Rachel Berwick

Thursday April 6, 2017 | by Andrew Page

Rachel Berwick, head of RISD Glass, will deliver keynote address at 2017 symposium at UrbanGlass

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Education, News

Artist Rachel Berwick, the head of the Rhode Island School of Design's glass department, will deliver the keynote lecture at the 2017 Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass this fall. Berwick's presentation, entitled "Alchemy: Innovation and Experimentation in Studio Practice," will lead off the third iteration of this biennial academic symposium set to take place from October 12 -14, 2017 in New York City. With the theme of "Issues in Glass Pedagogy: Curriculum and Career," the international gathering of glass educators will examine the factors that determine students' post-graduate success through a program of lectures, panel discussions, and demonstrations. Note: through May 1st, the symposium organizers are accepting proposals for presentations that address how academic curricula and programs affect career outcomes, with a special focus on best practices, statistical analyses, and case studies.

Bob Snodgrass, Skull Pipe, 2016. 6 in. courtesy: apexart.

Tuesday April 4, 2017 | by Awura Barnie-Duah

OPENING: Gaining acceptance, glass pipes being shown at larger art venues

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, Museums, Opening

Apexart, a downtown Manhattan non-profit arts venue for independent curators and emerging and established artists, is currently showing an exhibition of glass pipes unabashedly celebrated by the show's organizer David Bienenstock, who is the former head of content at High Times magazine and a self-described "cannabis consultant." Despite the growing support for the decriminalization of marijuana (the most recent Gallup poll on the subject found 60-percent of Americans support legalization), Bienenstock has titled the exhibition "Outlaw Glass," and it gathers a wide range of work by a new generation of artists following in the footsteps of pioneering flameworker Bob Snodgrass, whose legacy the exhibition is designed to honor. Not just a showcase of the best work by contemporary glass, the exhibition also delves into the "authentic underground cannabis culture," examining the sometimes shadowy aspects of pipemaking, which has endured targeted law enforcement crackdowns as recently as in 2003's Operation Pipedreams. Bienenstock notes that the fine art world's embrace of pipemaking may be "following the trajectory of graffiti culture, which started literally in the streets amid serious and sustained official repression, only to break through into galleries and then put its stamp on both high art and popular culture."

Rui Sasaki, Liquid Sunshine, 2016. phosphorescent crystal mixture, glass, solarium light, motion detector. H 91, W 228, L122 in. courtesy: artist website.

Monday April 3, 2017 | by Gabi Gimson

CONVERSATION: Checking in with Rui Sasaki on residencies, exhibits, and her new teaching post

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, News

Rui Sasaki is a Japanese conceptual glass artist and educator who, in recent years, has gained international notoriety for her ethereal and sometimes surrealistic work. She completed her MFA at Rhode Island School of Design in 2010 and has since been invited to participate in many artist-in-residence programs and exhibitions all over the world. Last month, Sasaki wrapped up a month-long residency in Stockholm funded by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, and she has three major exhibitions opening in the coming months: “Inervals between Nature and Artifact” curated by Koichi Yoshimura in Osaka, Japan, “The Poetics Of Weather” on view at a historical temple in Hoen-ji in Kanazawa, Japan, and “Young Glass 2017” at Glasmuseet Ebeltoft in Ebeltoft, Denmark. Beginning in April, Sasaki will work as a faculty-member at Kanazawa Utatsuyama Kogei Kobo in Kanazawa, Japan, the traditional craft epicenter of the eastern world. Recently, the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet had the opportunity to discuss Sasaki’s work and source of inspiration with the artist herself via an email conversation.

Preston Singletary, Travels on Water, 2017. Blown and Sand Blasted Glass with Metal Oars. H 11 W 20 D 6 in. courtesy: the artist

Thursday March 30, 2017 | by Hailey Clark

OPENING: Preston Singletary engages politics, the environment, in new body of work

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work

Preston Singletary, whose blown and sandblasted works in glass channel his Native American heritage, brings a political edge to a new body of work to be unveiled in his upcoming exhibition, Premonitions of Water, opening April 6, 2017, at the Traver Gallery in Seattle. Singletary has explored traditional Tlingit iconography for much of his artistic career. Working with images and narratives from Native American people from Alaska and British Columbia, Singletary weaves traditional figures usually carved into wood into blown-glass works. Interviewed for an upcoming episode of Nature, airing on PBS on April 21, 2017, Singletary discussed in depth his portrayal of the Tlingit myth The Raven.

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Artists from the 2016 Residency at Salem State. courtesy: The Glassworks Studio at Salem State University Facebook page.

Wednesday March 29, 2017 | by Awura Barnie-Duah

CALL FOR ENTRIES: Salem State University seeks artists for its Rosenberg Residency

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Call for Submissions, Education

In June 2017, The Rosenberg Residency at Salem State University, now in its fifth year, will offer month-long access to its glassblowing facilities for four artists to pursue individual and group projects.

Dale Chihuly, Rose Blush Macchia Studio Edition, 2017. Blown Glass. H 6, W 9, H 9 in. courtesy: schantz galleries

Tuesday March 28, 2017 | by Hailey Clark

Released in limited variety each year, Chihuly’s Studio Editions offer more accessible prices

FILED UNDER: Announcements, News

Hand blown, smaller-scale, and created in multiples, each year's crop of Studio Editions reference some of the best-known unique works by Dale Chihuly, perhaps the best-known artist working with glass, whose signature adorns each one. Each season since 2012, the Chihuly Workshop has released four new studio editions, part of a series designed to offer Chihuly works at a more affordable price-point. These are available at galleries specializing in glass such as Schantz Galleries in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg, Boat People, 2016. Blown and carved glass, brass hammered hull. H 20 W 105 D 19 cm. photo: alex ramsay

Sunday March 26, 2017 | by Hailey Clark

New work by Baldwin and Guggisberg at Sandra Ainsley Gallery extends ongoing boat series

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, News

Husband and wife artistic collaborators Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg continue to explore the metaphor of journey in their exhibition Thinking in Glass that runs through May 6, 2017, at the Sandra Ainsley gallery in Toronto. Assemblages of blown forms gathered into water craft is not new to this artistic duo, who have been experimenting with boat vessels since their initial series, "Sentinel" in the mid-1990s.

Rachel Owens, Queens Giant no. 5 (Oldest Being in NYC), 2017. Broken glass cast in resin with steel. H 93, W 19, D 55 in. courtesy: ziehersmith, new york

Thursday March 23, 2017 | by Andrew Page

Rachel Owens’ majestic works in cast resin and glass explore globalization and endurance

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, News

Rachel Owens, whose previous solo exhibit at Zieher Smith Gallery in New York's Chelsea neighborhood was a pointed critique of consumer culture, turns her sharp eye (and shards of broken glass) to the pre-European American landscape, global glass production, and New York City history in a new body of shattered glass and cast resin sculptures. The exhibition, titled "Mother," is the product of taking molds of a 400-year-old tree in the Queens borough of New York City. Owens uses these molds to render sides of the trunk of the oldest-living being in the city in a wide palette chosen from shattered glass from surplus supplies of cheaply made bottles from China. Her work is an homage to the longevity of the tree, which likely predates the arrival of the first Europeans, and brings an environmental component in its reference to American colonization being driven partly by the overuse of natural resources such as wood in Europe. Owens' glass and resin creations soar skyward in a defiant majesty, limited only by the reach of the artist's arms in making the molds of her arboreal subject.

Artist Sarah Mizer at work in the studio.

Wednesday March 22, 2017 | by Hailey Clark

3 Questions for ... Sarah Mizer

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work

Glass artist, Sarah Mizer, explores polarization, overindulgence, and nostalgia in her exhibition "Of Most Excellent Fancy," on view through April 1, 2017 at a project space in Laurel Park, North Carolina, that is the contemporary art component of a novel retail wine market called the Crate Project. Drawing inspiration from Vanitas Dutch still life imagery, and dialog from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Mizer created three groups of art forms that reside on individual walls. Each set of works evoke a sense of conflicting ideas, such as life and death, like Vanitas imagery, while incorporating her own experiences from her time as an artist residence at the Penland School of Crafts. In these three questions, Mizer expands on how her botanical studies mesh with 17th-century sources of inspiration.

Monir Farmanfarmaian, Third Family - Heptagon (Detail), 2011. Mirror, reverse-glass painting, and acrylic. photo: robert divers herrick. courtesy: the artist and haines gallery

Thursday March 16, 2017 | by Awura Barnie-Duah

OPENING: Iranian contemporary artist’s richly mirrored work featured at Chrysler Museum of Art

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, Museums, Opening

Kandinsky and Mondrian are two Western painters credited with pioneering the form of geometric abstraction. But artwork that focuses on patterns of color and shape rather than figuration goes back to ancient art forms, especially in Islamic Art, where depiction of religious figures has been carefully avoided in respect for the faith's ban on idolatry. The mirror sculptures of Monir Farmanfarmaian, an Iranian artist, bring together influences of Western avant-garde painting and centuries-old Islamic art in works of refraction and geometric abstraction. An opening reception this evening at The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, will kick off an exhibition of Farmanfarmaian's work that will continue through July 30, 2017.

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.