GALLERY EXHIBITION: Toots Zynsky artist reception tonight at Heller Gallery

Toots Zynsky's sensuous forms, made up of thousands of undulating glass fibers that have been fused into wide-throated vessels that reach skyward with sinuous lines and luminous colors, are on exhibit at Heller Gallery through May 28th. Tonight, the exhibition entitled "today tomorrow yesterday | oggi domani ieri," will celebrate the artist and her 40-year career with a reception at the Chelsea, New York gallery from 6 PM to 8 PM.

In 1973, Zynsky graduated with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she studied with Dale Chihuly, with whom she would continue to work in the early days of the Pilchuck Glass School. It was when Zynsky returned to the East Coast in the early 1980s, where she ran the hot shop at the New York Experimental Glass Workshop (now UrbanGlass, which publishes the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet), that she developed her technique, which she calls "filet de verre," for the layering of glass fibers to create her vessels.

She was originally wrapping her threads in other materials, such as barbed wires, but eventually settled on a method of making her vessels entirely from the threads, themselves, which she began showing in New York City Galleries, and which remains her signature style of work, which has been collected by major museums around the world.

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