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Monday January 2, 2017 | by Malcolm Morano

North Lands Creative Glass announces first summer program under artistic director Jeffrey Sarmiento

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Events, News

North Lands Creative Glass has announced its 2017 summer program, its first under recently appointed artistic director Jeffrey Sarmiento. The program of classes and a conference will be centered around the theme of faith. The program, titled "Leap of Faith," is billed as exploring the relationships between glass and belief in its varied forms — religious belief, social dogmas, and artistic conviction. Master-classes will be headed by artists Anne Vibeke Mou, Annie Cattrell, Beth Lipman, and the duo of Michael Schunke and Josie Gluck. The one-day conference, "Taking a Leap: Concept, Conservation and Innovation in Architectural Glass," is organized in collaboration with Bullseye Glass Company, and will take place on July 16th, 2017, in the county of Caithness in the northern reaches of Scotland.

The opaque steel walls of the flameworking studio at the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion include a wide picture window that allows the public to view its activities through the exterior walls. photo: © floto + warner studio

Friday December 23, 2016 | by Andrew Page

BOOK REPORT: Toledo Museum of Art celebrates 10-year mark for iconic Glass Pavilion with new tome

FILED UNDER: Book Report, Museums

With an unusual curved corner that echoes the rounded-glass-wall architecture of its subject, a new hardcover book entitled simply The Glass Pavilion ($44.95) is a 144-page love letter to the The Toledo Museum of Art's eye-catching annex designed by the Prizker Prize-winning Japanese architecture firm SANAA. Featured on the cover of GLASS magazine when it opened in 2006, the Glass Pavilion added 76,000 square feet of ethereal exhibition space and a state-of-the-art working glass studio to the 100-year-old museum. The museum wanted to make sure the new building devoted to art would be architecturally significant as would befit a facility dedicated to the same material on which museum founder Edward Drummond Libbey built his industrial empire. It was also at the Toledo Museum that Harvey Littleton held his famous 1962 workshop that many consider the birth of Studio Glass.

Thursday December 22, 2016 | by Andrew Page

BOOK REPORT: A conversation with artist and author Paul Stankard on the publication of his 3rd book

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Book Report

GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet: You've already published an autobiography, No Green Berries and Leaves (McDonald & Woodward, 2007), and a manual for artists entitled Spark the Creative Flame (McDonald & Woodward, 2013). What inspired you to come out with Studio Craft as Career (Schiffer, 2016) and how does it differ from your first two books? Paul Stankard: Well, my first book was a memoir, and the second one was a guide to finding and renewing motivation. But I decided to write this book because I was hearing so many people trying to make it as artists who believed it was all about who you knew. I wrote this book to say 'Wait a minute, it's not who you know, it's all about the work.' I wanted to give people a way to educate themselves about what excellence is, and to hand over tools for self-directed learning. People who read this book will hopefully think about how they need to see themselves in competition, not only with the best work in the contemporary realm, but also the best work that has come before. It's about studying the best work that's been done in your field and engaging in a dialog with it — to understand it, and to respond to that work in your own unique way.

Sydney Cash Broadway Windows1987 Daytime View

Original image of Sydney Cash's Broadway Windows Gallery installation of 1987. courtesy: heller gallery.

Thursday December 15, 2016 | by Malcolm Morano

OPENING: NYC Sydney Cash retrospective uses optical properties of glass to engage passersby

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, Opening

The unique optical qualities of glass — its translucency, transparency, reflection, and refraction — have served as rich terrain for artist Sydney Cash, who developed a lifelong relationship with the material after working with curved mirrors. Opening tonight, a retrospective exhibition of Cash's kinetic sculptures at Heller Gallery will showcase the artist's evolving visual vocabulary from the 1980s through the present, and will include a reprise of the now-legendary glass window installations from Cash's seminal Broadway Windows Gallery exhibition in 1987. Activated by passersby on the street, the three windows will make the city street part of the exhibition entitled "Pre-Net," and will likely have viewers moving back and forth before the gallery's large windows on 10th Avenue in the Chelsea area of Manhattan.

Monday December 12, 2016 | by Vicky Clark

IN MEMORIAM: Ron Desmett (1948-2016)

FILED UNDER: In Memoriam

You can’t talk about the late Ron Desmett, who died on December 7th from complications of cancer, without talking about his wife, Kathleen Mulcahy, or vice versa. The two were a team for almost 40 years; both exceptionally talented artists. They were co-founders of the Pittsburgh Glass Center, accomplishing what no one believed possible, a glass arts center that is still thriving. Appropriately they were honored together as PA Artists of the Year in 2013-14.

Jacob Fishman, It Is What It Is. Neon. courtesy: bergstrom mahler museum of glass.

Wednesday December 7, 2016 | by Malcolm Morano

The Bergstrom-Mahler’s neon exhibition taps into the special allure of sculpture that glows

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, Museums

There's something magnetic about neon. An object emitting light attracts the eye, no doubt the main reason neon has been so popular for so long as a medium for commercial signs. Executive director of Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass Jan Smith thinks this provides a special opportunity for neon art. "A sense of familiarity with its history in signage gives people an entry point," she told the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet, "and the journey into the sculptural realm takes them into a surprisingly new dimension." The museum hopes to guide visitors on that journey with "Bending Brilliance," a neon and plasma group exhibition currently on display through February 19th, 2017.

The Toyama City Institute of Glass Art hot shop.

Tuesday December 6, 2016 | by Andrew Page

HELP WANTED: Toyama glass department seeks associate professor of hot working for 2-year contract

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Help Wanted

The Toyama City Institute of Glass Art in Toyama, Japan, is seeking a hot work professor or associate professor for a contract position. Applicants must have at least 10 years of experience, hold a degree in fine arts or glass, and either currently teach or work primarily as a practicing artist. The advertised position will run from September 1, 2017 to August 31, 2019, with the possibility of an additional two years.

Thursday December 1, 2016 | by Andrew Page

It’s Official: 2018 Glass Art Society Conference to be held in Murano, Italy

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Events, News

UPDATED 01/10/2017 For it's 47th annual conference, the Glass Art Society is going overseas for the first time since the 2005 Adelaide, Australia, conference sent intrepid artists on long-haul flights Down Under. The 2018 event is set to take place in Murano, Italy, from May 16th through 20th, a notably longer duration than recent conferences, which have been three-day affairs. Led by Lino Tagliapietra, the conference steering committee for 2018 includes Cesare Toffolo, Lucio Bubacco, Davide Salvadore, Marina Tagliapietra, Roberto Donà, Adriano Berengo, and the Consorzio Promovetro Murano, an association of craft and industrial businesses in Venice dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Murano’s artistic glass and centuries of history.

Wednesday November 30, 2016 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: GLASS #145, Winter 2016-17

FILED UNDER: News, Print Edition

The Winter 2016-17 edition of GLASS (#145) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes this week. The four feature articles explore different aspects of the profound transition affecting glass art and design. Whether it's the aging of a loyal collector base that sustained its growth for decades; new technologies competing with, if not displacing, hot glass studios as the showpieces of college and university art departments; or the steady march of globalization finally encroaching on the price points at the high end of design, GLASS brings you unique insights into the changing dynamics of the field.

The Bousilles, or Whimseys in English, were a collection of factory worker experiments made in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Tuesday November 29, 2016 | by Andrew Page

MusVerre, a new glass museum in Northern France

FILED UNDER: Architecture, Museums, News, Opening

While the conversion of a former glass factory into a museum is not in itself unusual, the recently expanded MusVerre celebrates a peculiarly touching history. Beginning as a 1967 exhibition of curiosity pieces made by factory glassblowers in the 19th and early-20th centuries, the project of MusVerre reached new heights with its grand reopening in a new building designed by Raphaël Voinchet and W-Architectures earlier this month in Sars-Poteries, France. The inauguration is being celebrated with an exhibition by Ann Veronica Janssens, a Belgian artist whose “relevance, power and poetry... recurrent use of glass as a material and the very particular fit of the “wide-angle” space [of the new museum] to her work made this invitation an obvious choice,” for the museum’s curators.

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.