The banner that identifies the downtown Brooklyn location of the nonprofit art center UrbanGlass.
March 15th, 2011 will mark the kick-off of the Spring session’s high-level classes at UrbanGlass, where a regular menu of introductory classes will be augmented by a suite of master classes. At the Brooklyn studios of one of the first open-access glass facilities in the U.S., four innovative artist practitioners will share their techniques and skills in the course of four sessions that make each intensive week-long class. [Disclosure: The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet is published by UrbanGlass] The spring session will bring two of the top glassblowers (Katherine Gray and Chris Taylor), a rising star of flameworking and mixed-media artist (Matt Eskuche), and a mixed-process innovator (Jason Chakravarty) who blends blown forms with neon lighting.
This work by instructor Jason Chakravarty is entitled Story Time and mixes neon, cast and blown glass.
The master classes series kicks off with a course entitled “Illuminating the Vessel with Jason Chakravarty,” which runs from Tuesday, March 15th through Friday, the 18th. In four day-long sessions, the instrutor will explore the use of neon and light to illuminate blown forms, bringing together two separate techniques together in one class. Prospective students should have previous glassblowing experience. Instructor Chakravarty, a graduate of Arizona State University, has worked at a commercial neon sign shop where he learned technical fundamentals of the process. In 2002 he began illuminating hot shop forms while attending graduate school at California State University Fullerton. He has taught neon workshops at universities including Arizona State University, Bowling Green State University, and Salisbury University. His work has been shown in over 100 exhibitions. He is represented commercially at Thomas Riley Gallery, Morgan Contemporary Gallery, and K Allen Gallery. His studio is located south of Chicago.
Christopher Taylor's conceptual work, "Small Craft Advisory” involved a row boat, glass furnace, and video documentation.
Next up will be glassblowing legend Christopher Taylor, who has a reputation for challenging himself and his students to push their skills to the limit. His course, titled simply “ Blowing Glass with Chris Taylor” will run from Tuesday, April 5th through Friday, the 8th, in four day-long sessions in a single week. His course description reads like a modernist poem:
Blowing Glass.
Blowing glass into long, impossible molds.
Blowing glass into impossibly thin walled vessels.
Blowing glass that looks a lot like other things.
Blowing glass that creates a unique choreography.
Blowing glass that defies impossibility.
This skills-intensive course requires previous glassblowing experience required, and students are asked to bring an open mind regarding material and process. Taylor describes himself as an artist who derives significant insight from conventions within craft tradition by challenging them directly and simply. He is also known for his unconventional approaches to teaching, which he has done at colleges such as RISD and summer workshops such as Pilchuck, where he worked with his students to understand how to blow glass while inverted. Taylor claims to have reproduced a 16th century Venetian goblet (made using a technique that had been lost for over 500 years), and then planting it in a cabinet next to the original in the collections room of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His own artwork includes conceptual works such as blowing glass in a small vessel in the open ocean.
Matt Eschuke's work “Untitled” uses blown borosilicate glass to reference disposable plastic vessels in an exploration of the aesthetic and environmental implications of a disposable culture.
Next up is “Vessels and Form Conciousness with Matt Eschuke,” which runs from Tuesday, April 12th, through Friday, the 15th. In four sessions, students will develop a solid technical and aesthetic base to take flameworking further. With jacks, and diamond shears, students of all levels experiment with borosilicate tubing and colored rod using tools from the hot shop in the flameworking shop. Previous flameworking experience is recommended but not required. Eschuke, who is being honored by UrbanGlass with an award during its annual benefit auction in 2011, came to glass via ceramics and metalsmithing in high school. After practicing as a bench jeweler for several years he began flameworking in 1998. His work has generated attention within the glass gallery scene, where he is represented by Karen Echt Gallery, and increasingly at museums such as the Racine Art Museum, where he has a year-long installation, and in the permanent collections of The Lampwork Glass Museum in Kobe, Japan; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Museum of Arts & Design in New York.
This detail shot from Kathy Gray's installation entitled Aqua Alta references the rising sea levels that threaten Venice.
Winding up the spring session of master classes will be “Glass Synthesis with Katherine Gray,” which runs from Tuesday, April 26th, through Friday the 29th. Students will be encouraged to modify “traditional” glassblowing methods to serve their own artistic ends. Starting with a review of iconic forms and functions of glass through history into the present day, students will be encouraged to seek unique and relevant meanings by looking at prosaic, functional forms as potential source material for a coherent, personal vision. Instructor Gray received her undergraduate degree from Ontario College of Art in Toronto, and her MFA from RISD. Her work can be found in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, the Tacoma Museum of Glass and the Museum of American Glass in Millville, New Jersey. A recent solo show at Acuna- Hansen Gallery in Los Angeles was reviewed in the LA Times and on Artforum.com. Earlier this year, she completed a site- specific installation that was included in “Art Of Glass II” at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia. Gray is an assistant professor of Glass at California State University, San Bernardino.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Visit the education section of the UrbanGlass.org Website for the full schedule of spring classes, or to register.
For additional information about classes, contact Alan Iwamura, Director of Education, UrbanGlass, at 718.625.3685 ext. 237 or alan@urbanglass.org.