Saturday July 26, 2014 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Jim Loewer’s Asian-influenced bowls and vases featured in museum shop exhibit

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

The Alternatives Museum Shop at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts will feature the intense colors of Jim Loewer's glass vessels in a special exhibition debuting July 31st and running through September 25th, 2014. Based in Philadelphia, Loewer was trained as a painter, but now devotes himself to flamerworked borosilicate glass vases and bowls based on forms influenced by Japanese vesselware. He is self-taught and appreciates slight irregularities in his work which adds to their character.

Continue Reading

Thursday July 24, 2014 | by Elena Tafone

OPENING: Howard Ben Tré museum exhibition in Tacoma debuts this September

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

Howard Ben Tré, an artist who redefined the scale possible in glass sculpture with monumental glass totems often accented with metallic foil surfaces, will have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Glass, in Tacoma, Washington. Entitled “Lightness of Being,” the show opens September 14, and has been described as an indoor forest of vertical shapes, featuring towering sculptures cast in glass and bronze, some as much as 8-feet tall. The show seems to reprise work shown in 2012 at the Dennos Sculpture Center in Traverse City, Michigan.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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

Continue Reading

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.   

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

Tuesday June 10, 2014 | by Andrew Page

EXHIBITION: Glass exhibition on Bainbridge Island puts the focus on Seattle scene

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

Through June 30th, 2014, the Bainbridge Arts & Crafts Gallery is hosting "Blown Away, Cast Away," an exhibition curated by GLASS Quarterly contributing editor Victoria Josslin. Featuring the work of Granite Calimpong, Bruce Greek, Janusz Pozniak, Lynn E. Read, Boyd Sugiki, Takuya Tokizawa, and Lisa Zerkowitz, the exhibition combines sculptural and design works in glass.

Continue Reading

Friday June 6, 2014 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: April Surgent’s photographic glass panels debut at Heller Gallery

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, Opening

UPDATED 06- 07-2014; 8:06 PM

Continue Reading