ARCHITECTURE: James Carpenter opens up the Eero Saarinen-designed Museum of Westward Expansion at the foot of the iconic Gateway Arch of St. Louis

In addition to holding the honor of being the tallest arch in the world, the Gateway Arch of St. Louis is widely celebrated as an icon of the city. Recently, the spotlight has been trained on the small yet robust museum that lies at its feet, also designed by the arch's famed architect Eero Saarinen. Named "The Museum of Westward Expansion," the subterranean circular structure is devoted to presenting the stories of the explorers and colonists who pushed farther west and expanded the U.S. territory to the Pacific. Thanks to a five-year renovation, this once-modest museum has been expanded and opened up to natural light through the strategic use of glass by James Carpenter. New, expanded entrance spaces make the museum more inviting, as does a newly constructed landscape bridge leading to it. The freshly animated site now features a new West Entry and public Arrivals Hall, adding a total of 40,000-square-feet to the original Saarinen Hall.

4 Office 52 Architecture La Foe And Campbell Dichroic Light Scott Hall Cmu 2018

Jeremy Bittermann, Scott Hall at Carnegie Mellon University, 2018. courtesy: office 52 architecture.

Wednesday August 22, 2018 | by Olivia Ryder

ARCHITECTURE: A Portland, Oregon, architect harnessed her love of glass art to win a competition to design a striking new building at Carnegie-Mellon

When she's not in her Portland, Oregon, architecture studio, Michelle LaFoe can often be found at Bullseye Glass Co., where she takes classes, attends visiting artist lectures, and indulges her general fascination with glass. LaFoe’s passion was sparked by Chagall’s iconic glass work American Windows (1976) a painting in which metallic oxide paints were permanently fused to the glass with heat. When, in 2011, LaFoe was asked to submit a proposal for a new building at a prominent university, she was able to bring together her glass interests with her professional practice. For what would become her and partner Isaac Campbell's largest project to date, she proposed a glass building that is alive chromatically as the dynamic scientific research taking place inside its walls at Carnegie-Mellon University's Pittsburgh campus.

Clare Belfrage, Quiet Shifting, Pink and Green, 2018. H 19, W 13, D 9 1/2 in. courtesy: pippy mount.

Tuesday August 21, 2018 | by Chelsea Liu

OPENING: Clare Belfrage reflects, meditates on rhythm in a new monograph, short film, and two solo exhibitions

Ever since she was a child, Australian artist Clare Belfrage has been uniquely attuned to rhythm. From listening to nature's pulse to immersing herself in the tempo of glass-making, she has made rhythm a continual focal point of her life and practice, finding in it a serenity and yet restlessness returned to time and again. “The industry in nature, its rhythm and energy, dramatic and delicate still holds my fascination as does the language and processes of glass," Belfrage writes in her artist statement. A similar industriousness is manifest in her own work: especially her series of delicately colored, evocative vessels that express a movement and vitality within themselves, and have evolved over the years in theme and technique. Marked by Belfrage’s mastery of fine cane drawing and stringers, the work is quietly impressive, and has recently been recognized in a new book and a short film. In addition to the publishing and film projects, Belfrage is also going to be showing in exhibitions in both Australia and the U.S.

courtesy: sadie housberg.

Thursday August 16, 2018 | by Chelsea Liu

IN CONVERSATION: Paul Housberg discusses his recent installation for Charlotte’s City Center and how glass is his ideal material

Overlooking the lively City Center of Charlotte in North Carolina, artist Paul Housberg’s abstract glass installation on the exterior of 101 North Tryon provides a colorful distillation of memory and contemporary life. At 25-feet high and 14-feet across, the large-scale piece further animates an area rich in historical significance. The famed intersection of Trade and Tryon at which it is located is known as Independence Square after the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, often believed to be the first declaration of independence made during the American Revolution, and today it is host to a district teeming with commerce, art, and restaurants. Housberg’s work, created in collaboration with Wagner Murray Architects, “honors the historic significance of its location while celebrating the city’s robust commitment to contemporary art and culture,” to quote from its press release.

Thursday August 16, 2018 | by Justin Ginsberg

OPINION: A new glassblowing reality show asks artists to give up control of their image, and might present a warped perspective on the field

It was really only a matter of time before the first competitive reality-TV glassblowing show would make it into production. Given the onslaught of competitive, skills-based, and drowned-in-drama reality TV shows to provide cheap content for the proliferating online streaming platforms, it's no surprise that aspiring glassblowers would be seen as fodder for the same type of treatment given to the worlds of fashion, food, and tattooing. Let’s face it. Glassblowing is dramatic, and eye-candy for the crowds at museums which exhibit contemporary glass, offering chances to watch process from the comfort of bleachers with video monitors and high-volume PA systems making every technical step abundantly clear. Who doesn’t love a good camera shot through the idling fluffy torch, and pipe tips heated up in the pipe warmer, a good floppy bowl spinning out: steam, fire, burns, sweat, and muscles? It has all the tasty visual nuances that are guaranteed to fill seats. The call for applicants for Blown Away, coming soon to Netflix (theoretically), was announced in late summer. Casting will begin in September after the parade of auditions by U.S. and Canadian artists, craftspeople, and designers interested in being crowned the “best glassblower” is complete.

A still from a promotional video that succinctly documents the craftsmanship behind a new line of wineglasses.

Tuesday August 14, 2018 | by Olivia Ryder

New hand-blown glassware line touts simplicity, provides insight into craftsmanship as selling tool in 2018

One should never underestimate the power of glassblowing to transfix an audience. But beware of overestimating it, either. A tasteful website for a new line of mouth-blown wineglasses keeps the theatrical presentation of the wonders of glassblowing to a bunch of still photographs and a minute-and-a-half video, but the process is still there to establish the craftsmanship behind a new line of glassware. A partnership with perhaps England's most-prominent wine critic, Jancis Robinson, the new Jancis Robinson Glassware Collection by designer Richard Brendon is his latest "heritage craft" undertaking. This spare product seeks to simplify the wine glass choices (see, in contrast, Reidel's highly successful varietal-specific glassware) and not only claims to provide the best single wine glass shape for all wines from champagne to port, but it also touts the refined craftsmanship behind the mouth-blown crystal glass from the skilled artisans of Bohemia. This collection offers one wine glass, two beautiful decanters (one for young and one for old wine) and a water glass that could double as a stemless wine glass, meticulously designed, and expertly crafted to look and feel refined, elegant and timeless. With recent high-profile coverage in the New York Times, this is an instructive look at the marketing and presentation of hand-blown glassware that could serve as a snapshot of best practices in 2018.

Karen LaMonte, Kabuki (detail), 2012. H 53, W 28, D 31 1/2 in.

Tuesday August 7, 2018 | by Chelsea Liu

Karen LaMonte’s "Embodied Beauty" exhibition at Tennessee's Hunter Museum is her largest to date

Karen LaMonte’s ethereal female figures are absent save for an intimate record of their corporeal presence evoked by the exquisitely detailed drape of clothing. The models who sat for the artist as she created these suggestive forms have left, and what remains is a sculptural rendering of the uncanny, of lingering loss, paradoxes, and strange dualities. LaMonte's dresses thus occupy an intentionally undefined space between presence and absence, tradition and innovation, emptiness and overflowing with meaning. Through September 2nd, 2018, the exhibition "Embodied Beauty" offers 32 of LaMonte's figures to viewers at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It unites two distinct series of works from her oeuvre, "Nocturnes" and "Floating World," and represents the largest museum exhibition to date of LaMonte’s work in the United States, bringing together her figures in cast glass, clay, bronze, and iron.

Lino Tagliapietra, Aretino. Blown glass, H 25 1/4, W 11 1/4, D 7 in. courtesy: the gallery.

Wednesday August 1, 2018 | by Olivia Ryder

OPENING: Traver Gallery has three new exhibits this month, showcasing the breadth of possibility in glass work by artists Lino Taglipietra, John Kiley, and Preston Singletary

Traver Gallery has three upcoming exhibits that showcase the incredible breadth of glass work. The gallery offers a compelling array for the month of August of breathtakingly intricate, more traditional work from the maestro Lino Tagliapietra in "La Poesia Della Forma" ("The Poetry of Forms, in English). Then there's the bold, shattered and reconstructed glass work in John Kiley’s "Radiant" series. And finally, Traver Gallery will be showing figurative blown-glass sculpture from Preston Singletary's "Beyond the Horizon" series at the Seattle Art Fair from August 2nd - 5th at the CenturyLink Field Event Center.

Mary Hong now operates four galleries and three ShardWorx educational and event locations.

Tuesday July 31, 2018 | by Olivia Ryder

Mixing glass mosaic with painting, and her personal art practice with public participation, ShardWorx founder Mary Hong discovers a recipe for success

Mary Hong wears many hats - mother, wife, glass artist, painter, entrepreneur, businesswoman - and she seems to switch them effortlessly throughout each action-packed day. A 1980s graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with an undergraduate degree in interior design, Hong has always been involved in creative pursuits, which she has maintained with an extraordinary energy. She first started working in glass in 1999 in Hawaii with glass-bead and lamp maker Calvin Orr, where she says she learned everything she knows about glass. In a telephone interview with the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet, Hong said, "during that time I was entirely content, thinking I’ve found my happy medium" but, she explains, it was not to last. “Major life occurrences always change what you think is going to be forever - and being pregnant with twins will do that. So I put away my glass materials and took care of two babies.” As soon as her twin boys entered preschool, however, she dove back into art, turning from glass to painting, which she saw as a more parent-friendly practice she could do from home: “Nothing broke!” As her painting developed, she began to incorporate other materials to create collages. Eventually, she took out her stored glass beads and shards. “As a glass artist you are inherently expert when it comes to adhesives - I went crazy gluing things. When I pulled out this epoxy resin that had sat in my drawer, I poured it [over some glass elements on a canvas] and went to sleep, and when I woke up I saw my future in front of me.”

Thursday July 26, 2018 | by Chelsea Liu

CALL FOR APPLICANTS: Prospective Netflix reality show "Blown Away" seeks competitive glassblowers

Glassblowing can result in serious art -- but it can also be intensely performative, a fact that has helped to fuel its expansion as an art material over the past five decades. Just ask the demo team at The Corning Museum of Glass in New York State or, on the opposite coast, at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, where the amphitheater is regularly filled with museum visitors who want to witness the process of making. Few other art forms are as regularly paraded to the public as their final result is taking shape -- unfinished and hotly imperfect. The same theatricality that reliably fills the seats in Corning and Tacoma is being banked on to attract television viewers. A glass-blowing reality television show tentatively titled Blown Away is set to premiere in Spring 2019, and is seeking highly skilled glassblowers to audition for the first season.

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.