EXHIBITION: Norway's S12 mounts a major retrospective prior to a big move

Since its inception in 2007, S12 Studio and Gallery in Bergen, Norway, has pursued programs with a focus on artistic purity and authenticity. An artist-run gallery and workshop, its approach has been marked by the ambitious cultivation of creative sparks and a fluid relationship between artist and public, between the conceptual and the formal, and between glass and other media. Now in its 11th year, S12 is preparing to cross its most ambitious threshold yet: a retrospective of many of its former resident artists as one last spectacular exhibition before packing up and relocating to a new location.

Thursday June 21, 2018 | by Olivia Ryder

CONVERSATION: Robert DuGrenier discusses the work in museum exhibition "Handle with Care" opening on Friday

Perhaps it's the fact that hot glass must be manipulated with implements but artists sculpting in glass seem uniquely drawn to hand tools as a subject. With his latest body of work featured in the exhibition “Handle with Care” opening this Friday at Vermont's Brattleboro Museum, Robert DuGrenier joins Mary Shaffer, Rick Beck, Lou Lynn, and others in exploring the nature and meaning of hand tools by making them, in part, out of glass. (Disclosure: Robert DuGrenier is a board member of UrbanGlass, which publishes the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet.) Expanding on his earlier series “Out of the Ashes,” in which he combined blown and cast glass with the remains of tools and farming implements in a therapeutic process after a fire destroyed his historic barn in 2015, DuGrenier's new work grants tools a second, more permanent life in glass. By manipulating the glass more intentionally to create potentially functional handles for ax and hammer heads as well as other farm equipment, he mines the rich dichotomy between fragility and strength, making the viewer question the functionality of the tools even as they consider the poetic beauty of their highly evolved forms that make them extensions of the human body. In an exclusive telephone interview with the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet, DuGrenier revealed insights into his process and approach.

Installation view, Rob Wynne: FLOAT, Brooklyn Museum. photo by Jonathan Dorado.

Tuesday June 19, 2018 | by Olivia Ryder

SEEN: Rob Wynne activates Brooklyn Museum's period collection with dynamic mirrored-glass wall works

Entering the Luce Center for American Art on the Brooklyn Museum's fifth floor, one immediately encounters Rob Wynne’s ethereal glass works that activate the adjacent nineteenth-century neoclassical marble statues of Pandora, Nydia, The Lost Pleiad, and Bacchante. Rob Wynne’s work re-contextualizes viewer perceptions of the historic sculptures perched atop black granite pedestals, enveloping them in a swirling timelessness of hand-poured mirrored-glass wall reliefs. On view through January 6, 2019, Wynne's 16 ephemeral glass works force a reexamination of historic American artworks and are presented in an exhibition entitled “Rob Wynne: FLOAT” curated by Brooklyn Museum chief curator Jennifer Y. Chi and assistant curator Margarita Karasoulas.

Matthew Curtis, Ediface Pair Blue Gold, 2018. Blown and fused glass, stainless steel. H 23 1/2. W 17 3/4, D 8 in. courtesy: beth hirsch

Tuesday June 19, 2018 | by Chelsea Liu

CONVERSATION: Matthew Curtis on light, craft, and exhibiting internationally

Through July 15th, Australia-based artist Matthew Curtis is showcasing his latest body of work in the exhibit "Matthew Curtis: Intersect" at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe. The Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet asked him a few questions about how his work has been developing, what it's been like to exhibit internationally, and where he sees himself going from here. Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet: Does the work in this exhibition represent a new direction for you? Matthew Curtis: This work signifies a subtle shift in my use of the material. It is a continuation in exploring the blown glass bubble, in slicing these elements and compiling them into fields of components. These are then fused together, creating a plane of glass, reminiscent of the cross section of the internal structure of organic growth. So there are similarities in both narrative and structure, yet I have been able to work with more abstracted color fields.…

Gabe Feenan, Rider, 2016. Blown and solid hot-assembled glass. H 30 1/2, W 10, D 3 in. courtesy: the artist

Thursday June 14, 2018 | by Chelsea Liu

EXHIBITION: Bellevue Arts Museum readies its "Glasstastic" biennial surveying Northwest glass art

From Chihuly to Tagliapietra, glass has long had a storied history in the Pacific Northwest. That the Bellevue Museum in Washington will be devoting the last in its series of materials-based biennials to the medium is a fitting finale for the fifth iteration. The museum's juried exhibition has been occurring every two years, and offers a curated platform for regional, established and up-and-coming voices in art, craft, and design. On the heels of past shows on clay, fiber, wood, and metal, this fall's 2018 "Glasstastic Biennale" will celebrate the medium perhaps closest to Seattle’s heart. As executive director and chief curator of BAM Benedict Heywood stated in an exhibition announcement: “With Seattle being the undisputed center for the development of glass as an art form in North America, it was natural that this medium should have been selected to culminate the Museum's series of media-based biennials...The simplicity of its composition, the complexity of its production, the many forms it can take—blown, cast, frit, stained—as well as its many uses, from the stained-glass of a medieval cathedral to the modernist skyscraper, from the Venetian goblet to the IKEA tealight, attest to the fact that glass is a paradoxical material, that has inspired the artists of the Northwest for generations."

Matthew Curtis, Section Teal Uranium, 2018. Blown and fused glass, stainless steel. H 11 3/4, W 17 1/4, D 7 3/4 in. courtesy: beth hirsch.

Thursday June 7, 2018 | by Chelsea Liu

OPENING: Mesmerizing new work by Matthew Curtis debuts in "Intersect" exhibit at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe

Mesmerically patterned and radiant, the works of Australian artist Matthew Curtis are something uncanny in how they read as both organic and artificial. Inspired by what Curtis describes in his artist statement as the "exquisite architecture of cellular growth and how these biologically derived structures are reflected in our built environment," the interplay between the man-made solidity of the materials and the light and delicacy of glass filaments. With an opening on June 8th and running through July 15th, they will be on view at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in an exhibition entitled "Matthew Curtis: Intersect."

Laura Donefer and Dave Hickie wear designs by Nancy de Du Bois.

Wednesday June 6, 2018 | by Andrew Page

GALLERY: Images and a conversation with Laura Donefer on the historic Murano Glass Art Society fashion show

In 2017, artist Laura Donefer's phone rang. It was the executive director of the Glass Art Society gushing about the idea of having one of Donefer's signature glass fashion shows on boats during the 2018 Murano conference. She loved it, a definite "yes!" There was only one problem: Donefer says she'd never proposed it. The concept had been pitched by the artist and conference steering committee member Lucio Bubacco. "I was like WHAAA?" Donefer said in an exclusive interview with the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet. "It usually takes me three years to organize one of my big events, and this gave me very little time. And I was totally unsure of how this all would unfold…."

The cover of the new issue of Glass.

Tuesday May 29, 2018 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Summer 2018 edition of Glass (#151)

The Summer 2018 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#151) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes this week. Bundled with the summer 2018 edition of GLASS is a copy of the completely redesigned exhibition-in-print, New Glass Review (#39), which is produced by The Corning Museum of Glassand bundled with each summer issue of GLASS magazine at no extra charge to subscribers (newsstand copies carry an increased cover price for the special bonus issue)

René Roubíček in a 2016 photograph.

Sunday May 27, 2018 | by Milan Hlaves

In Memoriam: René Roubíček (1922 - 2018)

Born in Prague in 1922, the world-renown glass artist René Roubíček died in his native city on Sunday, April 29, 2018, after a brief illness. Despite his age and until his last moments, Roubíček was actively engaged in artistic pursuits and full of contagious energy. He is recognized as an artist who, from the 1940s, contributed greatly to enhancing the perception and use of glass as a full-fledged sculptural material.

Wednesday May 23, 2018 | by Andrew Page

HELP WANTED: UrbanGlass seeks education coordinator

UrbanGlass, the Brooklyn, New York, non-profit art center that publishes the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet, is seeking a full-time education coordinator to be responsible for the day-to-day logistics of the various types of education programs. The successful applicant will work in close coordination with the director of education, the registrar, and the youth coordinator, and will be responsible for logistics for workshop, youth, and university programs at UrbanGlass.

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.