Using pre- and post-consumer glass recycled from their community, Bicycle Glass Co. creates sustainable lighting fixtures. courtesy: smithsonian craft optimism.

Thursday April 29, 2021 | by Lindsay von Hagn

Smithsonian's "Craft Optimism" virtual marketplace puts the focus on craft and sustainability

When Covid pandemic hit just over one year ago, cancellation of events of all kinds followed. The organizers of the 2020 Smithsonian Craft Show were determined not to cancel its annual craft showcase. Although the show had to be postponed for about six months, the Smithsonian successfully shifted to a virtual format that combined the Craft Show with Craft2Wear, the Smithsonian’s annual wearable arts program. This year, the Smithsonian Women’s Committee (which has sponsored the Craft Show Since 1982) collaborated with non-profit arts organization Honoring the Future to launch a brand-new crafts market in the virtual space that addresses climate-change. Titled Craft Optimism, this show features 100 artists selected by experts in the craft community and highlights work that either “helps to address climate change or reflect on the impacts of climate change in some way,” according to the show’s mission statement. Handmade works in a myriad of craft mediums divided into four categories - Jewelry, Wearable Art, Accessories, and Art/Home - are for sale through Saturday, May 1st, and can be viewed in the online catalog.

Dr. Robert Brill (1929-2021). courtesy: the corning museum of glass.

Tuesday April 20, 2021 | by Lindsay von Hagn

IN MEMORIAM: Dr. Robert Brill (1929 - 2021)

Dr. Robert H. Brill, a research scientist who became the director of The Corning Museum of Glass, passed away at home on April 7, 2021 in the company of his wife, daughter, and cats. Dr. Brill founded the Corning Museum's scientific research department when he joined the staff in 1960. He retired in 2008 after having served the museum for five decades. During his long tenure with the museum, he conducted chemical analysis on historical glass objects to determine where and how they were made, their uses, and how they were traded. Much of his research culminated in the museum publication “Chemical Analysis of Early Glasses”, three volumes of site reports, analysis, and conclusions based on the study of over 3,600 pieces of historical glass from around the world. He later turned his focus to Asian Glass found along the Silk Road trade route, and was one of the first Western scientists to study Chinese glass.

Wednesday April 14, 2021 | by Andrew Page

"The Glass Quarterly Conversation" debuts with a discussion from the pages of the magazine on how the pandemic accelerated the digital shift in glass art

Monday April 12, 2021 | by Andrew Page

Curator, critic, and author Tina Oldknow will discuss the Venetian influence on American Studio Glass in virtual lecture April 13th

Fresh from co-curating the Stanze del Vetro exhibition "Venice and American Studio Glass," Tina Oldknow will be discussing the cross-pollination between two distinct glass cultures in her upcoming Art Glass Forum: New York lecture, which will be taking place on Zoom at 6:30 PM EST on Tuesday, April 13, 2021. Oldknow, a former curator of modern and contemporary glass at The Corning Museum of Glass, will trace the import of Venetian traditions and techniques to American glassblowers, who had been taking an experimental approach to freeing glass from the industrial facilities and ecosystems that defined the material. She and co-curator William Warmus assembled over 150 works by American and Venetian artists and designers to document how the creativity flowed both ways in the exchange as both Americans and Venetians benefited by the renewed creativity and vibrancy of a historic craft language.

The glassimpact.org website features a glassblowing demonstration at STARworks in North Carolina.

Saturday April 10, 2021 | by Andrew Page

"Glass Impact" coalition's online fundraiser celebrates diverse voices in glass, and seeks support to sustain outreach

In glass-art studios across the country, a more diverse community of artists is being forged thanks to the work of nonprofit arts centers around the U.S. that are reaching out to younger artists of diverse backgrounds as part of their mission. From GlassRoots in Newark, New Jersey, to Firebird Community Arts in Chicago; from Public Glass in San Francisco, California, to FOCI Minnesota Center for Glass Arts, these organizations banded together during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic to launch a collective fundraising effort they have named "Glass Impact." (Disclosure: UrbanGlass, which publishes the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet is among the member organizations of Glass Impact). The remaining organizations in the coalition are Hilltop Artists in Tacoma, Washington; North Carolina Glass Center in Asheville, North Carolina; and STARworks NC in Star, North Carolina.

Friday April 9, 2021 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: Dante Marioni on his shimmering vessels debuting at Montague Gallery

Dante Marioni is widely acknowledged as one of the top virtuoso glassblowers in the U.S., and was perhaps the first American to learn through an informal apprenticeship with Lino Tagliapietra, the Muraese maestro. Marioni has never been content with simple mastery of traditional techniques but has spent his career seeking new ways of applying them. The goal is to make something never before realized in glass, and he's spent past decades locked in a competition to outdo himself. Case in point is the new body of work he developed over the course of the pandemic in which he takes complex cane patterning to a new level. Walking around one of the flattened vessels, each close to three feet in height and perfectly on center, a viewer is entranced by the active shimmering of the intricate canework on the surfaces. Because of the flattening, the vessel's front and back walls are in close proximity to one another, creating a vivid moiré effect that dazzles the eye. The Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet discussed this bold new body of work with Marioni on the eve of his April 9, 2021, exhibition opening at San Francisco's Montague Gallery, where the aptly titled show "Intersections" will remain on view through May 22, 2021. A virtual Zoom opening will take place with the artist present at 12 noon PacificTime (3 PM EST) on Friday, April 9, 2021, which you must register for in advance.

Thursday April 8, 2021 | by Andrew Page

CALL FOR ENTRIES: San Francisco museum offers $1,000 prize for best work at intersection of activism and craft

The Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco has issued a call for entries for an exhibition entitled "Call & Response: Craft as a Tool for Activism," which will be juried by curator and writer Glenn Adamson; sculptor and designer Ebitenyefa Baralaye; and artist, educator and Public Glass executive director Nate Watson. The top three submissions will be offered prizes of $1,000, $500, and $250 respectively.

Wednesday April 7, 2021 | by Emma Park

CONVERSATION: "Blown Away" standout Elliot Walker on what it means to take top honors in the Netflix show's second season

Elliot Walker was the unexpected champion of the second season of Neflix's Blown Away. The combination of technical accomplishment and creativity in his glass sculptures, rounded off by quirky titles (Cogito Ergo Sum, Mr Noteworthy, Bodge Job), proved to be a winning one. He has just exhibited at Collect 2021 and is due to take up a residency at The Corning Museum of Glass, part of the prize for winning Blown Away, when circumstances permit. Walker currently works from a studio in Hertford, England, with his girlfriend and fellow glass artist, Bethany Wood. Below are some excerpts from the interview which he gave to Emma Park, Glass Quarterly's European correspondent, who is at work on a full-length feature on Walker as an artist and on his place in British contemporary glass, for an article that will appear in the forthcoming Summer 2021 print edition of Glass (#163), on newsstands June 1.

Monday March 22, 2021 | by Andrew Page

HELP WANTED: UrbanGlass seeks applicants for full-time Deputy Director position

UrbanGlass, founded in 1977 as the first artist-access glass center in the U.S., is seeking applicants for the newly created full-time position of Deputy Director. Serving more than 15,000 professional artists, designers, and students, the Brooklyn-based nonprofit is expanding its leadership team. Reporting to the Executive Director, the Deputy Director will provide operational oversight and management of the 17,000-square foot-facility, the largest of its kind in the U.S. Responsibilities range from management of safety preparedness to overseeing the nonprofit's event-rental business.

Wednesday March 17, 2021 | by Andrew Page

"Lino Tagliapietra: The Making of a Maestro" presents this icon of glass art in his own words, and on his own terms

There's been no shortage of attempts to document on video the unique phenomenon that is Lino Tagliapietra, the supremely talented Muranese maestro who made the radical decision to leave the island and the traditional hierarchies of the centuries-old glasshouses to travel the world as a teacher and as an artist. Many filmmakers have labored to capture on camera his lifelong quest to expand on the time-honored skills he learned through apprenticeship and punishingly long hours at the factory bench, bringing to them his refined international sensibility that draws inspiration from art, architecture, and cultural explorations around the globe. What's sets Lino Tagliapietra: The Making of a Maestro (available for streaming on Amazon Prime) apart from many other notable cinematic efforts is that from conception to execution, the project is strikingly intimate and insider -- no surprise given the central role played by Jacopo Vecchiato, Lino's grandson and executive manager, a prime mover behind the project. Directed by John Forsen (of the 2015 documentary Pilchuck: Dance with Fire), and with celebrity narration by Alfred Molina, the film is replete with lush scenes from the hotshop, in which the fire, sparks, and smoke are savored in slow motion, as well as the requisite glittering panoramas of the Venetian Lagoon. But this film is also a rare opportunity for Lino to tell his own story in Italian. The maestro is very proud of his abilities to speak English and often resists presenting with an Italian translator, but in this film, Lino's interviews in Italian (with English subtitles) reveal new details of Lino's biography in his own words, and with a fuller range of expression in his native tongue.

Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly, a glossy art magazine published four times a year by UrbanGlass has provided a critical context to the most important artwork being done in the medium of glass for more than 40 years.