Tuesday July 22, 2014 | by Elena Tafone

Pittsburgh Glass Center gives glass a larger role in regional art biennial

FILED UNDER: New Work, News, Opening

Though not quite following the 2-year interval its name suggests (it was last held back in 2011), the 2014 Pittsburgh Biennial is an exhibition and celebration of regional artwork, and, thanks to a new program at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, it also includes fresh expressions in glass thanks to the pairing of artists who don't work in glass with skilled glass makers. In the 20 years since the biennial exhibition was launched at the Center for the Arts, it has steadily grown to become the largest showcase of contemporary art in Western Pennsylvania, and has spread out to take place at several venues in the Pittsburgh area.

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Friday July 18, 2014 | by Lindsay von Hagn

OPENING: Caroline Ouellette explores memories through the senses in Australian exhibit “In Vitro”

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

UPDATED 7/29/14

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Tuesday July 15, 2014 | by Elena Tafone

OPENING: Claire Lieberman brings her glass guns to Brooklyn art center

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, News, Opening

Located on Brooklyn’s Red Hook waterfront, the Hot Woods Art Center will host the opening reception for a duo exhibition on July 25, featuring the glass firearms of multimedia artist Claire Lieberman. Since 1999, Lieberman has explored and subverted the functionality of form with her “Ice Gun” series. The guns, like something from an 80s sci-fi flick, are meant to be cartoonish in their design. Over the years, they have only become less and less realistic, most lacking vital components, such as bullets and triggers, that would make the firearms functional. This “purely aesthetic” effect is enhanced by the glass from which these pieces are sculpted. While some are colored, creating an almost candy like appearance, the majority are clear, as if crafted from ice.   

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Thursday July 3, 2014 | by Lindsay von Hagn

OPENING: Vibrant new work by Davide Salvadore debuts at Traver tonight

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

New, vividly colored work by Muranese glassblower Davide Salvadore is the focus of a new exhibition at Seattle's Traver Gallery. Titled simply "Davide Salvadore: New Work," the show that blazes new chromatic ground for this artist best known for his sculptural stringed-instrument objects, opens tonight, July 3 and will be on view through Sunday, August 3, 2014. Salvadore, born into a family of glass workers, has devoted his career to reinterpreting and modernizing the traditional techniques and aesthetics he uses in his work. He often instructs students on non-traditional murrini-making techniques and how to employ the tiny detailed pieces in compelling ways. In his own work, he draws inspiration from ancient musical instruments, African symbols and textiles, and the colors of the African landscape. While many of the shapes in this exhibition are not new, Salvadore has added a number of intense new colors to his palette, using less of his characteristic earth tones in favor of bright turquoise, yellows, and oranges. Sometimes these colors fill the entire piece, and sometimes the colors jump out from a background of neutral colored, yet equally intricate patterns.

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Wednesday July 2, 2014 | by Lindsay von Hagn

OPENING: Emily Nachison links measurements to meaning in Bullseye Gallery exhibition

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work, Opening

An essential philosophy of Portland-based artist Emily Nachison is that “our world is one of transformation and not destruction.” Much of her previous work examines the transformation that takes place during lifecycles of growth and decay. She has also dissected mythologies of scientific (and even pseudoscientific) history, as well as contemporary spirituality. In addition to her work in fiber, in which she holds an advanced degree, Nachison also makes cast-glass sculptures, which will be the focus of her solo exhibition at the Bullseye Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Entitled “The Realm of Quantifiable Truths”, the exhibition opening is this evening, Wednesday, July 2nd, and it will run through August 30th, 2014.

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Sunday June 29, 2014 | by Andrew Page

Corning Museum of Glass pushes back opening date for new contemporary wing

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

Originally set for a December 2014 opening, the new North Wing of the Corning Museum of Glass is now going to open to the public on March 20, 2015. The construction of the ambitious expansion project with a $64 million budget is on schedule, according to a Corning Museum spokesperson, but the additional time is needed for installing the 70 works that will be the hallmark of the new 26,000-square-foot gallery dedicated to showcasing the larger scale typical of contemporary work in glass. "We will begin installing our objects in the galleries once the building is complete," writes Yvette Sterbenk, the museum's senior manager of communications in an email exchange with the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet. "As the caretakers of the world’s most important collection of glass, we want to make sure we give ourselves time to do this appropriately. Instead of opening in the winter, we set the opening around the vernal equinox – the start of spring – which gives us a great opportunity to celebrate the idea of light, as befits the new building."

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Thursday June 26, 2014 | by Elena Tafone

OPENING: Artists in glass and other media take on a post-Fukushima Japan in New York exhibition

FILED UNDER: New Work, News, Opening

Opening tonight in New York City is a group exhibition of Japanese artists whose work in various media including glass wrestles with a new reality in the wake of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that unleashed their destruction on the Japanese coast in spring of 2011 and led to one of the world's worst nuclear accidents. The redefined landscape of the post-Fukushima era is the subject of the show entitled “Duality of Existence — Post Fukushima” and debuting this evening at Freidman Benda. Japan has a uniquely complex relationship with nuclear power as the only nation to have endured a nuclear attack (with the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagisaki in the waning days of WWII in 1945). Following the nuclear disaster and radiation release in 2011, the country struggled to understand the truth of the extent of the damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant which is considered a combination of natural and human factors, and the government control of information about safety created a firestorm of discontent and soul-searching.

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Thursday June 26, 2014 | by Lindsay von Hagn

EXHIBITION: Katerina Ganchak elicits emotion in “Just Feel” exhibit in Brooklyn

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work

Artists and designers often expend a lot of energy developing a strong concept to depict through their work, but Katerina Ganchak’s work in her current solo exhibition, “Just Feel: Glass Sculptures and Paintings”, shies away from establishing a concept and focuses instead on eliciting an emotional response from the viewer. Her work intends to appeal to people with strong imagery that all human beings can intuitively relate to, and in “Just Feel”, on display at Java Studios Art Gallery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, visitors are free to have their own individualized experience.

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Tuesday June 24, 2014 | by Elena Tafone

PERFORMANCE: Justin Ginsberg challenges the traditional in Berlin residency

FILED UNDER: Events, Exhibition, New Work, News

Art is communication: the transfer of nonphysical ideas from the artist to viewer through a physical medium. It is an exchange that has long preoccupied American artist Justin Ginsberg, who presented his work to the public during an evening performance at Berlin Glas e.V. on June 19, 2014. Ginsberg’s work “Decadence” was the culmination of his five-day residency at the nonprofit art center in Berlin, Germany.

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Tuesday June 17, 2014 | by Lindsay von Hagn

EXHIBITION: “Glass Creatures” exhibit features studies of form by Susan Leibold and Mari Meszaros

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, News

Many glass artists are driven by the subject of water and the worlds encompassed inside of its bodies. In the 19th century, Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka studied and made extensive drawings of specimens they wanted to recreate for university study, and in addition to fruits and flowers, made realistic marine invertebrates from glass. A collection of their invertebrates is housed at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, and these extraordinary sculptures can also be seen on a 37-page online gallery on the Cornell website. Years ago, I had the rare opportunity to flamework on the Corning Museum of Glass’s functional replica of the Blaschka’s bellows-operated torch and workbench, managing to only create a small leaf or flower petal with its alcohol-burning flame. The size of the fire the Blaschkas worked with is much smaller than the gas and oxygen burning flame contemporary flameworkers are accustomed to, so I can attest that perfecting this process and completing the collection was no small accomplishment. Assembling these lifelike pieces with that technology in the late 1800s was certainly a labor of love. Though the Blaschkas were eventually contracted to make glass specimen for universities, the initial motivation to make these pieces must have been fueled by relentless inspiration.

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