With an opening ceremony Wednesday evening at 6 PM, the Glass Art Association of Canada will kick off its semi-annual conference taking place this year in Montreal, where a city-wide celebration of glass has filled museums and galleries with exhibitions of art made from glass. Titled “Transparent Transformation,” the conference will run through Sunday, May 30th, and include a Laura Donefer-produced fashion show at the Montreal Science Center on Saturday evening that promises to outdo all previous fashion shows through a partnership with Montreal’s top fashion designers and models as well as newly renovated nonprofit Espace Verre.
The official GAAC 2010 conference T-shirt was chosen through a design competition.
Among the highlights of the GAAC conference will be lectures at the College of General and Vocational Education by Susan Edgerley (Thursday at 9 AM), Michèle Lapointe (Friday at 10:15 AM), Silvia Levenson (Friday at 4 PM), and Tyler Rock (Saturday at 11:30 AM). Presentations by Tina Oldknow (Saturday at 1:30 PM) and Clifford Rainey (Saturday at 2:30 PM) at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts will be followed by a tour of the Mendel Collection on exhibit there. Not-to-be missed demos at Espace Verre include John Paul Robinson (Thursday at 10 AM), Karina Guévin (Thursday at 10 AM), Denise Stillwagon (Friday at 11 AM), Lucio Bubacco (Saturday at 10 AM), and Jocelyne Prince (Saturday at 10 AM).
Co-hosting the glass fashion show with Laura Donefer, Philippe DuBuc, in an image from his website dubucstyle.com, is a rare Montreal designer who regularly participates in the top Paris fashion shows.
While fully stocked with interesting technical and intellectual presentations, what glass art conference would be complete without opportunities for glass artists to strut their stuff? Events on both Friday and Saturday nights will offer plenty of opportunity to gawk at glass on stage. The main event will undoubtably be the glass fashion extravaganza called “La Défilé” (or, “The Parade” in English), which brought Canadian glass artists led by Laura Donefer together with Montreal’s thriving fashion design scene led by Philippe DuBuc, who is perhaps the most internationally-known designer to come from Montreal in many years.
In a break with her eight previous fashion shows, Donefer will not be using glass artists themselves as models for what promises to be her biggest show yet. In Montreal, the wearable art designs that have been developed through a collaboration between glass artists and professional fashion designers will be modeled by professional models on a real catwalk set up at the Montreal Science Centre Saturday evening. Donefer told the Hot Sheet the event took off, literally, after the big-name designers got involved. “It flew away from me,” she said playfully. “And I’m here watching it circling around and around.” She is looking forward to seeing the new incarnation of the fashion show which, for the first time, she will not need to make happen through last-minute, frenetic scrambling, as a highly efficient fashion world team will handle the planning and execution of what promises to be a high-style and highly produced event.
In an effort to preserve some of the energy of previous fashion shows, however, conference organizers are holding another event the evening before. Billed as “Le Boudoir de Verre” and held with Donefer’s blessings, artists are going to take the stage in a loosely organized talent show that, in the words of organizer Rika Hawes, will be “our glass salon of closeted secret talents, intimate moments, sensuality and vulnerability.” Scheduled to take place at 7 PM on Friday evening at Café EXODE at the College of General and Vocational Education the event will feature 5-minute performances of everything from juggling to telling jokes.
“The fashion show will be a highly stylized performance that of course did involve a lot of artists, but is essentially a performance to be viewed by the spectator,” says Hawes. “The talent show offers GAAC members the opportunity to participate in creating their event.”
IF YOU GO:
The Glass Art Association of Canada (GAAC) Conference May 26th – 30th, 2010 Montreal Website: www.glassartcanada.ca/programs.php