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The Rakow Commision work Tantric Object (2015) by Swiss studio jeweler Bernhard Schobinger features glass skulls crafted from the bottom of antique poison bottles.

Thursday November 12, 2015 | by Andrew Page

MUSEUMS: Corning to unveil subversive jeweler’s Rakow Commision work today

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Award, Exhibition, Museums, New Work, News

Today, The Corning Museum of Glass will unveil its 30th Rakow Commission, the first to be awarded to a jeweler and the first new work to be added to the collection of the museum's Contemporary Art + Design Wing since the March 2015 opening. The work is titled Tantric Object by the avant-garde Swiss jeweler Bernhard Schobinger. It is a necklace of tiny skulls made from the bottom of green poison bottles. Gold laquer adds a decorative flourish to this provocative neckwear, and the word "GIFT" is evident in one of the glass pieces -- which in German means "posion." In a provocative 45-year career, the artist-jeweler has built his reputation on his use of castaway materials such as broken glass and ceramic shards, worn-out erasers, and even the elastic that once kept underwear from falling down.

Wednesday November 11, 2015 | by Andrew Page

3 Questions for ... Jean-Simon Trottier

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work

GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet: What are you working on?Jean-Simon Trottier: For the past two years, I've been working continuously on a collaborative project with my partner Montserrat Duran Muntadas. We have created several sculptural installations that explore the issues of immigration and borders. For this project, we were especially inspired by seeds of various plants as metaphorical symbols of freedom. Because the organic forms of our sculpture were inspired by nature, this especially made our technical research an enriching one, while giving us pieces that surpassed our expectations.

Tuesday November 10, 2015 | by Sia Lenaburg

YaYa Center for the Arts readies for its first fundraising auction in new home on Friday

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Auction, Education, Opening

UPDATED: November 12, 2015 Of all the cities I've visited, New Orleans is the most human — the most alive. The city of New Orleans is a lot like a person, someone who is full of life, yet who has suffered and survived. A person with a story to tell, which undoubtedly begins and ends with an obstacle that has been overcome. Driving up to the YaYa Arts Center in Central City New Orleans, I was taken aback by how “new” the architecture of the buildings appeared. Construction had just been completed, and the shiny new center is surrounded by other new infrastructure, which, explained Lesley McBride, YaYa’s events and special projects manager, is the result of economic growth of the Central City neighborhood where the new YaYa is located.

Jeff Mack, who managed the studio at the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion, will join the Corning Museum of Glass Hot Glass Programs team in December.

Saturday November 7, 2015 | by Lindsay von Hagn

MUSEUMS: Jeff Mack moving from Toledo to Corning in December 2015

FILED UNDER: Announcements, News

UPDATED: 11/8 11:50 AM -- Artist and educator Jeff Mack, after seven years as the manager of the studio at the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion, will be joining the The Corning Museum of Glass in December as the Hot Glass Programs and Projects Supervisor. This position, created in light of the recent museum expansion and the rapidly evolving hot glass programs at the Corning institution, will involve managing the daily operations of the popular Hot Glass Show, scheduling the team of glassmakers and guest artists, and managing hot shop maintenance and supplies. Though he will be doing some travel with the Hot Glass Roadshow and GlassLab Design Program, Jeff will not be heading out to sea with the cruise ship glassblowing programs, primarily facilitating recruitment and deployments from the home base in Corning. "I hope to realize the potential of the CMOG's incredible new space," he says, referring to the renovated Hot Glass Show amphitheater.

Vesna Jovanovic. "Elisabeth Morrow," 2014, 24"x36," Gouache, Ink, Watercolor, Graphite, and Colored Pencil on Paper

Friday November 6, 2015 | by Sia Lenaburg

EXHIBITION: Medical glass takes center stage at Chicago’s International Museum of Surgical Science

FILED UNDER: Curiosities, Education, Exhibition, Museums

Advances in glass technology have paralleled the development of modern medicine since Anton van Leeuwenhoek's breakthroughs in optical lenses and microscopes in the 17th century began to unravel the mysteries of blood flow, yeasts, and the how small parasites can affect human health. Glass instruments in medical science are directly or indirectly responsible for a substantial number of the improvements the world has seen in health and health care, and glass participates in forwarding expansion of the human lifespan. Just how indispensible the material is to the medical field is brought home in an exhibition currently on view at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, a great detour for those in town for the big SOFA art fair this weekend. The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet recently interviewed Collin Pressler, curator at IMSS, to discuss the museum’s take on how glass is both an historical and aesthetic display of beauty and purpose.

The Glass Guillotine, where unsold works are smashed, adds to the free-wheeling atmosphere of this unconventional fundraiser.

Thursday November 5, 2015 | by managingeditor@glassquarterly.com

Texas glassblowing studio hosts Steampunk fundraiser Saturday

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Auction, News

Steampunk is alive and well in Grapevine, Texas, where it’s the theme of an annual fundraiser put on by Vetro Glassblowing Studio and Gallery. Featuring a “twisted version of a live auction,” Glass On The Tracks will take place Saturday, November 7, from 7–10 pm.

Wednesday November 4, 2015 | by Andrew Page

HELP WANTED: Royal College of Art seeks new Head of Glass & Ceramics Program

FILED UNDER: Education, Help Wanted, News

The Royal College of Art, located in the Kensington area of London, is seeking a new head of its Ceramics & Glass Program, which is unique in only offering graduate-level studies. Masters and doctoral students at RCA are pursing glass and ceramics from different perspectives, including as product designers and individual artists, but all are driven by a desire to achieve material understanding. Reporting to the college's dean of the "School of Material," the successful applicant to head the program will be in charge of the academic direction, research, and resources allocations of the program and its staff, according to the official job posting. Key qualities sought are business acumen and creative thinking to help bolster the program's prestige as a venue where creativity, science, and technology meet.

Wednesday October 28, 2015 | by Sia Lenaburg

EXHIBITION: Tina Aufiero makes provocative words into challenging glass sculptures

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Artist Interviews, Events, Exhibition, Opening

Artist Tina Aufiero doesn’t make Word Art — written language rendered in glass and presented in a gallery context — as a way to reclaim meaning, as some of the best-known practioners of the genre such as Jenny Holzer do, but rather to consider how her own perception of a word develops in time while she is creating the piece. For Aufiero, meaning develops as a response to the process of creation. She works with a variety of materials, but returns to glass, possibly because the material is uniquely suited to conveying elusive concepts and surface reflections with a purity of expression. Though her work has been described as whimsical, the playfulness of her art speaks to deeper questions of our everyday language, as well as elusive concepts such as “love” and “happiness.”…

Tuesday October 20, 2015 | by Andrew Page

Two new Dan Graham installations in Paris embrace urban flux

FILED UNDER: Announcements, New Work, News, Public Art

Through October 25th, the busy Place Vendome, ground zero for Parisian fashion boutiques, will feature two new works by American sculptor Dan Graham, whose architectural installations employ partially mirrored surfaces and refraction to juxtapose viewers with their surrounds and one-another. Two Nodes (2015) features two mirrored cylinders that mix reflectivity with transparency to create a constantly shifting environment that distorts bodies, and overlaps images. In an adjacent outdoor work, Passage Intime (2015), Graham invites users to traverse a narrow passageway, which also provides shape-shifting reflections to viewers, as well as draws narrow boundaries of shared public space.

Tuesday October 20, 2015 | by Andrew Page

3 Questions For ... Doreen Garner

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work

Anyone who dismisses the material of glass as too beautiful or perfect to communicate signifcant content or emotion hasn't encountered Doreen Garner's raw mixed media work, which cultivates strong reactions ranging from from desire to disgust. Walk into an exhibit of this 2014 graduate of RISD's MFA program and you know this is sophisticated work that plows deep psychological territory, confronting viewers with sometimes-disturbing works that take on the human body, sexuality, race, gore, and objectification. By adding unexpected materials such as latex or petroleum jelly as well as organic substances such as human hair, this Philadelphia native cannily pursues her agenda of peeling away layers of distance, digging down into a primordial strata of experience and consciousness. There's no shortage of concept either, with her recent work confronting the assault on black bodies in the name of medical research. The work's boldness is no surprise to those who saw the artist's 2014 "Observatory" exhibition in which she exhibited herself as a specimen unclothed in a glass box covered in glitter and stuffed condoms. There's nobody in glass taking on these issues in this manner, or with this level of risk-taking. GLASS recently interviewed Garner via email about where her work is going and where it can be seen.

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.