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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.

Thursday October 15, 2015 | by Andrew Page

Matt Szösz awarded 2015 University of the Arts Borowsky Prize

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Award, News

The Irvin Borowsky Prize in Glass Arts, a $5,000 award and artist residency organized by the University of the Arts since 2013, has been awarded to glass artist Matthew Szösz for 2015. Designed to recognized "an artist whose work advances the field of contemporary glass art," the recipient is also given a residency at the Philadelphia university's studios, and is invited to give a talk, which Szösz will deliver on November 12, 2015. This year, two additional Jurors' Awards were announced, going to the Chrysler Museum of Art Glass Studio programming director and manager Charlotte Potter and artist-educator David King.

Wednesday October 7, 2015 | by Andrew Page

HELP WANTED: National Glass Centre in Sunderland, England, seeks new director

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Help Wanted, Museums

The National Glass Centre in Sunderland, England — an ambitious hub for glass education, research, fabrication, and exhibition — is seeking a new director. The art center is part of the University of Sunderland, and also in the national porfolio of the Arts Council England, meaning it receives substantial funding from the British government. The gallery showing new design and sculpture using glass attracts 250,000 visitors per year, and the center also is the classroom and workshop for 130 students at the University of Sunderland's arts, design and media program. The ideal candidate for the director position will "lead the organisation through the next stage of its development, ensuring its place in local, national, and international networks," according to the official job posting.

Wednesday October 7, 2015 | by Andrew Page

Iittala launches limited-edition “City Bird” series with an eye on social media

FILED UNDER: Design, New Work, News

In a bid to update its 40-year-old line of Tokkia birds, and to give the series a little cutting-edge social media juice, the 135-year-old Finnish glass house Iittala is launching a limited edition of its famous blown-glass birds only available in select markets for which they were named. Only 200 numbered examples of the blown-glass "City Bird" collection will be hand-made, and obsessive collectors must travel to Shanghai, Toyko, Paris, New York, and Helsinki to buy them all.

Hot Shop Heroes instructor Conor McClellan guides a student through the beginning steps of the glassblowing process.

Friday October 2, 2015 | by Lindsay von Hagn

EXHIBITION: Museum of Glass unveils work made by soldiers and veterans in therapeutic program

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Education, Exhibition, Museums

Recently opened at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, the exhibition “Healing in Flames” features work produced by the spring and summer 2015 instructors and students of the museum’s "Hot Shop Heroes: Healing with Fire" program, an educational project to offer glassblowing and art-making experiences to soldiers and veterans. The exhibit showcasing this life-changing program will remain on view through March 2016.

Thursday October 1, 2015 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Dante Marioni, Rik Allen at Traver Gallery

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, Opening

New work by Dante Marioni and Rik Allen is being unveiled at Traver Gallery in Seattle this evening. Marioni is continuing to push scale and precision in his newest work that features bravura canework patterning rendered at unforvingly large scale. A 39-inch-tall blue leaf, titled Standing Reticello Leaf (2015) is a further exploration of his attempts to push traditional technique to new levels, marrying it to a decidedly contemporary color scheme. The outsized scale takes this work out of the realm of design in a bid to make a monumental statement on technical skill and skills passed down for centuries.

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