Viewing: News

William Gudenrath, Amy Schwartz, and David Whitehouse at the opening of the Studio at The Corning Museum of Glass in 1996.

Wednesday May 18, 2016 | by Andrew Page

Looking Back: Amy Schwartz on the Corning Studio as the program she helped build turns 20

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Events, Exhibition, Museums, News

In 1995, a pregnant Amy Schwartz and her husband, William Gudenrath, relocated to Corning, New York, at the invitation of museum director David Whitehouse (1941-2013) to begin the planning for The Studio at The Corning Museum of Glass, a new initiative that would redefine and expand the museum's role as a place where glass was not only studied and exhibited but also made and taught. To take their new positions as studio director and resident advisor, respectively, Schwartz and Gudenrath were both leaving jobs in New York City — she managed the computer system of a law firm on Wall Street and he was a longtime instructor at UrbanGlass (and one of the first to join its precursor, The New York Experimental Glass Workshop). The Studio at Corning opened its doors in 1996 with a block party that included an ice cream truck and guests such as gallerist Doug Heller and artist Paul Stankard. The couple's newborn daughter, Sophia, also attended the Studio's opening on May 26, 1996, taking it all in from a stroller. Twenty years later, as the studio has hosted hundreds of instructors and artists in residence, as well hundreds of thousands of museum visitors making their own glass, the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet spoke with the Studio's director about the highlights of the past two decades.

Friday May 13, 2016 | by Andrew Page

Citing overcapacity and new regulations, Spectrum Glass to close; future of product lines unclear

FILED UNDER: Announcements, News

Spectrum Glass, a leading supplier of art glass materials including its System 96 family of products that includes compatible sheet glass and cullet for furnaces, shocked the glass world on Wednesday, May 11th, with its announcement it has begun an appoximately two-month process of closing its operations. For four decades, the Woodinville, Washington, company has been a major supplier of materials for stained glass and fusing projects, and also offered a popular line of premelted cullet used by many studios to speed the time for charging furnaces while also offering compatibility with the company's extensive line of sheet glass. In its communication to customers, Spectrum cited the twin factors of overcapacity and a more complex regulatory climate for glass producers as the reasons for this decision. The announcement cited the dramatic sales decline that followed the economic recession in the late 2000s, and now estimates that the company is operating at only 40 percent of capacity. "Our consistently reduced levels of sales simply cannot cover the fixed costs required to operate a facility of our size," reads the official announcement posted on the company hompage.

1 Anne Siblings 2013 3`x 4`paper Salt Plastic Ink Vienna Gallery Hinterland Copy

Curator and artist Yuka Otani

Tuesday May 10, 2016 | by Andrew Page

A conversation with artist/curator Yuka Otani about her plans for the “Emancipation” of glass art

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Events, Exhibition, News

Yuka Otani wants to challenge the current classification and labelling of "glass art," and she is doing so with an independent exhibition entitled "Emancipation: how to make a work of glass that isn't glass" taking place during the upcoming Glass Art Society conference in Corning, New York (June 9 - 11, 2016). Otani, who holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2008) and a BFA from Tama Art University in Tokyo (2000), has organized provocative exhibitions before. In 2009, concurrent with an earlier GAS conference at Corning, she and co-curator Anjali Srinivasan organized a group exhibition entitled "How is This Glass" in multiple venues. In 2010, Otani and Srinivasan also put together a "Post-Glass Video Festival" that was screened at Heller Gallery and other venues. But her latest project is unique in its break with the material of glass itself — none of the work actually includes glass but Otani feels embraces it as a quality or metaphor. The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet recently had the opportunity to explore the ideas behind "Emancipation" in a conversation with Otani to better understand the concepts fueling the project. —AP

Thursday May 5, 2016 | by Andrew Page

GALLERY EXHIBITION: Toots Zynsky artist reception tonight at Heller Gallery

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

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.

Wednesday April 20, 2016 | by Andrew Page

Groundbreaking for the Kotler-Coville Glass Pavilion at the Ringling Museum

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Architecture, Museums, News

This morning, Florida State University president John Thrasher, Ringling Museum executive director Steven High, and the chair of The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art Foundation Michael Urette spoke at a morning ceremony to mark the groundbreaking of a new glass art pavilion at the Sarasota, Florida, art museum. Named in honor of donors Nancy and Philip Kotler and Margot and Warren Coville, the 5,500-square-foot addition will open in the fall of next year as an exhibition area to display objects from the museum's growing collection of American and European Studio Glass. The primary donors were present for the ceremony and reportedly used special ceremonial shovels to move sand in a symbolic launch of the construction project.

Wednesday April 6, 2016 | by Andrew Page

Rethinking the Littleton myth, Koen Vanderstukken explores alternate glass-art histories in new book

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Book Report, News

The head of the glass studio at Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada, Koen Vanderstukken was driven by curiosity to delve deeper into the evolution of glass as an art medium than the concise story that Harvey Littleton was singlehandedly responsible. This inquiry, which he undertook in 2008, led him to ponder the intrinsic complexity of the material of glass that drew artists such as Larry Bell and Robert Smithson who had little connection to the Studio Glass movement as led by Littleton, and evolved into a book project. (Disclosure: GLASS is planning to run an excerpt from Vanderstukken's new book in the Fall 2016 edition. Also, editor Andrew Page is the author of an essay that appeared in a Black Dog Publishing book.) Taking notes, researching, and writing, on his own time, he has completed the manuscript and sourced images to illustrate his points. The 288-page book is scheduled to be published in September 2016 in partnership with U.K.-based Black Dog Publishing but Vanderstukken needs to finance half the printing costs, and has turned to crowd-sourcing, where in less than 24 hours, he's raised 20-percent of his goal of $15,000 US. The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet spoke with Vanderstukken about the book project and his fundraising initiative. Excerpts from our telephone interview below:

April Surgent, Boathouse, 2014. Fused glass, cameo-carved.

Tuesday March 22, 2016 | by managingeditor@glassquarterly.com

OPENING: To celebrate 10th anniversary of the TMA Glass Pavilion, a survey show

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Architecture, Exhibition, Museums, News, Opening

To celebrate that 10th year since its Glass Pavilion opened, the Toledo Museum of Art will survey Studio Glass with a new exhibit opening in April. "Hot Spot: Contemporary Glass from Private Collections" will be on view in the exhibition gallery of the Glass Pavilion from April 15th through September 18th, 2016, and will feature work from North American, Asian, Australian, and European artists. Since it opened in 2006, the 74,000-square-foot Glass Pavilion has housed not only glass exhibitions, but artist studios, demonstration areas, and special museum events. The new building across the street from the historic art museum was ground-breaking in its use of glass not only for exterior walls, but for interior walls as well. Designed by the Pritzker-Prize winning architecture firm of SANAA, Ltd., the unique structure was chosen for its light imprint on the park it occupies, as well as an architectural marvel that celebrates a material so connected to the institution founded in 1901 by industrial glass magnate Edward Drummond Libbey, whose Libbey corporation continues to operate in the city of Toledo.

Tuesday March 15, 2016 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Corning to exhibit the lesser-known invertebrate sculptures by the Blaschkas

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, Museums, News

The father-and-son team of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, famous for their lampworked glass flowers that make up the Ware Collection at Harvard, were better known in their day for their models of sea creatures. While their flowers are what gives them the most contemporary attention, such as the recent "Lifeforms" exhibition of realistic work at Pittsburgh Glass Center in which the German model-makers are cited as inspiration for a juried show, a new exhibition opening in May at The Corning Museum of Glass will put the focus on their models of sea creatures. More than 70 Blaschka invertebrate sea creatures, drawn mostly from the collection of the Cornell University Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, will be on view, as well as numerous drawings and instruments used to craft these finely detailed objects.

Thursday March 10, 2016 | by Andrew Page

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

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work, News

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.

Sunday February 21, 2016 | by Andrew Page

Hot Off the Presses: GLASS #142, Spring 2016

FILED UNDER: Announcements, News, Print Edition

The Spring 2016 edition of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#142) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes at a moment when virtual reality is poised to go mainstream. Devices that turn your cell phone into a headset are already shipping to curious consumers, the Sundance Film Festival highlighted interactive experiences in an exhbition called "New Frontiers," and even an organization as august as The New York Times has been releasing online reports designed to envelop users in a digital experience. More complex headsets and interactive accessories are getting ready to ship. All of the buzz about virtual reality inspired us to remind the world of the rich terrain already mined by visual artists, who've used installations, architecture, and sculpture that create new realities through repeat reflectivity, partially mirrored glass surfaces, and cultivated perceptual shifts that play with optics to alter our relationship to the world around us, and force us to reconsider our place in it.

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.