GLASS 117, Winter 2009-10
The new issue of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly hits newsstands and subscriber mailboxes this week. On the cover: Emma Varga’s 21-1/2-inch tall Red Red Sky Burning #7 (2008), made from fused, ground, and polished glass sheets, mosaic elements, and frit. This complex work is her response to Australian bushfires, which leave the landscape devastated but rich with the necessary nutrients of revival. Varga emigrated from the former Yugoslavia in 1995 to Australia where she has restarted her life and career, and she has found the intense bushfires of her new country “both disastrous and regenerating.” Writing about her 2007 exhibition “The Story About Red” at the Jam Factory in Adelaide, Varga said: “No other color could express all the dramatic circumstances I have been though in my life.”
For this artist, whose work is an exploration of how ideas survive and evolve throughout one’s life and circumstances, the many nuances of color, trapped bubbles, and light that are captured in intricately constructed kiln projects can be seen as a metaphor for her life experiences and personal reinvention.
Also in this issue:
- GLASS Seattle correspondent Victoria Josslin investigates the next chapter for those artists who collaborated with William Morris until his retirement in 2007. How is this team that lent considerable individual skills and creativity to realizing Morris’s vision applying their technical breakthroughs to their own work? Josslin takes a look at the work of Rik Allen, Shelley Muzylowsky Allen, Kelly O’Dell, Jon Ormbrek, Randy Walker, Ross Richmond, Veruska Vagen, and Karen Willenbrink-Johnsen.
- Former Pilchuck executive director and accomplished curator Patricia Grieve Watkinson examines the work of Mary Van Cline in an in-depth consideration of this groundbreaking artist who brings together photographic process and glass to extend the power and meaning of images. Based on extensive interviews, Watkinson brings new insights into Van Cline’s powerfully realized sculptural works.
- Reviews of Spencer Finch’s public art installation for New York City’s High Line, Nancy Callan’s “Seventh Inning Stretch” exhibit at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Dale Chihuly’s “Mercurio” exhibit at Traver Gallery, Gunnel Nyman’s “Beauty Captured in Glass” exhibit at the Finnish Glass Museum, and Thomas Scoon’s exhibit at Ken Saunders Gallery.
To order this copy, or subscribe, visit us at www.glassquarterly.com, or call 718.625.3685, ext 222. GLASS magazine is also the perfect gift this holiday season. Go here to learn about a special 2-years for $50 gift subscription offer available for a limited time.