Placeholder

Viewing: New Work


Monday May 9, 2016 | by Andrew Page

3 Questions for ... Rui Sasaki

In 2010, I had the good fortune to be invited as a visiting critic to an especially strong RISD graduate show of glass MFAs, which that year included Charlotte Potter, Matthew Day Perez, and Rui Sasaki. I was impressed across the board, not only with the work, but the confidence with which all three artists worked with materials, embracing readymade and non-glass media in their respective thesis projects. Rui Sasaki presented a 4-hour video of her multi-day performance art piece that involved a block of ice made up of the same amount of water in the human body. A test of endurance and risking hypothermia, she curled her nude body around the block to hasten its melting, displaying a similar block of ice while the document of her marathon performance was screened. Since her graduation, she's taught glass and contemporary art at Worcester State University in the U.S., and Kyoto University of Art and Design as well as the Toyama City Institute of Glass Art in Japan. Working with "transparent materials," which includes ice and glass, she is building on her long-standing interest in the concepts of "home" and, by extension, "intimacy," something she felt the profound loss of when she left Japan to study in Rhode Island in 2007. Since her graduation, she's been traveling widely to residencies in the U.S., Sweden, Belgium, and Japan, as well as to exhibitions around Europe and Asia. As she writes in her artist statement: "Wandering is a part of my work to achieve the definition of intimacy in empty space and intimacy without space. Through my work, I document the intimacy and memory of the home." The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet recently caught up with Rui at her residency in Norway, where she answered some questions about her latest projects. —AP

Continue Reading

Thursday May 5, 2016 | by Andrew Page

GALLERY EXHIBITION: Toots Zynsky artist reception tonight at Heller Gallery

Toots Zynsky's sensuous forms, made up of thousands of undulating glass fibers that have been fused into wide-throated vessels that reach skyward with sinuous lines and luminous colors, are on exhibit at Heller Gallery through May 28th. Tonight, the exhibition entitled "today tomorrow yesterday | oggi domani ieri," will celebrate the artist and her 40-year career with a reception at the Chelsea, New York gallery from 6 PM to 8 PM.

Continue Reading

Thursday April 28, 2016 | by Andrew Page

Call for Submissions: The Glass Art Society looks to fund cutting-edge approaches to the material

The Glass Art Society is currently accepting applications for the third iteration of its Technology Advancing Glass Grant, which is designed to support projects breaking new ground in material, technique, or method, to advance the practice of making art with glass. Up to $5,000 will be awarded to the top applications for the 2016-17 fiscal year. Last year, the glass-frit-and-paper experiments of Iranian artist Saman Kalantari took top honors, with runners-up Michal Czeisler, Jin Won Han, and a collaborative group from the Chrysler Museum of Art Glass Studio and the NASA Langley Research Center each receiving $2,000 for their projects. It appears the budget for the upcoming awards will be held to a total of $5,000 versus the $11,000 awarded in 2015.

Continue Reading

Tuesday April 26, 2016 | by Andrew Page

3 Questions for ... Alli Hoag

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, New Work
Alli Hoag, who holds a BFA from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a 2012 MFA from Alfred, is obsessed with boundaries. If there's a line through the varied work she has produced both in her own practice and through international residencies at locations such as the Cite des Arts International in Paris, France and S12 Galleri og Verksted in Bergen, Norway, it is her interest in the possibilities and limitations of connection — interpersonal as well as between individuals and the world around them. Hoag's art-making is driven by this interest. As she writes in her online artist's statement: "The act of making becomes an action of physical wish fulfillment. The physical result becomes a proxy, a body without organs — it exposes our innate drive to connect yet reveals the deficiencies in our physical capabilities to do so." Despite being especially busy with her recent appointment to assistant professor of the glass area at the three-dimensional studies program at Bowling Green State University, Hoag took some time for an interview with the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet.

Continue Reading

Thursday April 14, 2016 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Tacoma youth share personal stories through glass works inspired by Bangladeshi textiles

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, Opening
"Common Threads: A Glass Exploration of Kantha Embroidery" is the title of a new installation by Hilltop Artists students. An opening reception will take place at the W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory in Tacoma’s Wright Park tomorrow evening, April 15th. Kantha embroidery is a textile artform from South Asia that Hilltop Artists students learned about when Cathy Stevulak and Leonard Hill, co-producers of the documentary film Threads, visited the program  to discuss their film, which profiles a self-taught artist who trained poor women in Bangladesh to translate their life experiences into Kantha. The Hilltop Artists students were encourage to translate what they learned into allegorical works of glass art.

Continue Reading

Thursday March 24, 2016 | by Andrew Page

EXHIBITION: Recent RISD MFA grad has solo exhibition in New York City embassy

Phillippines-born artist Christina "Goldie" Poblador is currently exhibiting a multi-media interactive installation at the Phillippine Center Gallery, her first solo exhibition in New York City. Running through April 15, 2016, the exhibition entitled "Venus Freed" uses interactive blown glass objects, flowers, and found materials to examine the Philippine myth of the ylang ylang, a distinctly shaped and scented flower used in many perfume formulations but rarely identified or sourced from the Phillippines. Earning her MFA in glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in  2015 Poblador finds rich metaphoric associations in the complex Colonial history of her native country, and employ the unique scent and shape of this distinctive and mythic flower as an object specific resonance for the exploitation of Phillippine women.

Continue Reading

Agood Spirit 29X6 5X5In 2016
Preston Singletary, Journey Across the Fire, 2016. H 28 in. courtesy: traver gallery

Monday March 21, 2016 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Preston Singletary to debut new work at “Journey across the fire” exhibition

Opening April 7th, and running through the end of the month at Traver Gallery in Seattle, a new exhibition by Preston Singletary will unveil new forms that marry traditional Northwest Coast Native American imagery with new glass shapes. Entited "Journey Through the Fire (and in to the World)," the exhibition's work employs Modernist vessel forms as three-dimensional canvases for the artist's ongoing study of Native American iconography — specifically Tlingit Formline art. 

Continue Reading

Thursday March 10, 2016 | by Andrew Page

Silvia Levenson solo show opens at the Murano Glass Museum in Venice

Argentinian-born artist Silvia Levenson's traveling exhibition "Identidad Desaparecidos ('Missing Identity' in English)" has been on view in Buenos Aires, Spain, France, Latvia, and at the Katzen Center at American University in the Washington D.C. area. An examination of the lingering trauma experienced by Argentine society under brutal dictatorship that Levenson and her young family fled will open in her adopted country of Italy on March 12th (Levenson has been living here since 1980). On Saturday, the Murano Glass Museum will open Levenson's first solo  exhibition in Venice, and it will include a unique site-specific work that will circle the gallery area with 119 kiln-cast baby clothes represting the number of the children taken from their mothers who, thanks to the ongoing efforts of the "Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo" have been able to learn their biological identity through DNA testing.

Continue Reading

24725162422 D583498286 Z
A rhino by Kelly O'Dell greeted visitors to the opening of "Lifeforms 2016"

Saturday February 6, 2016 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Scenes from the kick-off reception for “Lifeforms 2016” at Pittsburgh Glass Center

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, News, Opening
More than 500 people attended last night's opening of the second "Lifeforms" exhibition at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, some drawn by the nonprofit's 15th anniversary celebration. But the main event was the exhibition of 55 life-like "biological glass models"  inspired by the highly realistic plant and invertebrate models made by the now-legendary father and son team of Rudolf and Leopold Blaschka. Spurred by the interest generated by the first "Lifeforms" exhibition in 2013, the 2016 jurors — artist Amber Cowan, PGC executive diretor Heather McElwee, artist Robert Mickelsen, artist Kait Rhoads, and art administrator David Francis — sorted through 177 submissions from around the world, including some from as far away as China, Argentina, and Russia. Though an homage to the Blaschka's lampworked forms, the exhibition was open to artists working with any technique to manipulate glass. According to the Website dedicated to the application process for the show, entries were judged for "accuracy in representing the organism, aesthetic beauty, presentation, and originality." You can view all the submissions here.

Continue Reading

Wednesday January 27, 2016 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Tyler faculty showcased in group exhibition in Philadelphia

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, News, Opening
Opening at the Philadelphia Art Alliance tomorrow evening, January 28, 2016, is a group exhibition entitled "Hush," featuring work by four members of the Tyler School of Art's glass faculty: Megan Biddle, Amber Cowan, Jessica Jane Julius, and Sharyn O’Mara (the department head). Ranging from site-specific installations to sculptures and drawings, the work in the exhibition shares a common focus on concepts of "reflection (literal and figurative) and distillation," according to the official announcement.

Continue Reading

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.