Yuka Otani offers an edible glass workshop at the Whitney museum March 25th

How Sweet It Is: Sugar glass-blowing performed by Bryan Wilson.

For one night at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New Yorkers will have the opportunity to employ traditional glass techniques of casting, blowing, and sculpting with the very non-traditional medium of sugar. Trade School, a pop-up learning institution currently located in SoHo, will venture north on Friday, March 25th, to the Whitney to host a one-night workshop titled “Edible Glass” as a part of their special event Trade School at the Whitney: Coincidence of Wants.” The sugar glass course will be one of 16 workshops led by artists, teachers, and self-proclaimed experts, offering students the chance to learn a skill, create art, or participate in a discussion. Though the course is free, students will be required to donate a piece of handmade work. The glass course will take place from 7 – 8 PM. “Edible Glass” will be taught by multi-media artist Yuka Otani.

Artist Yuka Otani is currently an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Art and Design in New York, where she continues to explore the creative techniques of sugar glass. Above, the sugar glass lab at MAD.

“Edible Glass” is a course designed to explore sugar glass as it is used for creative purposes as opposed to pastry design or film industry stunt work. Based in New York and Japan as a multi-media artist, Otani primarily works with other malleable matters such as water, glass, light, as well as sugar, to imply the concepts of permanence and change through transforming materials.

Throughout the short, 45-minute workshop she will be introducing students to the work of other contemporary sugar glass artists such as Rebecca Holland, Meschac Gaba, and Felix Gonzalez Torres, as well as her own work, and from there will spend the majority of the class giving students time to work with the sugar. “I am looking to focus on the hands-on practice part for the Whitney workshop, because it’d be best for one to play with the material in order to understand what it does,” said Otani. Although the techniques used for working sugar glass and traditional glass are similar in many ways, there are some unique ways in which the sugar will respond while artists are working it, and especially after.

“I have a fascination with things that shift appearance over the time, and I feel typical glass art works tend to be too precious, untouchable, and self-sufficient. Sugar glass, unlike real glass, is harder to control, and it disintegrates over the time,” said Otani. “My sugar glass piece gradually melt and re-crystalize, like divitrification of glass, during the course of exhibition.”

Because of this difference, she finds it important for students who are participating in the course, learning about the medium, and trying to understand the significant difference between sugar glass and traditional glass, all in a compressed time frame. “Given the 45-minute class time frame, it will be challenging to cover various topics, but I’m planning to bring in some of my sugar glass pieces, tools and molds to convert the part of the museum into an experimental lab, so that it’ll be a lot to see as well as to do.”

Trade School at the Whitney, Friday March 25, Edible Glass Workshop 7 to 8 PM with Yuka Otani

For those interested in the course Otani recommends comfortable work clothes, and invite students from any skill level, experienced glassworkers or not. For more information about this and other Trade School courses at the Whitney, visit http://tradeschool.ourgoods.org/whitney.

—Alica Forneret

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