Viewing:

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).

Friday September 27, 2019 | by Andrew Page

Schedule released for the upcoming 2019 Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass (October 24 - 26, 2019)

The full program of the 2019 Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass , which will run from October 24 through October 26, has been published. Among the highlights is an award to be presented to Lino Tagliapietra in recognition of his profound impact on the history of glass education in the United States. The ceremony will take place as the culmination of the Thursday evening gallery tour that kicks off the symposium and will take attendees through the Manhattan art neighborhood of Chelsea with stops at contemporary art galleries showing glass such as Marianne Boesky, Pace, and Luhring Augustine. The award will be presented at the final stop, Heller Gallery, where, during a catered reception in honor of Tagliapietra, the maestro will share his thoughts on the history and future of American glass-art education in a public conversation with Glass magazine editor and symposium organizer Andrew Page.

Richard Marquis, Ruby Heart Teapot, 1980. Blown glass, murrine technique. H 5, W 6, D 5 in. courtesy: museum of glass

Thursday September 26, 2019 | by Jillian Cheney

OPENING: Historic and contemporary work by iconic glass artist Richard Marquis on view in two Seattle-area exhibitions

A glass dog perched atop a wooden anvil. Patterned pink teapots. A golden birdcage. Watercolor postcards serving as the backdrop of whimsical found objects. All of the above -- and much more, with increasing variety -- are to be found at the Traver Gallery and Museum of Glass this month in two Marquis exhibits. At the Traver Gallery, on view through September 29th, both Richard and his painter and mixed-media artist wife, Johanna Marquis, display their work side by side in "Recent Works: New and Used." The gallery exhibition includes pieces both from their early careers and new works. And opening later this month at the glass museum in neighboring Tacoma, Washington, "Keepers" displays prized work draw straight from Richard Marquis' personal archives, spanning his decades-long career and providing insights into what the artist himself felt were among his most important and successful efforts.

Peter Bremers, Blue Elevated Space, 2019. Glass. H 39 1/4, W 22 1/2, D 6 1/4 in. courtesy: sandra ainsley gallery

Wednesday September 18, 2019 | by Jillian Cheney

OPENING: In his latest work, now on view at Toronto's Sandra Ainsley Gallery, Peter Bremers channels introspection and new beginnings

Using sculpted cast glass and earth-tones, Peter Bremers channels the outside world in making his artworks. Trips to the Antarctic and the American Southwest have advanced his premise that the beauty of natural phenomena is not a simple pursuit, but integral to the human experience. The transformation of self that can occur during these encounters is the subject of his introspective works. In his newest exhibition, which just debuted at the Ainsley Gallery outside Toronto, Bremers unveils 22 new works that encourage personal transformation through positive introspection in a show he tells the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet is "important to me as a human being and as an artist."

Installation view of Erica Rosenfeld's newest work at Heller, including her Cake Light sculpture at left, and her "paint-by-number" assemblages.

Thursday September 12, 2019 | by Jillian Cheney

OPENING: Erica Rosenfeld's second solo exhibition at Heller is a menagerie of mixed-media animal imagery

Vintage paint-by-numbers kits, especially those from the mid-20th-century, are more than kitschy relics to artist Erica Rosenfeld, who incorporates imagery from these kits into her original paintings. She references found visual artifacts in her hand-painted depictions of animals in her second solo exhibition at Heller Gallery. Entitled "Reverie Forest: Sanctuary for Strange Creatures," these new works go on view this evening in the Chelsea art district of Manhattan.

New York Times art critic Martha Schwendener also writes for Artforum, Art in America, and The New Yorker.

Thursday August 29, 2019 | by Andrew Page

New York Times art critic Martha Schwendener will deliver keynote lecture at the 2019 UrbanGlass symposium that runs from October 24th through the 26th

The theme for the fourth biennial academic symposium at UrbanGlass is "Issues in Glass Pedagogy: Criticism, Critique, and Critical Thinking," and the keynote speaker will be a prominent New York Times art critic. Martha Schwendener, a visiting associate professor at New York University, writes for several top art publications, but most often for the Times, where she focuses on non-mainstream artists. Just this year she's reviewed Nancy Spero's feminist art exhibition at PS 1, the big MoMA show on art and technology, and the Karrabing Film Collective.

Tuesday August 27, 2019 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Fall 2019 edition of Glass (#156)

The Fall 2019 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#156) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes this week. On the cover is a glass tapestry by Amber Cowan, who creates elaborate three-dimensional wall works by flameworking fragments of discarded, machine-made pressed glass. As new contributing editor Samantha De Tillio writes: "The work demands slow observation and challenges preconceived stereotypes regarding ornamentation, femininity, and the dominance of modernism."

Tuesday August 20, 2019 | by Meghan Hayfield

OPENING: Tiffany's ecclesiastical windows to go on display at Chicago's Driehaus Museum

Opening September 7, 2019, at the Driehaus Museum in Chicago is an exhibition of selected ecclesiastical stained-glass windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany. In addition to the setting, which shows the windows in appropriate Gilded-Age surroundings of an opulent residence that is now a museum, the exhibit also highlights the stories behind the works. Regular attendees of the SOFA art fair might recognize these windows, which had formerly been exhibited at Chicago's Navy Pier, where the Richard H. Drienhaus Gallery Stained Glass once stood adjacent to the Smith Museum of Stained Glass. (Both shut down for the recent renovation of Navy PIer.) The windows are part of the personal collection of the museum's founder, the investor and art collector Richard Driehaus, who also financed the purchase and renovation of the Driehaus Museum, which opened in 2008.

Liesl Schubel pictured before her 2018 textile work To Bloom Is Divine (Opa's Early Girls).

Tuesday August 13, 2019 | by Gabriela Iacovano

CONVERSATION: Liesl Schubel, who's returned to UrbanGlass as director of education, talks about building on the unique New York educational experience

Artist, educator, and arts administrator Liesl Schubel has been named director of education at UrbanGlass, taking over from Ben Wright, who left to become artistic director of Pilchuck Glass School in May 2019. Schubel is very familiar with educational programming at UrbanGlass as she worked closely with Wright from 2016 to 2018 as the program's education coordinator before leaving to work on her own art practice. (Disclosure: The Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet is published by UrbanGlass.) Schubel earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has worked and taught at several premier institutions across the country, including Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Pilchuck Glass School, WheatonArts and Cultural Center, The Chrysler Museum of Art Glass Studio, Circle 6 Studios, Ox-Bow School of Art, and UrbanGlass. Schubel is also a founding member of the glass and performance-art collective Flock the Optic, a group that shares her own focus on the concepts of materiality, gravity, and intimacy. The Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet caught up with Schubel to talk about her plans for the UrbanGlass program.

Recent graduate Katie Spiers' work, The Fading Call of the Curlew, took top honors at the 2019 Glass Prize.

Thursday August 8, 2019 | by Gabriela Iacovano

AWARD: Ireland's Katie Spiers takes first place in the annual Contemporary Glass Society's recent graduate prize

The U.K.'s Contemporary Glass Society (CGS) has announced the winners of its annual Glass Prize, awarded by a jury each year to the top British and Irish students who have graduated from an accredited course in the previous year. Nearly 50 graduates from 16 colleges entered for the chance to win a £250 ($300 USD) first-place cash prize, which is supplemented by books, magazines, and vouchers from various sponsors. Winners also have their work published in CGS’ New Graduate Review 2019, a 16-page publication circulated to all CGS Members & Associates. Katie Spiers of Dublin took top honors for her work The Fading Call of the Curlew, a pair of delicately rendered glass birds. Bethan Yates of Swansea and Calum Dawes of Sunderland took second and third places, respectively, with Under the Microscope and Pull.

Alison Kinnaird, Subway Photographer, 2019. Double-engraved flashed glass, reverse laminated to a carrier glass. H 120, W 60 cm. courtesy: Robin Morton.

Tuesday August 6, 2019 | by Gabriela Iacovano

Alison Kinnaird discusses her explorations of the timeless by pairing traditional techniques with contemporary themes

Scottish glass artist and harpist Alison Kinnaird marries the ancient art of wheel engraving with contemporary aesthetics and subject matter, insisting that tradition is not a constraint, but a “moving point.” Kinnaird’s latest work, soon to be exhibited as a part of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, ponders timeless questions by fusing age-old craft processes with the contemporary aesthetics of street art.

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.