A detail from Mark Peiser's "Palomar" series homage to an unparalleled glass engineering accomplishment graces the cover of Glass 122, Spring 2011.
The new issue of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly hits newsstands and subscriber mailboxes this week. On the cover: a work from Mark Peiser’s “Palomar” series that pays tribute to the 200-inch mirror, the largest cast-glass object ever created in the early 20th century, that continues to power the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory at Caltech. Until 1993, the unprecedented size of the main mirror ensured it remained the largest telescope in the world. The honeycomb pattern pictured on the cover is Peiser’s reference to the breakthrough ideas of George V. McCauley, a physicist in Corning’s research laboratory who solved several extremely difficult problems when the mirror was successfully completed in the 1930s. In this issue’s cover article, GLASS contributing editor James Yood investigates Peiser’s wide-ranging body of work that is unified in its celebration of the engineering challenges of teasing creative expression out of the material of glass.
Other features include an examination of the earliest glass bead sculptures of Liza Lou by art critic Peter Schjeldahl in an excerpt from a just-published mongraph titled simply ?Liza Lou (Skira Rizzoli). Lou dropped out of San Francisco Art Institute because she perceived her painting professors scoffed at her interest in using glass beads to paint with light. Schjeldahl calls Lou’s accomplishments using thousands upon thousands of glass beads the product of an artist’s ruthless drive.
Regular GLASS contributor Annie Buckley offers an intriguing look at the atmospheric trompe l’oeils of Mary Temple, whose latest installation at the Rice University Art Gallery in Houston, Texas, fills viewers with a peaceful ambiance of dappled light flooding in through a window and across the floor and wall. Only that there is no such light; it’s painted on by Temple to create a powerful effect and provocative moment of reflection of how we are affected by our perceptions of our surroundings.
Finally, GLASS editor Andrew Page presents a look at the large-scale work of Nikolas Weinstein Studios, that creates architectural glass installations in which the material swoops, billows, and otherwise transforms hotel lobbies, bars, and cafeteria spaces. Pushing the envelope of glass engineering, Weinstein and his San Francisco-based team pull off new feats of creative engineering for every one of their projects.
Elsewhere in the issue, you will find incisive reviews of exhibitions including Jean Wells at David Richard Contemporary in Santa Fe; the new stained-glass window project by Kiki Smith and Deborah Gans at the Museum on Eldridge Street in New York City; and April Surgent’s solo museum exhibition at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Bellevue Washington. The latest news and a reflection column round out the spring edition.
Don’t miss out. To order this copy, or to subscribe, email us at subscribe@glassquarterly.com, visit us at www.glassquarterly.com, or call 718.625.3685, ext 222. Your subscription also helps support the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet!