OPENING: A revamped Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery reopens outside Toronto with all-star exhibiti

Also included in the group show opening tonight, Alfred Engerer's cast glass work was the subject of a September solo exhibition.

Tonight’s opening from 5 to 8 PM, of “Glass Factor: Luminaries: In the Canadian Art Glass Scene,” a new exhibition at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery in Waterloo, Ontario, will feature work by a who’s who of the best-known names in Canadian glass art, including Brad Copping, Laura Donefer, Susan Edgerley, Alfred Engerer, Irene Frolic, Kevin Lockau, Susan Rankin, John Paul Robinson, and Ione Thorkelsson, among many others. But it will also mark a new start for this struggling nonprofit arts gallery, an hour and a half’s drive from Toronto. The gallery has had financial challenges since even before it opened its doors in 1993, when it needed extra funding from the city of Waterloo to complete construction. It came back to the city for a $100,000 (Canadian dollars) loan in the fall of 2009, when a cash flow crisis forced a reexamination of the accounting and budgeting of this organization. And just last month, an additional $51,150 (Canadian) was granted from the city as part of an institutional overhaul that included increasing the staff, making capital improvements to the nearly 20-year-old building, and doing more marketing and community outreach to raise its profile in the arts community.

“The initial cash flow issue (from nearly a year ago) has been addressed and many of the matters than brought about that crisis have also been addressed,” Robert Williams, past chair of the Canadian Clay & Glass Galery’s board of directors told the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet in an email. “While the Gallery is no longer on ‘life support,’ the financial situation remains a challenge. I have every confidence that the new Board will be able to meet that challenge successfully.”

A Canadian collage of glass artwork from some of the country's best-known figures provided a bold illustration for the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery's inviation, a sign of a new effort to improve marketing.

Tonight’s opening will be a chance to show off the new face of the gallery, which bills itself as “the pride and cultural jewel of the City of Waterloo” on a page of its Website. According to a press release, the gallery will unveil “a new logo, highly visible signage on the building, a more welcoming environment for our visitors, as well as free admission to our exhibitions from now on.” To appeal to Canada’s sizable French-speaking population, the gallery will also introduce new French-language educational programming.

Tonight’s opening will debut an all-star group exhibition. In a press release, Christian Bernard Singer, the Gallery’s curator states, “While many glass creators look to the natural world for inspiration there is something uniquely Canadian in the work of these artists. They embrace and make reference to our spectacular geological and archaeological landscape filled with mysteries and stories begging to be explored. You will be able to learn about each artwork and artist, their vision and their process, more fully at our opening reception during the Curator’s Talk.”

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