A portrait of the artist by photographer Ele Runge. courtesy: uarts, philadelphia.

Wednesday October 16, 2019 | by Jillian Cheney

AWARD: Simone Fezer wins $5,000 University of the Arts Borowsky Prize, will lecture at Philadelphia campus in November

Philadelphia's University of the Arts has announced that artist Simone Fezer is the seventh winner of its annual Irvin Borowsky International Prize in Glass Arts. The prize is awarded to an artist whose work is "conceptually daring, exemplifies technical skill and innovation, and advances the field of contemporary glass," according to the award announcement by UArts. The winner receives a $5,000 award, and gives a lecture at the UArts campus. Fezer, who is based in Germany, plans to do so in November.

$Refract$

Monday October 14, 2019 | by Eve Aaron

Refract Seattle, a four-day festival debuting Thursday, hopes to expand the Northwest glass-art scene into a region-wide art extravaganza

From October 17th through 20th, the glass-art community of artists and institutions throughout the Seattle area are teaming up to host the very first Refract: The Seattle Glass Experience, a four-day festival that has the potential to solidify the Northwest Coast as a center of American glass, and broaden its appeal to the wider public. The festival was spearheaded by Chihuly Gardens and Glass that together with the Glass Art Society, funded a research project exploring the Pacific Northwest region as a major center for glass art. It discovered some 700 artists and over 100 studios working in the material, and identified opportunities to expand awareness and cooperation in the field. Inspired by its research findings , Gardens and Glass joined forces with Visit Seattle, the official tourist partnership, to create Refract.

John Kiley & Dante Marioni, Leaf Halo, 2019. Blown and cut glass. H 15, W 13, D 14 in. courtesy: traver gallery

Thursday October 3, 2019 | by Jillian Cheney

OPENING: John Kiley and Dante Marioni's cutaway collaborations, April Surgent's haunting landscapes at Traver

Boldly experimental and technically rigorous are terms that can be applied to the collaborations between John Kiley and Dante Marioni, which are going on view this evening at Traver Gallery. Lino disciples and arguably two of the top American glassblowing masters who have known one another for almost two decades, they first connected in 1991 when Marioni stopped in at the restaurant where Kiley worked wearing a Pilchuk Glass School t-shirt after Kiley had just registered to take a class there.

Scenes from the 2017 Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass, where head of the RISD glass art department Rachel Berwick was the keynote speaker (top left).

Friday September 27, 2019 | by Andrew Page

Schedule released for the upcoming 2019 Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass (October 24 - 26, 2019)

The full program of the 2019 Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass , which will run from October 24 through October 26, has been published. Among the highlights is an award to be presented to Lino Tagliapietra in recognition of his profound impact on the history of glass education in the United States. The ceremony will take place as the culmination of the Thursday evening gallery tour that kicks off the symposium and will take attendees through the Manhattan art neighborhood of Chelsea with stops at contemporary art galleries showing glass such as Marianne Boesky, Pace, and Luhring Augustine. The award will be presented at the final stop, Heller Gallery, where, during a catered reception in honor of Tagliapietra, the maestro will share his thoughts on the history and future of American glass-art education in a public conversation with Glass magazine editor and symposium organizer Andrew Page.

Richard Marquis, Ruby Heart Teapot, 1980. Blown glass, murrine technique. H 5, W 6, D 5 in. courtesy: museum of glass

Thursday September 26, 2019 | by Jillian Cheney

OPENING: Historic and contemporary work by iconic glass artist Richard Marquis on view in two Seattle-area exhibitions

A glass dog perched atop a wooden anvil. Patterned pink teapots. A golden birdcage. Watercolor postcards serving as the backdrop of whimsical found objects. All of the above -- and much more, with increasing variety -- are to be found at the Traver Gallery and Museum of Glass this month in two Marquis exhibits. At the Traver Gallery, on view through September 29th, both Richard and his painter and mixed-media artist wife, Johanna Marquis, display their work side by side in "Recent Works: New and Used." The gallery exhibition includes pieces both from their early careers and new works. And opening later this month at the glass museum in neighboring Tacoma, Washington, "Keepers" displays prized work draw straight from Richard Marquis' personal archives, spanning his decades-long career and providing insights into what the artist himself felt were among his most important and successful efforts.

Peter Bremers, Blue Elevated Space, 2019. Glass. H 39 1/4, W 22 1/2, D 6 1/4 in. courtesy: sandra ainsley gallery

Wednesday September 18, 2019 | by Jillian Cheney

OPENING: In his latest work, now on view at Toronto's Sandra Ainsley Gallery, Peter Bremers channels introspection and new beginnings

Using sculpted cast glass and earth-tones, Peter Bremers channels the outside world in making his artworks. Trips to the Antarctic and the American Southwest have advanced his premise that the beauty of natural phenomena is not a simple pursuit, but integral to the human experience. The transformation of self that can occur during these encounters is the subject of his introspective works. In his newest exhibition, which just debuted at the Ainsley Gallery outside Toronto, Bremers unveils 22 new works that encourage personal transformation through positive introspection in a show he tells the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet is "important to me as a human being and as an artist."

Installation view of Erica Rosenfeld's newest work at Heller, including her Cake Light sculpture at left, and her "paint-by-number" assemblages.

Thursday September 12, 2019 | by Jillian Cheney

OPENING: Erica Rosenfeld's second solo exhibition at Heller is a menagerie of mixed-media animal imagery

Vintage paint-by-numbers kits, especially those from the mid-20th-century, are more than kitschy relics to artist Erica Rosenfeld, who incorporates imagery from these kits into her original paintings. She references found visual artifacts in her hand-painted depictions of animals in her second solo exhibition at Heller Gallery. Entitled "Reverie Forest: Sanctuary for Strange Creatures," these new works go on view this evening in the Chelsea art district of Manhattan.

New York Times art critic Martha Schwendener also writes for Artforum, Art in America, and The New Yorker.

Thursday August 29, 2019 | by Andrew Page

New York Times art critic Martha Schwendener will deliver keynote lecture at the 2019 UrbanGlass symposium that runs from October 24th through the 26th

The theme for the fourth biennial academic symposium at UrbanGlass is "Issues in Glass Pedagogy: Criticism, Critique, and Critical Thinking," and the keynote speaker will be a prominent New York Times art critic. Martha Schwendener, a visiting associate professor at New York University, writes for several top art publications, but most often for the Times, where she focuses on non-mainstream artists. Just this year she's reviewed Nancy Spero's feminist art exhibition at PS 1, the big MoMA show on art and technology, and the Karrabing Film Collective.

Tuesday August 27, 2019 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Fall 2019 edition of Glass (#156)

The Fall 2019 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#156) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes this week. On the cover is a glass tapestry by Amber Cowan, who creates elaborate three-dimensional wall works by flameworking fragments of discarded, machine-made pressed glass. As new contributing editor Samantha De Tillio writes: "The work demands slow observation and challenges preconceived stereotypes regarding ornamentation, femininity, and the dominance of modernism."

Tuesday August 20, 2019 | by Meghan Hayfield

OPENING: Tiffany's ecclesiastical windows to go on display at Chicago's Driehaus Museum

Opening September 7, 2019, at the Driehaus Museum in Chicago is an exhibition of selected ecclesiastical stained-glass windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany. In addition to the setting, which shows the windows in appropriate Gilded-Age surroundings of an opulent residence that is now a museum, the exhibit also highlights the stories behind the works. Regular attendees of the SOFA art fair might recognize these windows, which had formerly been exhibited at Chicago's Navy Pier, where the Richard H. Drienhaus Gallery Stained Glass once stood adjacent to the Smith Museum of Stained Glass. (Both shut down for the recent renovation of Navy PIer.) The windows are part of the personal collection of the museum's founder, the investor and art collector Richard Driehaus, who also financed the purchase and renovation of the Driehaus Museum, which opened in 2008.

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.