Stephen Rolfe Powell’s legacy lives on in new glass museum seeking national prominence

With a name as grand as its ambitions, a Kentucky art center seeks a national profile for its glass collections, built upon a major gift of Stephen Rolfe Powell’s work. The Art Center of the Bluegrass in Danville, Kentucky, opened a new museum building just next door on November 3, 2023. Its name? “GLASS National Art Museum.”

Wednesday November 8, 2023 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: Contributing editor Samantha De Tillio on winning the 2023 Lois Moran Award for Craft Writing

Samantha De Tillio. a contributing editor to Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly and an independent curator, has been recognized for her outstanding article on glass performances of the late 20th and early 21st century, which was published in the Summer 2023 edition of Glass (#171). De Tillio was named a recipient of the 2023 Lois Moran Award for Craft Writing in an announcement that cited the original interviews and archival research she conducted for the article entitled “Live Glass at the Turn of the Millennium: The Performance Troupe."

Artist and designer Robert DuGrenier (second from right) has been honing his cooking on molten glass in anticipation of an unforgettable night of hot-shop cuisine at UrbanGlass for the winning bidder.

Tuesday October 10, 2023 | by Sponsored Content

The UrbanGlass 2023 Gala and Auction offers a chance to bid on a sizzling evening to remember in the hot shop

For its 2023 Gala and Auction taking place on October 11, UrbanGlass is putting a wide range of artworks up for bid as part of its annual fundraising event. At $9,000, the auction item with the highest minimum bid is for an unusual blend of performance art, glass blowing, and fine dining that will take place in the open-access art center's state-of-the-art hotshop. This unique experience will see the winning bidder and up to 11 guests meet up to celebrate the fusion of glass art and culinary ingenuity as glass artist, designer, progressive farmer and UrbanGlass board member Robert DuGrenier, working together with New York Times-starred chef Alex Sorenson of Blank Slate Kitchen, whip up an unforgettable feast for the senses.

Thursday October 5, 2023 | by Andrew Page

John Miller goes big for solo exhibition at a Florida Art Museum

When John Miller was in kindergarten, meals with his motorcycle-dealer Dad at a drive-in diner left a lasting imprint on him. Everything from the fast food served in generous portions to the automobile culture of the era, where people came as much to eat as to show off their gas-guzzling 1970s cars, imprinted themselves in Miller's mind. Years later, as an undergraduate student of glass art at Southern Connecticut State University, he found himself sketching crinkle-cut french fries in sculpture class no matter the assignment. Bubbling up was inspiration in his memories of a by-gone era of indulgence. He's far from the first to revel in turning everyday objects into monumental pop-art sculptures, but to Miller, these seemingly whimsical objects are freighted with meaning.

Thursday September 28, 2023 | by Andrew Page

Paper and resin artist Dolores Furtado creates timeless, ethereal glass works on view in New York

Artist residencies can be welcome opportunities for an artist to pursue their lifelong passions for a material, or they can be game-changing experiences of seeing their ideas jump from one media to another. In the case of Dolores Furtado, it is the latter phenomenon as her richly textured colored forms made from sculpted paper pulp take on a new dimension of live-ness in the light-refracting material of glass which turns her ideas from stolidly opaque to translucent and something else altogether.

Tuesday September 12, 2023 | by Andrew Page

Pilchuck announces the departure of executive director Christopher Taylor after five years

In a brief announcement issued in the late afternoon on Monday, September 11th, the board of the Pilchuck Glass School announced the departure of its executive director, Christopher R. Taylor, after five-and-a-half years at the helm. Pilchuck's deputy director Donna Davies was named as interim executive director, effective immediately.

Scenes from the 2017 Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass, where head of the RISD glass art department Rachel Berwick was the keynote speaker (top left).

Thursday September 7, 2023 | by Andrew Page

This Fall, a bumper crop of glass-educator gatherings will offer multiple opportunities to connect and exchange ideas

Three separate gatherings this fall -- in Amsterdam, Netherlands; Madison, Wisconsin; and Brooklyn, New York -- will each offer a unique opportunity for glass educators to consider the issues facing the field of glass art.

Thursday August 31, 2023 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Fall 2023 edition of Glass (#172)

You could be forgiven if you didn't immediately think "Paul Stankard" when viewing the close-up of sinewy human bodies intertwined with flower blossoms, mossy grasses, and seed pods on the cover of the Fall 2023 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly. Stankard is well-known for his lush floral arrangements encased in glass, detailed depictions that accurately capture the organic complexity of their delicate beauty.

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Wednesday August 30, 2023 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: Jane Bruce on the battle to save North Lands from liquidation

Jane Bruce, who from 2002 to 2007 served as the artistic director of North Lands Creative Glass (before the word "Glass" was removed from its title) is investigating ways to save the studio, buildings, and equipment of this European center for glass along the windswept coast of Northeast Scotland. As debts mounted over the past year, the staff was let go, and recently, the facilities have been secured and a liquidator has been assigned to sell off the assets of this beloved institution that dates back to 1996. For decades, it drew artists from around the world to the Scottish coastal fishing village of Lybster in the county of Caithness. Bruce is actively looking to partner with other artists who might want to invest in saving the infrastructure from being sold off, and to restart the furnaces and kilns in a newly structured organization that may or may not become again an officially registered charity. The Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet had an opportunity to discuss the fast-moving situation with Bruce in an in-person interview in the offices of UrbanGlass, the nonprofit art center in Brooklyn, New York, that publishes Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly as well as this online publication.

Thursday August 17, 2023 | by John Drury

IN MEMORIAM: Outsider artist Robert Blackstone (1971 - 2023), whose Crystal City installation is a visionary portrait of Dayton, Ohio, falls victim to the city's gun violence

Even before the COVID pandemic, Dayton, Ohio, was known as one of the top 5 deadliest U.S. cities, as CBS designated it in 2019. On August 1st, 2023, one of the most important artists to try and capture the spirit and energy of this complex Ohio city was gunned down on a downtown street. Robert Blackstone, the self-taught installation artist who worked extensively with glass, was grievously injured by a gunshot wound to his chest, and he died from his injuries. The alleged shooter, who has a long criminal record, is in custody.