Viewing: New Work

Several participating artists, alongside Deborah Harding, selecting their artifacts from the collection. Courtesy of Nathan J. Shaulis.

Tuesday June 16, 2015 | by Alexander Charnov

OPENING: New Pittsburgh exhibition mines ancient glass for inspiration and inquiry

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, Museums, New Work, News, Opening

New movements in art can be understood as conversations with contemporaries, as peers engage in aesthetic dialogues that can reshape the art world. A new project at the Pittsburgh Glass Center facilitated a related but contrasting conversation between contemporary glass artists and their long-departed precursors — the anonymous makers of ancient glass who created extraordinary glass objects two millennia ago, which are in the permanent collection of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. An innovative partnership between two Pittsburgh organizations, the project resulted in an exhibition opening Friday, June 19th, entitled “Out of the Archives and Into the Gallery.”

Lesley Pyke's work Wish You Were Here (2015) took the top prize.

Wednesday June 10, 2015 | by Alexander Charnov

U.K. glass artist association announces winner of glass postcard competition

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Award, Exhibition, New Work

Earlier this week, The Contemporary Glass Society announced the winners of its annual glass art prize, which corresponded with the week-long International Festival of Glass in Stourbridge, England. Artists were asked to submit postcard-sized works made predominantly of glass. Chosen from the more than 160 submissions received, artist Lesley Pyke was awarded first place, and Evy Cohen was awarded second place.

"Glass: In the Nature of Things" as installed at the Bullseye Resource Center New York.

Tuesday June 9, 2015 | by Alexander Charnov

Opening Reception: “Glass: In the Nature of Things” at the Bullseye Resource Center

FILED UNDER: Events, Exhibition, New Work, Opening

Opening on Saturday June 13th in Mamaroneck, New York, an exhibition entitled “Glass: In The Nature of Things” will feature new work by Sandy Gellis, Susan Cox, and Jane Bruce—three New York-based artists who recently partook in a joint residency at the Bullseye Resource Center, the site of the exhibition which will include Sandy Gellis’ Charting Earth, River Sediments and Compounds (2015), Susan Cox’s Cathy’s Memories (2015), and Jane Bruce’s From the Edge (2015).

Monday June 1, 2015 | by Andrew Page

HOT OF THE PRESSES: Glass #139, Summer 2015

FILED UNDER: New Work, News, Print Edition

The Summer 2015 edition of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#139) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes. It comes bundled with the just-published 2015 edition of New Glass Review, a special subscriber bonus at no additonal charge (It is also available at select newsstands, but at a higher cover price). On the cover is a striking work by sculptor Rachel Owens, who employs glass for the same light-mediating qualities that draw so many sculptors. But she is especially focused on its metaphoric resonance. She began to notice broken green glass on the sidewalks of her Greenpoint, Brooklyn, neighborhood shortly after moving to New York after earning an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Keeping its sharp edges intact and giving it shape using a resin casting process, she has made it a primary material in her work, tapping into its associations of consumption and violence—two forces she zeroes in on in her critique of the excesses of our culture of rampant consumerism and its dire implications for the natural world. An in-depth conversation with Owens explores the importance of her investment in making her own work, which brings together concept and material for a powerful, multi-layered effect.

Elaine Miles and Adrian Lander, Glass Doors, 2015. Blown glass, found objects, mixed media. H 47, W 47, D 55 in. photo: adrian lander

Wednesday May 27, 2015 | by Emily Ma-Luongo

OPENING: Elaine Miles subverts magazine styling of glass in collaborative exhibit in Australia

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, Opening

"Glass Doors", opening on June 11th, will be the inaugural show at The Grey Area gallery in Collingwood, Victoria, as well as the debut of work from a new collaborative project of Australian artist Elaine Miles and photographer Adrian Lander. In experimental works dealing with perspective and light, glass installations will be paired with photographs lining the walls to explore the concept of "photogenic glass," or the kind of stylized images that you might see in a home catalog or interior design magazine and subverting them by creating unnerving tableaus.

Tuesday May 12, 2015 | by Emily Ma-Luongo

Toledo Museum of Art invites visitors to experience “Play Time” with glass and other media

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Events, Exhibition, Museums, New Work

“Play Time,” an interactive exhibit opening on May 22, 2015, at the Toledo Museum of Art, promises to be a participatory art playground for museum-goers. The event is based on the idea that a sense of "play" is an important element of everyday life and helps maintain good health (the event is sponsored by a health organization). Depending on the material, the projects will vary in the amount of viewer participation, and will include everything from a climbable net to a giant rubber ball. For glass artist Kim Harty's Glass Mountain project, which involves layering hot strands of molten glass over itself to create a complex single structure, it will be less of an opportunity for hands-on involvement by the general public, but more of a spectacle or performance. For the project, which will begin on Friday, May 22, and continue over the Memorial Day weekend, Harty intends to interact with the audience in a different wayto create her own unique corner of “play.”

Sibylle Peretti, Snowchild II, 2015. cast glass, H 37, W 40, D 21 in.

Thursday May 7, 2015 | by Justyna Turek

OPENING: Heller Gallery transformed into a dreamlike world for Sibylle Peretti’s solo exhibition

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work

A solo exhibition opening this evening of May 7, 2015 in New York City is entitled “The Land Behind” and features work by Sibylle Peretti, a German artist based in New Orleans. New York's Heller Gallery will offer an intimate opportunity to explore the artist’s personal world of fragility and translucency, an environment inhabited by fairy tales and dreams. Peretti's work mines the connection between children and nature, delving into both as symbols of innocence and vulnerable purity. The opening reception will run this evening from 6 - 8 PM and the exhibition remains on view through June 3, 2015.

Wednesday May 6, 2015 | by Emily Ma-Luongo

OPENING: An exhibition in Venice seeks to marry traditional skills with contemporary art

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work

With a reception on Friday, May 8th, and continuing through November 22nd, an exhibition in Venice called “In Glass We Trust” brings together works by virtuosos of lampworking and blowing at the Balbi Art Glass gallery. The collective goal of this presentation of work by seven artists is to show glass at a higher level of abstraction, as well as to provide an open-ended context for displaying exceptional craftsmanship. With the aim of reaffirming innovation in an age-old Italian practice, the show presents itself as an opportunity for established artists to demonstrate their personal imaginations.

Tuesday May 5, 2015 | by Emily Ma-Luongo

OPENING: Hiroshi Yamano exhibition “East Meets West” kicks off at Studio Inferno in New Orleans

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work, News

Opening on May 9th at the Studio Inferno in New Orleans, an exhibition of Hiroshi Yamano’s artwork entitled “East Meets West” will kick off with an opening reception at 6 PM. The show is being presented as a Japanese artist’s narrative of Western culture’s influence on his life. Having been inspired to work with glass after seeing a Scandinavian exhibit in Kyoto in 1975, Yamano’s experience with the medium was shaped by education both in the U.S and Japan. Although his exposure to glass was split between East and West, he was strongly influenced by his studies with Studio Glass pioneer Marvin Lipofsky at the California College of Arts and Crafts, while his technical skills were honed at the Tokyo Glass Art Institute.

Tuesday April 28, 2015 | by Emily Ma-Luongo

Helsinki-based duo create comic strip from blown glass vases for Toronto comics festival

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, News

Sini Majuri and Ella Varvio, a Finnish duo, create comic art through glass art. Their project entitled "Tulintu" is an ongoing cartoon series where illustrations are presented not in panels on paper, but as drawings on a series of mouth-blown glass vesseles, fusing two separate practices into a hybrid platform for contemporary art. From May 4th through the 10th, their work will be presented at the Toronto Reference Library as part of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF). Blending traditional glassblowing with the inky, elaborate drawings of graphic novels, the pair is bringing a new twist to each art form with a linear story that unfolds across 15 glass vessels.

Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly, a glossy art magazine published four times a year by UrbanGlass has provided a critical context to the most important artwork being done in the medium of glass for more than 40 years.