Mary Hong now operates four galleries and three ShardWorx educational and event locations.

Tuesday July 31, 2018 | by Olivia Ryder

Mixing glass mosaic with painting, and her personal art practice with public participation, ShardWorx founder Mary Hong discovers a recipe for success

Mary Hong wears many hats - mother, wife, glass artist, painter, entrepreneur, businesswoman - and she seems to switch them effortlessly throughout each action-packed day. A 1980s graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with an undergraduate degree in interior design, Hong has always been involved in creative pursuits, which she has maintained with an extraordinary energy. She first started working in glass in 1999 in Hawaii with glass-bead and lamp maker Calvin Orr, where she says she learned everything she knows about glass. In a telephone interview with the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet, Hong said, "during that time I was entirely content, thinking I’ve found my happy medium" but, she explains, it was not to last. “Major life occurrences always change what you think is going to be forever - and being pregnant with twins will do that. So I put away my glass materials and took care of two babies.” As soon as her twin boys entered preschool, however, she dove back into art, turning from glass to painting, which she saw as a more parent-friendly practice she could do from home: “Nothing broke!” As her painting developed, she began to incorporate other materials to create collages. Eventually, she took out her stored glass beads and shards. “As a glass artist you are inherently expert when it comes to adhesives - I went crazy gluing things. When I pulled out this epoxy resin that had sat in my drawer, I poured it [over some glass elements on a canvas] and went to sleep, and when I woke up I saw my future in front of me.”

Thursday July 26, 2018 | by Chelsea Liu

CALL FOR APPLICANTS: Prospective Netflix reality show "Blown Away" seeks competitive glassblowers

Glassblowing can result in serious art -- but it can also be intensely performative, a fact that has helped to fuel its expansion as an art material over the past five decades. Just ask the demo team at The Corning Museum of Glass in New York State or, on the opposite coast, at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, where the amphitheater is regularly filled with museum visitors who want to witness the process of making. Few other art forms are as regularly paraded to the public as their final result is taking shape -- unfinished and hotly imperfect. The same theatricality that reliably fills the seats in Corning and Tacoma is being banked on to attract television viewers. A glass-blowing reality television show tentatively titled Blown Away is set to premiere in Spring 2019, and is seeking highly skilled glassblowers to audition for the first season.

Jutta Cuny in her studio around 1982. photo: enrico cattaneo.

Wednesday July 25, 2018 | by Valerie Hughes

CALL FOR ENTRIES: Jutta Cuny-Franz Memorial Award 2019

The Jutta Cuny-Franz Foundation, centered at Museum Kunstpalast in Germany, is calling for submissions to the Jutta Cuny-Franz Memorial Award for 2019. Participants cannot be older than 40 years of age by 2019 and their chosen artwork must be from either 2017 or 2018. Each artist can submit three artworks in the form of images, with no more than three images per work, and the artist must own all rights of the images. The biennial award, which is endowed with 10,000 Euro (roughly 12,300 US dollars) is granted to artists whose works feature glass in a significant display of skill and creativity. In addition, two Talent Prizes are awarded, each consisting of 1,500 Euro (roughly 1,845 US dollars) and there are Honorary Diplomas granted as well. The deadline is October 14, 2018 and those who are interested may apply here. Applications may be submitted in English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish but any further correspondence will be in English. A choice of entries will be published in the Journal Neues Glas/New Glass. Winners are selected by a jury and the awards will be announced in the Spring of 2019.

Lino Tagliapietra with Medusa at Schantz Galleries opening on July 13th. photo: kim saul. courtesy: schantz galleries

Tuesday July 24, 2018 | by Olivia Ryder

With exhibitions at two of the top East Coast galleries, Lino Tagliapietra reveals his experimental energy is undimmed

Never mind that he's well into his eighth decade, Lino Tagliapietra is constantly testing the boundaries of his own skills and imagination, taking color, pattern, and form to new levels of complexity. In a field where many successful glass artists become trapped making one type of work, Lino is constantly reinventing -- from exploration of ever-more-intricate patterning, to unusual vessel shapes on the pipe, to leaving the pipe behind to innovate large-scale glass panels that take shape in a kiln. His startling range is testament to his versatility as a Muranese maestro, a title he earned at the age of 21, when he had already spent a decade learning the centuries-old techniques. His last 65 years have been spent pushing glass-working techniques into new directions, and this spirit seem to be only intensifying as he advances in years. This summer, two leading glass galleries on the East Coast -- Heller Gallery in New York City and Schantz Galleries in Stockbridge, Massachusetts -- featured solo exhibitions of the master artist with openings one week apart. Though some overlap couldn't be avoided, both dealers feature exclusive works, so any serious collector or artist has no choice but to visit both Heller and Schantz to see what glass can do in the expert hands of an inveterate innovator.

Tuesday July 17, 2018 | by Chelsea Liu

PROFILE: Military veteran and Ohio glassblower Doug Frates created a monumental installation in North Carolina

Stepping into Vidrio, a Mediterranean restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina, visitors are met at once by kaleidoscopic discs and whorls of color that recall shells and aquatic flora, and combine to create an immersive atmosphere. Through this 30-by-50-foot wall mounted assemblage by Doug Frates Glass, which consists of 700 hand-blown glass pieces hung by the artist and his two assistants, the seascape is evoked in a rich display that is offset by the restaurant interior's otherwise minimalist decor.

Thursday July 12, 2018 | by Olivia Ryder

AWARD: Percy Echols II wins the first Ron Desmett Memorial Award for Imagination in Glass

Percy Echols II is the first recipient of the Ron Desmett Memorial Award for Imagination in Glass established by the Pittsburgh Glass Center (PGC). Founded in memory of artist Ron Desmett, this award is given to an emerging glass artist that challenges conventional understanding of the medium and shows great potential in the same vein as the late co-founder of the center. Then a painter and ceramist, Desmett didn’t start his glass work until a year after opening the PGC with his wife Kathleen Mulcahy, a glass artist herself, who in 2002 asked artists from other materials to “think in glass.” Thus tasked, he began blowing opaque black glass vessels shaped inside hollowed out tree trunks which pushed the envelope of the previously polished and pristine glass vessels, embracing the notion that nothing is impossible and that glass doesn't have to be beautiful to make a powerful statement.

A veteran of Seattle's Pratt Fine Art Center, Brandi Clark was most recently the executive director of a museum devoted to Northwest Coast artists.

Thursday July 12, 2018 | by Andrew Page

Glass Art Society announces appointment of seasoned non-profit administrator as interim executive director

The Glass Art Society announced today that Brandi Clark, who had served as executive director of the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, Washington, has stepped in to fill the position of executive director recently vacated by Pamela Koss after 14 years. A native Texan Clark has worked at a range of nonprofit organizations in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Washington, including a 7-year stint as events manager and then director of community initiatives at Seattle's Pratt Fine Arts Center.

At the 2018 UrbanGlass gala, executive director Cybele Maylone is flanked by honorees real-estate developer David Picket and artist Amber Cowan.

Tuesday July 10, 2018 | by Andrew Page

Cybele Maylone, executive director of UrbanGlass since 2013, moving on to lead regional contemporary art museum

Cybele Maylone, who has served as executive director of UrbanGlass (the nonprofit art center that publishes the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet and Glass magazine) since May 2013, has announced she will be leaving the position to take on a leadership role at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Maylone will depart in the middle of August and, in September, plans to begin her new position as executive director of the Aldrich. Since 1967, the Connecticut institution has been devoted to interdisciplinary exhibitions and programs, and it remains the state's only museum dedicated to contemporary work. The board of directors of UrbanGlass will soon begin the search for Maylone's successor, with details on the executive director hiring process to follow.

As Pilchuck's artistic director, Tina Aufiero brought her expertise in emerging technologies, such as 3-D printing, to update the experimental spirit of this glass school. She is pictured in the BotLab she built during her tenure.

Friday July 6, 2018 | by Andrew Page

Tina Aufiero to step down as artistic director of Pilchuck in December, will focus on personal art practice

At the end of 2018, Tina Aufiero will step down as Pilchuck's artistic director to focus on her own artistic practice. In her six years in this leading role, Aufiero has expanded the techniques taught at the Pilchuck Glass School to include emerging digital technologies such as 3-D printers, robotics, and scanners. She's also redefined the institution's relationship with the glass pipe-making world, embracing its technical innovations and their application to art-making, as well as initiating partnerships to offer glass art programs to underserved communities. Aufiero will not only stay through the end of this year, she will be planning the courses for 2019 as well.

Tanja Pak, Breaths, 2017. Blown glass. H 17-22, W 17-21 in. courtesy: TR3 Gallery.

Thursday July 5, 2018 | by Olivia Ryder

CONVERSATION: Tanja Pak wants you to think about breathing (hers and yours)

Conscious breathing seem like a trendy idea, but it goes back centuries as an aspect of religious practice of many faiths. It is also the subject of a new body of work by Slovenian artist and University of Ljubljana fine-art professor Tanja Pak. An artist committed to sculpture, the design of beautiful glass objects, and the architecture of meditative spatial installations, Pak employs her breath to create objects that invite contemplation and self-awareness. For her exhibition curated by Nataša Ivanović, "The Breath in Between," on view at gallery TR3 in Ljubljana through October 2018, Pak presents a grouping of dimpled white glass forms that bear evidence of their previous state as temporarily liquid hot glass. In these poignant organic shapes that seem to huddle together, Pak seeks to document that meditative moment in between breaths. The gently collapsing glass shapes can be seen as a reference to lungs in mid-exhale. Pak also works in photography and poetry which help to elucidate and expand upon the ideas she eloquently evokes through the translucent glass.

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.