The Fall 2016 edition of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#144) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes next week. On the cover is a work by Christina Bothwell who creates sculptural vignettes using cast glass and ceramic elements. In Bothwell's hands, the smooth, shiny aspects of glass are hidden by pocked surfaces or rubbing with oil paints to further dull the finishes. Undimmed is the ability of glass to capture and transmit light, creating a glowing effect that effective serves the work's central themes of transformation, dreams, and the passage of time.
In this issue's cover article, entitled "The Extractionist," contributing editor William Warmus writes that Bothwell's work "is all about time," and investigates how her work is an effort to unite past, present, and future through a vocabulary of universal human experience that has particular poignancy in the second decade of a new century.
In another feature article in the Fall edtion, artist and educator Alexander Rosenberg examines a group exhibition of four artists who are also seeking to make sense of our era of rapid changes, but in the case of artsts Megan Biddle, Amber Cowan, Jessica Jane Julius, and Sharyn O'Mara, they choose to work more conceptually. Their group exhibition in Philadelphia entitled "Hush" featured multimedia assemblages that pair glass with metal, paint, and even dog hair, as the artists embraced the duality of glass — it's ability to be both "archaic and innovaitve" — as the exhibition emplyed the material as "an escape from the noise and speed of a digital age, as something slow, quiet, manual, and solitary," writes Rosenberg.
Contributing editor Victoria Josslin traveled to the New Mexican desert to spend time with sculptor Stacey Neff, whose career has involved in parallel with her abiding interest in sustainability. Neff, who graduated from RISD with a BFA in 1995, was one of the first to effectively utilize recycled glass as a material for sculpture. While her early works took recycled glass to new scale, thanks to fiberglass reinforcement that allowed her to create monumental works such as Spatial Negotiation II (2001) which is prominently featured in the new contemporary art wing at Corning, Neff's latest work is wall-mounted kiln-formed works. As Josslin discovers, even in the unforgiving desert environment, Neff's creative spirit and interest in sustainability remains undimmed.
Finally, we are proud to present an exclusive excerpt from the eagerly-awaited new book by Koen Vanderstukken, which cuts a wide swatch through the history, science, and contemporary art world's embrace of glass. Entitled Glass: Virtual, Real (Black Dog Publishing, London), the Belgian-born artist's project has taken him nearly a decade, and represents one of the most ambitious efforts to chart how the changeable nature of glass has evolved over time, and become the perfect material for contemporary art.
All this, plus five reviews and a lively essay by glass fashion show diva Laura Donefer.