Corning Museum’s GlassLab comes to New York’s Governors Island for live design performances

Massimo Vignelli and glassblower Amy Ruza at GlassLab at Cooper Hewitt, the National Design Museum in 2008. courtesy of: Corning Museum of Glass website (http://bit.ly/KaD5Ja)

Since 2007 Corning Museum of Glass’s GlassLab has been providing designers with a unique opportunity. A “mobile, ultralight glassblowing studio” developed by the Museum has served as the event’s backbone; the studio’s innovative design (and its shipping container, designed by Paul Haigh) allows for the program to set up shop virtually anywhere. Unlike other mobile glass studios, which are typically assembled to peddle the work of a single artist (or artists), the goal of GlassLab is to seek out artists and designers who want to explore the creative and material potential of glass, recalling the original all-inclusive spirit of the Studio Glass movement. Beginning June 30th and continuing every weekend through the 29th of July, GlassLab will be hosting live design performances at Governors Island, NYC’s so-called emerging “backyard” of arts and culture. The event will feature designers from Cooper-Hewitt, the National Design Museum’s “Graphic Design—Now in Production” onsite exhibition, which will be open until September 3, 2012.

The range of work produced throughout the program’s existence reflects the diversity of participants’ backgrounds and aesthetics. Designer Sigga Heimis took advantage of glass’s potential for forming soft edges and rendered exaggeratedly soft human viscera; furniture artist Wendell Castle reinterpreted the martini glass; Sigi Moeslinger of Antenna Design chose a quieter reflection on a natural form. These works and more are currently on display at the Museum’s “Making Ideas: Experiments in Design at GlassLab” exhibition, which will be open through January 6th, 2013.

GlassLab first partnered with Cooper Hewitt back in 2008 and brought in designers of both two- and three-dimensional forms. While many of the participants of the upcoming GlassLab have designed for three dimensions—Inna Alesina, for instance, is a product designer—it’s interesting to note that their work for “Graphic Design” was chosen for exhibition based on its dialogue with “design-driven magazines, newspapers, books, and posters,” i.e. two-dimensional media. Other participants will include 2×4 (Georgie Stout and Michael Rock), Inna Alesina, Peter Buchanan-Smith, Rodrigo Corral, Keetra Dean Dixon and JK Keller, Eric Ku, Chris and Dominic Leong, Abbot Miller, Mike Perry, Leon Ransmeier, Paul Sahre, James Victore, and David Weeks. As with previous events, this upcoming GlassLab promises to yield some inspiring collaborative efforts.

—Isabella Webbe