CALL FOR ENTRIES: Canberra Glassworks seeks Australian applicants for first Klaus Moje Award

Canberra Glassworks has announced the next iteration of its annual Hindmarsh Prize, which has honored contemporary glass artists from the Canberra region since 2016. The first biennial Klaus Moje Glass Award (KMGA), named for the artist and founder of Canberra’s Australian National University School of Art Glass Workshop, has broadened the focus to include participants from across the nation of Australia, and honors the legacy of one of the most important pioneers of Australian glass, Klaus Moje (1936 - 2016). The deadline to apply is August 14, 2019.

The Bullseye Resource Center in Los Angeles. courtesy: bullseye glass company

Sunday July 7, 2019 | by Meghan Hayfield

CALL FOR ENTRIES: Bullseye applications for Spring/Summer 2020 residencies due September 1st

Bullseye Glass Company is now accepting applications for its 2020 winter/spring artist residency program. The residencies take place in five locations: the Bullseye Studio in Portland, Oregon, and in each of the Bullseye Resource Centers, which are located in Santa Fe, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York. Accommodations are not provided, except at the Portland location if needed. The deadline to apply for the residencies (taking place between January and June 2020) is September 1st, 2019.

The management team of the combined Rago and Wright auctioneers. (L to R) Richard Wright, CEO; David Rago, President; Suzanne Perrault, President. courtesy: rago

Wednesday July 3, 2019 | by Gabriela Iacovano

Lambertville, New Jersey-based Rago Auctions, an important venue for secondary-market glass art, has merged with Wright Auctions

Rago Auctions in Lambertville, New Jersey, and Wright Auctions of Chicago and New York City have recently announced the merger of their business operations. Both houses will continue to operate under their individual names at their respective locations but will start sharing technology, expertise, and marketing efforts while also collaborating on co-branded projects. With a combined $65 million in annual sales and an expanded team of 75 employees, the two businesses hope that there's power in numbers. It remains to be seen how this impacts their respective pools of consignors and buyers.

Reforestation of the Imagination is the latest project by Ginny Ruffner, now on view at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Tuesday July 2, 2019 | by Meghan Hayfield

EXHIBITION: With an augmented-reality app she developed, Ginny Ruffner empowers viewers to unleash their imaginations at the Renwick Gallery

Artist Ginny Ruffner's exhibition "Reforestation of the Imagination," which just opened at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, enlists cutting-edge technologies in the artist's ongoing quest to celebrate and explore the power of the imagination. Viewers who attend the exhibition, which is on view through January 5, 2020, are asked to download a unique augmented-reality app on their mobile devices. Ruffner developed it working with Seattle-based animator and media artist Grant Kirkpatrick. With the help of the app, the gallery's monochromatic landscape is transformed digitally, and the six glass tree stumps that stand as targets to aim mobile devices come to life with colorful organic growth. Without the use of technology, the space is desolate. With digital programming, the "trees" bloom spiraling branches and elaborate foliage referencing Ruffner's powerful reimagining of what may result in the near-future from climate change.

Stephanie Sara Lifshutz, You Heard me the First Time, 2019. Neon, mixed-media. courtesy: heller gallery

Thursday June 27, 2019 | by Meghan Hayfield

EXHIBITION: "Collaborations with Queer Voices" celebrates identity and decodes language at Heller Gallery

Artists Matthew Day Perez and Kate Hush asked 10 artists to consider language, which can be especially charged for those in the LGBTQ community. Building on the success of their provocatively named business venture, FagSigns, Perez and Hush then fabricated the artists' ideas into working neon signs, which are debuting at an exhibition that opens this evening, June 27, 2019, at Heller Gallery in New York City. The show entitled "Collaborations with Queer Voices," which is timed to Pride month and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, continues FagSign's conversation about neon's role in electrifying the voices of marginalized individuals.

Karl Unnasch, Operant (An Oldowonk Cataract), 2019. Reclaimed dump truck, stained glass, glass tchonks, steel, paint, polycarbonate, LEDs. H 17, W 9, D 26 ft. courtesy: the artist.

Wednesday June 26, 2019 | by Gabriela Iacovano

Karl Unnasch's latest public-art project in Boston uses his extensive stained-glass expertise to illuminate discarded machinery

Artist Karl Unnasch, a Minnesota-based stained-glass window maker, has been gaining notice in the past few years for his large-scale installations that employ two-dimensional stained glass panels to bring new life to cast-off three-dimensional objects. The other-worldly results — pieces of industrial machinery outfitted with vibrant, pictorial windows that glow from within — reflect on the artist’s rural Midwestern upbringing. His piece Slumgullion (The Venerate Outpost), a log cabin outfitted with various types of art glass, was recently recognized by Americans for the Arts as one of 50 outstanding public art pieces created in 2018. In an ongoing Boston installation, Unnasch’s sculpture that brings together stained glass and an old dump truck explores the intersection of the natural landscape and the road construction process.

While on a Fulbright in Finland, Jonathan Capps conducted a hot-shop demonstration for Kirsti Taiviola's (far right) design students at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland. Capps was assisted by Sara Hulkkonen (far left). courtesy: jonathan capps.

Tuesday June 25, 2019 | by Meghan Hayfield

In Finland on a Fulbright Scholarship, artist Jonathan Capps found eager exchange and interest in an American approach to glass

As the economics of handmade glass production are battered by globalization, the centuries-old glass-making culture in Europe is increasingly opening up (see the 2018 Glass Art Society conference in Murano, or the upcoming 2020 conference at Kosta Boda) and looking internationally for ideas of how to reinvent their businesses. One example comes in the story of Jonathan Capps, who graduated from Ohio State with an MFA in glass in 2016. Last year, Capps applied for and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to spend a year in Finland working with the Nuutajärvi Glass Village Cultural Foundation (NGVCF), which operates out of a shuttered historic glass factory and was set up to preserve and study traditions of Finnish glass art. Capps was driven by his interest in learning a Scandinavian approach to working with glass, but it quickly became clear that there was an equal interest in his uniquely American approach. The culmination of Capps’ year in Finland came with a group exhibition titled “Why Not? Finnish American Art Glass,” which is on view at the formerly thriving Nuutajärvi Glass Factory through September 1, 2019. Between his studio research and informal artist residency at Tavastia Vocational College (a local glass school) glass school, Capps soon became aware of a strong interest in his own way of doing things. Through his interactions with artists and teachers at Tavastia, and the welcoming embrace of local glass artists and designers, Capps became intimately involved with Nuutajärvi's search for a new type of glass identity.

Center for Craft Windgate Fellow Brian Fleetwood. courtesy: center for crafts

Tuesday June 25, 2019 | by Meghan Hayfield

Where most fellowships aim at emerging artists, two new $20,000 opportunities at the Center for Crafts are aimed squarely at mid-career

The Center for Crafts, the non-profit arts organization based in Asheville, North Carolina, that advances the field of art from craft media, has announced two new $20,000 Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowships targeting mid-career artists. While the Craft Research Fund has been providing fellowships since 2005, most are limited to emerging artists or recent graduates. Following a July 2018 meeting with national leaders of the art, craft, and philanthropy fields at the Center for Craft, a new fellowship program was designed for artists of any age throughout their career.

Pieces from Blown Away on display in the museum's amphitheater hot shop. courtesy: corning museum of glass

Friday June 21, 2019 | by Gabriela Iacovano

Glass reality show Blown Away to premiere July 12th on Netflix, Corning Museum of Glass sets up exhibition of show artifacts

The Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) in Corning, New York, has intensified its involvement with Blown Away, an upcoming glass-art reality television program, by displaying pieces made during taping of the show. The exhibit is set up in the museum’s Ampitheater Hot Shop, and not the main exhibition spaces. The reality show, which premiered on Canada’s newly launched Makeful satellite channel in February, is scheduled to debut in the U.S. on Netflix on July 12, 2019. Perhaps sensing the show's potential to introduce new audiences to the beauty of glassblowing, the Corning team, which had joined the production as evaluators and offered hands-on assistance to the glass artists during Blown Away's final rounds, is upping its involvement in the reality television program with the exhibition as well as planned appearances at the museum by the show's as-yet-unreleased victorious contestant. The winner of the competition will visit the museum for two working sessions this summer and a “Blown Away Residency” is planned in October, where the artist will perform demos for museum visitors.

Richard Royal, Illusion, 2019. Hot sculpted glass. H 23, W 11, D 5 in. courtesy: schantz galleries

Thursday June 20, 2019 | by Meghan Hayfield

EXHIBITION: New larger-scale work by Richard Royal on view at Schantz Gallery

On view through the summer at Schantz Galleries in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, is an exhibition of new work from Richard Royal, one of the pioneers of the Studio Glass movement. Three years in development, Royal’s latest body of work is a geometric series that achieves a larger scale and features a commanding palette of primary colors. After 11 years of developing a process and system, Royal’s geometric series is playful but structurally complex, with titles offering homages to famous figures in art and architecture.

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.