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Tom Patti will be the Specialty Glass Artist-in-Residence at The Corning Museum of Glass for 2015 through 2016.

Wednesday July 8, 2015 | by Emily Ma-Luongo

Tom Patti awarded specialty glass residency at The Corning Museum

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Artist Interviews, Museums, News

The Corning Museum of Glass has chosen Tom Patti for the 2015/16 Speciality Glass Artist-in-Residence, an award granted for a unique opporutnity to work with cutting-edge formulations of glass. The residency will allow the artist freedom to work in an industrial laboratory with the assistance of the museum's glassmakers, research scientists, and curators. Patti is the second selected artist in the invite-only program after Albert Paley. Beginning this month, the residency will take place in the research and design facility known as Sullivan Park, where Patti will have the opportunity to experiment with patented glass formulations from the Corning Archives, giving him the chance to further explore the medium. Known for his innovative techniques that push the physicality of glass, Patti will use the residency to further explore how temperature affects the material. Since his primary concern is to conduct research, he told the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet that he is going into the process without a specific creative agenda, but to simply further his knowledge of what glass is capable of doing.

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.”

courtesy: the artist

Wednesday June 3, 2015 | by Alexander Charnov

In Memoriam: Michael Nourot (1949-2015)

FILED UNDER: In Memoriam, News

Glassblower Michael Nourot, who, with his wife, Ann Corcoran, operated Nourot Glass Studio in Benicia, California, from 1974 to 2012, died on Thursday, May 14, 2015 at the age of 66. At the start of his prolific 40-year career, Nourot attended the first session of the now-iconic Pilchuck Glass School, where he worked closely with founders Dale Chihuly and James Carpenter. In his glassblowing studio, Nourot went on the make decorative glass works, some of which were presented to popes and presidents, according to the studio website.

The museum building that will house ZIBA - Prague Glass Experience.

Tuesday June 2, 2015 | by Justyna Turek

A major new glass museum prepares to open in Prague in 2016

FILED UNDER: Education, Museums, News

Europe will gain a major new museum devoted to glass when ZIBA - The Prague Glass Experience Museum opens in 2016 in the center of the historic city of Prague in the Czech Republic. Designed to be an inspiring experience of visual art, design and innovative technology in contemporary glass will present the material with an emphasis on its prominence in Czech history. The museum will connect glass art with its role in design, crafts, technology, architecture, and other creative disciplines across the industry, including education and entertainment. Though the official opening is still more than a year away, the venue is already hosting interesting exhibitions and events in preparation.

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.

Tina Oldknow in the Heineman Gallery. photo: allison lavine

Tuesday May 26, 2015 | by Andrew Page

A conversation with Corning’s Tina Oldknow on the announcement of her retirement

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Museums, News

This morning, The Corning Museum of Glass will announce that Tina Oldknow plans to retire from the position of senior curator of modern and contemporary glass in September 2015. Oldknow has been in this high-profile position since 2000. Her 15-year-tenure has been marked by numerous exhibitions, publications, and frequent appearances as a lecturer, critic, and panelist (including those I've moderated). Her visibility, as well as prodigious output as an author and curator, have made her perhaps the most-visible and best-known figure in the world of contemporary art made from glass, and one of its most-enthusiastic proponents. Oldknow's retirement will come just months after the March 2015 opening of The Corning Museum's new Contemporary Art + Design Wing, which she curated, and for which she made several major acquisitions while being intimately involved in its planning and design. Oldknow also wrote the exhibition catalog for the new wing, entitled Collecting Contemporary Glass: Art and Design After 1990 from the Corning Museum of Glass (2014).

Tuesday May 12, 2015 | by Emily Ma-Luongo

EXHIBITION: Finalists in Belgian and Dutch art competition on view in Holland

FILED UNDER: Award, Exhibition, Museums, News

Since 1992, Bernardine de Neeve Exhibition has been celebrating new developments in contemporary glass among Belgian and Dutch artists. Taking place once every three years, the seventh iteration of this competition has been narrowed down to three 2015 finalisits who are exhibiting their nominated works at DordtYart, an industrial shipyard turned contemporary art center. The finalist will be annnounced on June 28th.

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.

Tuesday April 21, 2015 | by Emily Ma-Luongo

The Glass Art Society establishes Littleton Lecture at the artist organization’s annual conference

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Events, News

The Glass Art Society has announced a new lecture that will become a regular part of its annual conference. Named for the recognized founder of Studio Glass, Harvey Littleton, the lecture will be presented by a glass artist chosen for his or her ability to express individuality in the medium. The inaugural Littleton lecture will be delivered by Therman Statom during the arist association's upcoming conference in San Jose, California, which will take place from June 7th through the 9th with the theme of "Interface: Glass, Art, and Technology."

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.