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Not Vital's work, Moon, engages, refracts, and illuminates its site within the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. courtesy: yorkshire sculpture park

Saturday August 20, 2016 | by Ana Donefer-Hickie

Artist Not Vital uses glass and stainless steel to explore landscape at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work

Despite a 45-year career spent creating pieces and installations around the world, it was only May 2016 that Swiss artist Not Vital opened his first U.K. exhibition. On view at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park through January 2, 2017, the large-scale solo show combines several new works designed specifically for the site with a collection of the artists's older pieces. Born in Sent, a small village in the Swiss Alps, Not Vital grew up in an isolated landscape. Since his childhood, however, he has travelled widely, producing and leaving site-specific installations in the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Brazil, and Patagonia. Both Not Vital's isolated upbringing and subsequent international career are reflected in the pre-occupation with landscape articulated in many of his works. Using glass and highly polished, chased stainless steel, the artist inexorably links his sculptures and paintings both to the Swiss landscapes that he occupied as a child, and the international landscape that he occupies as an artist.

Carrie Fertig, Film still from La Sireneuse picturing Fertig's glass instruments. Photo: Rob Page. Image courtesy: Carrie Fertig.

Thursday August 18, 2016 | by Ana Donefer-Hickie

Flameworker Carrie Fertig’s Torcher Chamber Arkestra to make second U.K. appearance in September

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Events, New Work, News

Reprising its 2012 performance at the International Festival of Glass in Stourbridge, England, the collaborative multi-media group Torcher Chamber Arkestra that combines flameworked glass, fire, and percussion-heavy musical performance is being brought back to England for another audience-interactive, glass-centric appearance. On September 2nd and 3rd, 2016, the Birmingham arts center known as mac birmingham will be filled with the sights, sounds, and spectacle that is an Arkestra performance in an event put on by Craftspace Curates, a craft-development organization that works "to push boundaries and perceptions of crafts practice, presentation and learning" through programmes of touring exhibitions, research, and participatory projects. "Pushing boundaries" is certainly something that the Arkestra, currently featuring artist Carrie Fertig, composer Alistair MacDonald, and percussionist Stu Brown, is intimately familiar with. Best described as an interdisciplinary collaborative performance group, the Arkestra defies traditional categorization by merging craft production, performance, and audience participation to create musical soundscapes produced through the manipulation of glass.

Hot glass being shaped in a block at the North Carolina Glass Center. photo: jacob biba.

Tuesday August 16, 2016 | by Malcolm Morano

Glass art on the rise in Asheville as nonprofit buys private facility, plans new studios in 2017

FILED UNDER: Announcements, News, Opening

North Carolina has multiple connections to glass art, from the remarkable residencies and classes at Penland to the glass supplier Spruce Pine Batch, run by the son of Studio Glass pioneer Harvey Littleton, who relocated to the state in 1977. Now the city of Asheville, North Carolina, which the state art council cites as home to "the third-largest number of craft artists in the United States," will get a boost for glass artists with the recently formed North Carolina Glass Center, a nonprofit art center gearing up to move into a brand-new facility in spring of 2017. NCGC will occupy state-of-the-art studios at River Arts Makers Place (known as RAMP), a multi-use 50,000-square-foot facility that will house facilities from a variety of institutions, including the University of North Carolina Asheville. The new glass center aims to offer studio rentals, glass classes and workshops, as well as gallery space. But even before the new building comes online next year, the new nonprofit is already in business, having purchased the assets of the privately-held Asheville Glass Center as of June 1, 2016. NCGC's executive director Kari Rinn, formerly the director of creative arts at Haywood Community College, told the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet that the nonprofit plans to vastly expand the glass education programs while keeping the public access that Asheville Glass Center offered.

An image of the harbor at Lybster, the fishing village where North Lands Creative Glass is based.

Tuesday August 16, 2016 | by Andrew Page

North Lands fills new position of chief executive, names next artistic director

FILED UNDER: Announcements, News

North Lands Creative Glass, located on the rugged Northeast coast of Scotland, has filled its newly-created position of chief executive, hiring the executive director of RUA RED, a multi-faceted contemporary arts center in Dublin, Ireland. Karen Phillips will leave behind the Irish nonprofit that provided artist studios, art galleries, performance spaces and workshop facilities, to take the helm at North Lands on August 24th, 2016. In partnership with the artistic director, Phillips will be charged with building "upon North Lands reputation as an international centre for creative glass as well as a vital community facility for the people of Lybster and Caithness," according to a statement from Eleanor Hargrave, North Lands marketing officer, issued in response to a query from the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet. "This should build on existing activities and relationships and integrate and develop new ones," according to the statement. Phillips will have a new artistic director to work with this fall, as Emma Woffenden's three-year term in that role will end, and artist and educator Jeffrey Sarmiento will take over starting on October 1st, 2016.

Monday August 15, 2016 | by Andrew Page

3 Questions for ... Leo Tecosky

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work

Through September 4, 2016, Leo Tecosky’s exhibition entitled "Flithy Precision" will be on view at the galleries of Glass Wheel Studio in Norfolk, Virginia. Tecosky's work, which freely mixes glassblowing and neon, as well as found and constructed elements, incorporates inspiration from across cultures. His approach is an outgrowth of his interest in travel and wider study. Tecosky holds a BA from Alfred University with a cocentration in fine art, and an MFA from The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet recently checked in with Tecosky about his latest work and exhibition.

The top works will be exhibited at the Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, with the top prize of 10,000-Euro also including a solo exhibition at this Denmark institution.

Sunday August 14, 2016 | by Andrew Page

CALL FOR ENTRIES: Once-a-decade museum competition anoints new talent, offers multiple prizes

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Call for Submissions, Museums, New Work

Since the inaugural “Young Glass” exhibition in 1987, the Glasmuseet Ebeltoft in Denmark has held an international competitive exhibition of up-and-coming artists every 10 years. The fourth iteration of this juried exhibition, which includes a top award of a 2017 solo museum exhibition and a 10,000-Euro cash prize, is now accepting submissions. With a deadline of December 1, 2016, the competition is open to all students, artists, designers, and craftspeople using glass as a key element in their work. Because of the stated goal to identify new talent, there is a strict age limit. To apply, you must have been born after January 1, 1982, which will mean the finalists will not be over 35 when announced in 2017.

The Visiting Artist residency doubles as a demonstration for visitors to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma hotshop. Pictured: artist Courtney Branam.

Thursday August 11, 2016 | by Andrew Page

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Tacoma Museum of Glass has four open slots for visiting artists in 2017

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Call for Submissions, Museums

The Museum of Glass in Tacoma is accepting applications for four Visiting Artist slots in 2017. The program offers a short (up to 5 days of hotshop time) but intensive opportunity to work with the museum's crew, as well as two days of basic cold-working. While work made during the residency remains the property of the artist, residents are "encouraged to donate two works" — one chosen in consultation with the artistic director for the museum's collection – and the other donated to the annual fundraising auction. Artists are also responsible for their own travel, accommodations, color powders, as well as packing and shipping of all work after the residency.

Anna Carlgren's site-specific works bathed in sunlight at Muze'um L in Belgium. courtesy: anna carlgren

Wednesday August 10, 2016 | by Ana Donefer-Hickie

EXHIBITION: At a Belgian museum devoted to light, Anna Carlgren employs glass in site-specific works

FILED UNDER: Exhibition

Solo exhibitions are often designed to illustrate the artist's particular style, concepts, goals, or development. So-called "in situ" exhibitions, in which work is produced in relation to the particular geographic or architectural site where it will be installed, are the result of a more-intense relationship between the institution and the artist. Through September 4th, 2016, the Belgian Muze'um L, Light and Landscape is featuring an exhibition by Swedish artist Anna Carlgren that was designed specifically for the Muze'um L. The untitled site-specific show explores themes central to the work of both the museum and the artist: namely light, the environment, and our perception of both.

Benajmin Edols and Kathy Elliott, "Surge" series, 2015. Blown Glass, wheel carved. H 17, W 11 1/2, D 7 in. photo: ben townsend

Tuesday August 9, 2016 | by Malcolm Morano

The collaborative career of Ben Edols and Kathy Elliott featured in museum exhibition in Japan

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, Museums, New Work

Benjamin Edols and Kathy Elliott have been creating polished, largely opaque, and intensely colored glass forms over a 24-year collaborative career. The full range of this prolific partnership is currently on view at the Toyama Glass Art Museum. Entitled “Light Marks,” and on exhibit through September 25, 2016, the show marks the first time their modestly-scaled, buoyant works have been shown in a full career retrospective. In addition to the 46 works that span the pair's history, four previously unseen examples from their latest "Deluge" series of more-transparent, meticulously carved vessels, are also included in this extensive exhibition.

Thursday August 4, 2016 | by Andrew Page

VIDEO: A calligrapher in Turkey writes out the word “Glass” using a glass shard as pen

FILED UNDER: Seen, Video

A video by Mücahit Aydınhan, a "calligraphy artist" based in İstanbul, Turkey, shows him breaking a sheet of glass with a hammer, selecting the right shaped shard, and then expertly writing the word "Glass" in scarlet red ink. A brief but elegant diversion courtesy of YouTube.

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.