Founded in 1971, the Glass Art Society has grown in the more-than-four decades since it began as a semi-formal meeting of glassblowers at Penland, into a full-fledged nonprofit organization with a full-time staff and an office in Seattle, Washington. The scale of its annual get-togethers has grown as well, culminating in the 2012 GAS conference in Toledo when glass artists and aficionados from around the world gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Toledo Museum of Art workshops that many credit with launching Studio Glass. Aside from this year's canceled conference, the annual meeting of glass artists has been a key opportunity to check in with colleages, reconnect with old friends, and attend lectures and demonstrations that help advance the field technically and intellectually. With the launch of a completely redesigned Website, however, GAS has expanded beyond an organization primarily focused on its annual conference. Though it is charging ahead with its 2014 conference in Chicago next March, it has also overhauled its Internet presence with a just-relaunched Website that redefines its online presence as a place for artistic exchange as well as news and information. Among the key features are an expanded and redesigned member directory that showcases member artists' works to the general public as well as to fellow members, taking its impressive networking role into the digital realm.
The Glass Art Society announced their redesign on October 23, simultanously with a reconceived logo (pictured at left). "This fresh new design represents a resourceful and energetic organization and celebrates the creative spirit of artists working in glass," reads the press release about the redesign, which was done with the Web designers at Rock Hill, South Carolina-based Social Design House. Among the highlights of the new look and feel are easy navigation via search, better organization, easily accessed news, visually-bold member profiles that showcase artwork in a lightbox gallery format, a redesigned GAS conference page with better naviation, and plans to build the site into an educational resource, including offering Webinars and a video library for online demonstrations of techniques as a second phase of the redesign.
"This is an exciting new path for GAS that will allow us to add more features in the near future, including webinars and an extensive video library," the official announcement continues. "Our goal is to provide the very best resources and up-to-date information for the creative glass community."
The redesign project was made possible with the support of Corning Incorporated Foundation and the Klorfine Foundation.