Editor's Letter

by Andrew Page

Rachel Owens, whose broken-glass-and-resin foot graces the cover of this issue, employs glass for the same light-mediating qualities that draw so many sculptors. But she is especially focused on its metaphoric resonance. Broken green glass, which she began to notice on the sidewalks of her Greenpoint, Brooklyn, neighborhood shortly after moving to New York and which has become a primary material in her work, is rich with associations of consumption and violence—two forces she zeroes in on in her critique of the excesses of our culture of rampant consumerism and its dire implications for the natural world.

Hourglass

Beth Lipman unveils new work at New York City gallery; the Glass Art Society honors Harvey Littleton in a new lecture series debuting at its 2015 conference; two collaborators from Finland create labor-intensive blown-glass comics; Ione Thorkelssohn’s dual exhibitions in Ottowa engage biologies synthetic and natural; a new artist fellowship debuts at MassArt in memory of Kanik Chung; Corning is the first museum to use its parent company’s Gorilla Glass to make display cases disappear; with a botanical installation and an opera stage set, Dale Chihuly takes Norfolk, Virginia; Venice exhibition presents virtuosic skill in a contemporary art context; the traveling “European Glass Experience” exhibition moves to Murano.

Reviews

Marita Dingus at Traver Gallery, Seattle; Amber Cowan and Charlotte Potter at Heller Gallery, New York; Jean-Simon Trottier and Montserrat Duran Muntadas at Espace VERRE, Montreal; Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian at the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

UrbanGlass News

Meet three of the visiting artists who come to UrbanGlass throughout the year to explore glass and create new bodies of work

Reflection

by Justyna Turek

Out of Shards: Comparing the broken-glass sculpture of Josepha Gasch-Muche and Marta Klonowska

Complicity

by Andrew Page

A conversation with sculptor Rachel Owens, who creates alluring objects out of broken glass and resin that indict our consumer culture and force us to consider our role in its unsustainability.

Tall Tales

by Victoria Scholes

James Maskrey’s vessels serve as ethereal canvases for life stories— his own and those of others.

The Surveyor

by William Ganis

Norwood Viviano’s glass structures are transparent objects formed according to mathematical modeling and based on statistics charting the changing fortunes of American cities.

The Persistence of White

by John Drury

Using varied approaches, Japanese artists Sachi Fujikake, Hirohiko Ito, and Yoshiaki Kojiro all employ the purity and power of the absence of hue, which is actually the presence of all colors.