The Winter 2016-17 edition of GLASS (#145) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes this week. The four feature articles explore different aspects of the profound transition affecting glass art and design. Whether it's the aging of a loyal collector base that sustained its growth for decades; new technologies competing with, if not displacing, hot glass studios as the showpieces of college and university art departments; or the steady march of globalization finally encroaching on the price points at the high end of design, GLASS brings you unique insights into the changing dynamics of the field.
For the cover article, artist, educator, and critic Scott Benefield traveled to Kosta, Sweden, to witness the creation of a “legacy” piece by 79-year-old Bertil Vallien, who straddles the worlds of sculpture and design in an unusual but mutually beneficial arrangement. The Kosta Boda factory where Vallien cast Passage is at once a logical yet highly unusual setting for this landmark work, and Benefield proves a canny witness to the fabrication, which that doubled as a sophisticated art- tourism package that that just might show the way to engage potential new collectors.
Back in the U.S., artist and educator Tina Aufiero is uniquely comfortable occupying the shifting ground of transformational change, as contributing editor Victoria Josslin discovered in her in-depth profile. When her glass teaching job at Parsons in New York City was threatened by closure in an effort to make room for digital studies, Aufiero adapted, and ended up running the new- media program. While she has embraced coding and the intricacies of making art in the digital era, Aufiero’s passage from glass to new media demonstrates the artist’s ability to shift the conversation, and her own process, to embrace the universal aspects of expression. As artistic director at Pilchuck Glass School, Aufiero is in a unique position to shape the future, and her progress is notable and a cause for optimism.
Looking back at a transformative moment in history, contributor Bruno Andrus assesses the outsized impact of the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal, Canada, the first encounter Western artists had with the work of giants of Czechoslovakian glass such as Stanislav Libensky/Jaroslava Brychtová, and René Roubicek. The scale and expressive refinement stunned up-and-coming glass artists such as then grad-student Dale Chihuly, and this watershed encounter between East and West inspired a nascent art movement to use glass as a full-scale sculptural material. Andrus brings the event to life, but also traces its impact, particularly on two local artists who would go on to be the founders of Espace Verre, the seminal glass center in Montreal.
And finally, we have an examination of the Australian glass scene, rocked by the recent passing of its leading light Klaus Moje, whose program at Canberra set the bar high, establishing refined qualities that have come to be associated with glass Down Under: its restraint, sensitivity to surface, and preference for minimalist, resolved forms. Curator and critic Ivana Jirasek examines the history, the high-water mark, and the question marks facing glass as government funding shifts away from a medium it once supported so strongly. Like everywhere in the glass world, it’s a time of transition and adaptation, in which one might see echoes of the early years, the lean years before the commercial market came, when everything was possible and so full of potential.
All this, plus six reviews, the latest news, and a back-page essay on what it means to be an artist in the words of the late-Klaus Moje.
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