Tuesday December 5, 2017 | by Joseph Modica

Yayoi Kusama's latest infinity installations transfix at New York gallery

Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese-born artist whose graphically intense, immersive works have become the hallmark of her seven-decade career, has two concurrent exhibitions that feature works ranging from her vivid paintings to her famous inifninity-mirror rooms. Taking place across two Manhattan gallery locations of the David Zwirner Gallery, the “Festival of Life” exhibition is drawing selfie-seeking crowds who are lining up in the Chelsea art neighborhood for the two new “infinity rooms,” mirrored surfaces that cover every inch give an expansive backdrop as well as the reflective spheres that are arranged around the floor and suspended from the ceiling. There are also 66 paintings from her “My Eternal Soul” series, new large stainless steel flower sculptures and a polka-dotted environment. Select paintings from Kusama’s “Infinity Nets” series are featured at the uptown location. The downtown “Festival of Life” is open through December 16, 2017, while “Infinity Nets” is open on the Upper East Side through December 22nd.

Thursday November 30, 2017 | by Angela Laurito

IN MEMORIAM: Zoltan Bohus (1941 - 2017)

FILED UNDER: In Memoriam

Zoltan Bohus, a Hungarian pioneer in the field, died of complications due to cancer on November 24th, 2017. He was singularly responsible for establishing glass art in Hungary, and quickly rose to international prominence for his architectonic sculptures of cold-worked glass or remarkable power.

Tuesday November 28, 2017 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Winter 2017-18 edition of Glass (#149)

The Winter 2017-18 edition of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#149) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes this week. In the cover article, contributing editor William Warmus considers the provocative work of Matthew Szösz, who has refined his experimental inquiries to create glass objects that function as artifacts of a dual nature that values raw spontaneity when executed after meticulous research and disciplined technical execution. To understand what Szösz is up to, Warmus cites Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and silent-film anti-hero Buster Keaton, before presenting a detailed catalog of the artist's most important series.

Tuesday November 21, 2017 | by Malcolm Morano

GLASS Quarterly's online directory, an exhaustive list of education programs and suppliers, is a searchable treasure-trove of information

GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly has launched a comprehensive online directory of glass schools and suppliers. Organized by areas of focus, this directory is an exhaustive list of every glass education program – degree and non-degree granting – and all glassmaking material, equipment, and tools suppliers we were able to locate. Visit glassquarterly.com/resources (or simply click the “Resources” tab at the top right of this screen), and start using the definitive, up-to-date resource for the glass art field.

Resized Vladimira Klumpar Ariana 157 0096

Vladimíra Klumpar, ARIANA. Cast glass. H 8 5/8, W 26 3/4 in. courtesy: heller gallery

Thursday November 16, 2017 | by Joseph Modica

Vladimira Klumpar explores the organic and inorganic in new work in "Meadow" exhibition

Integrating childhood memories into her established geometric explorations of forms in volumes of cast glass, “Meadow” is the newest exhibit from Czech-artist Vladimira Klumpar. Using flowers as her subject, she has blended her well-known industrial aesthetic with a new embrace of organic forms. The pieces were created in her studio in northern Czech Republic, in the Northern Bohemian hamlet of Loučky, which translates to “Meadows” in English. The exhibition has just been extended through December 7, 2017, at Heller Gallery's Chelsea location.…

A Chihuly installation that has been gifted to the Lowe Art Museum, where it will be displayed in 2018 after it is reconfigured by the artist's studio.

Thursday November 16, 2017 | by Angela Laurito

MUSEUMS: The Lowe to welcome a reworked Chihuly installation, a donation from the Andersons

FILED UNDER: New Work

In Spring 2018, the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami will unveil what it hopes will become its signature installation: Dale Chihuly’s Mosaic Persian. The piece was originally commissioned in 1998 for husband-and-wife art collectors Dale and Doug Anderson. Made up of 32 glass elements, the Chihuly Studio will be redesigning the assemblage for the Lowe, where it will have a "relaunch" in a new configuration, 20 years after its initial creation.…

Installation view of "Synaptic Reverb," an exhibition of paintings by Jim Butler inspired by glass sculptures.

Thursday November 9, 2017 | by Angela Laurito

EXHIBITION: Jim Butler's New York solo painting show is all about his fascination with glass

FILED UNDER: Exhibition

“Mercurial and fixed,” “familiar albeit fantastical.” Paradoxical terms such as these came up repeatedly in conversations with painter Jim Butler as he discussed his new "Synaptic Reverb" series on view at New York's Tibor de Nagy Gallery through December 22, 2017. The five glass-inspired large-scale canvases were created over the past two years, and each represents a detailed investigation of the behavior of light passing through glass. The oil on canvas images will tempt you to reach out and touch their intricate detailing and labyrinthine extensions of the glass sculptures, testament to Butler's skill with a brush, but also his keen insights into the qualities that distinguish glass from any other medium.…

David Gappa, Introspection, 2017. H 50, W 40 ft. photo: alonso rochin

Wednesday November 8, 2017 | by Joseph Modica

Imaging the Brain: David Gappa's installation at the University of Texas uses glass and light to illustrate synaptic firing

A synapse is the structure that connects neurons in the brain, linking then together so that electrical signals can be transmitted to create thoughts, memories, and experiences. A single synapse can fire 50-times a second, a sequence that is multiplied for hundreds of trillions of times during the normal synaptic functioning in the brain. If this is hard to conceptualize, artist David Gappa created a visual tool to illustrate. The result of Gappa's efforts is Introspection, a massive light fixture illuminating the room with a vibrant luminescent display, Each flicker, pulse, or flash of light in the over thousand hand-blown glass objects shows the viewer what a group of synapses does a billion-times an hour. His largest creation yet, the monumental work was unveiled on October 12, 2017 at the University of Texas' Brain Performance Institute. …

Lino Tagliapietra, Fenice. Blown glass. courtesy: schantz galleries

Thursday November 2, 2017 | by Angela Laurito

OPENING: Tonight, SOFA Chicago kicks off a weekend of art from craft materials, with many events and exhibitors featuring glass

FILED UNDER: Announcements

The annual Sculptural Objects Functional Art + Design (SOFA) Fair kicks off in Chicago’s Navy Pier tonight, November 2, 2017, with an invite-only two-hour preview from 5 - 7 PM, during which some of the best works will be snapped up. At 7 PM, the doors open to the general public, who will have been lining up to take part in the festivities surrounding the largest art fair dedicated to work in craft materials. Glass will figure prominently in this year's fair, with exhibitors from around the world displaying glass sculptural works, and events providing new insights into the field of collecting and curating. The Corning Museum of Glass Road Show will once again be in attendance, and the steady program of live glass demonstrations featuring prominent artists in the field is sure to keep the attention on the material throughout the three-day affair that ends Sunday at 6 PM.…

Clifford Rainey among the heat-twisted remains of his former Napa, California, studio.

Thursday November 2, 2017 | by Andrew Page

Clifford Rainey, who lost everything in Northern California wildfires, to make drawings out of a charred landscape

On Sunday night, October 8th, at 10:30 PM, artist and former chair of the glass program at the California College of Art Clifford Rainey and his partner, Rachel Riser, were awakened by a neighbor's frantic telephone call warning them that a wind-driven wildfire had kicked up and was blazing toward their shared Napa, California, residence. They needed to get out immediately. "We were very close to where the fires started so there had been no warning. We could see the wall of flames on the next hillside so we just threw whatever we had into the car to get out of there," Rainey told the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet in a telephone interview from the hotel room he was staying in the weeks after evacuating. "The next day we found out the house had gone totally but were still hoping my studio would survive, which was down the hill a bit from the house. A couple days later, a neighbor called to tell us it was gone."

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.