Bandahu Dunham, A Spot of Tea. Flame worked glass. H 12, W 10, D 9 in. courtesy: morgan contemporary

Wednesday April 19, 2017 | by Awura Barnie-Duah

EXHIBITION: Annual “teapots!” exhibition continues Pittsburgh gallery’s celebration of the form

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work, News

Tea and the ceremonies it inspires have brought people people together across centuries and across continents. People have gathered, celebrated, and connected as they share the product of hot water and tea leaves that is steeped in teapots, a simple device that has brought people together and inspired complex traditions. For over a decade, Morgan Contemporary Glass Gallery, has organized their annual teapot invitational, which is a multi-media celebration of the time-honored vessel, as well as an opportunity to showcase the creativity of artists working in glass and other materials. The gallery, which was Pittsburgh's first art gallery devoted to contemporary glass, is currently exhibiting its 11th annual teapot exhibition, and features striking new ways of thinking about this vessel that can be traced back to 13th-century China.

Monday April 17, 2017 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: Moving on, Susan Warner reflects on the glass museum she joined in 2001

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Museums, News

In her 16-year-tenure at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, Susan Warner has served as executive director, artistic director, and director of public programs. Last week, she announced she'll be leaving her current position as the institution's artistic director and major gifts officer next month to once again assume the title of "executive director" but at a very different arts organization. The Vashon Center for the Arts is located on the largest island in the Puget Sound, which sits almost midway between Tacoma and Seattle. Unlike the glass museum, the Vashon is primarily focused on performing arts, and grew out of an arts league established in 1949. It currently has a staff of eight full-time employees, offers 120 classes a year, and puts on over 40 events per year, both exhibitions in its galleries and performances in its newly built theater. The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet recently spoke with Susan by phone about her impressive tenure at the Museum of Glass, her reflections on how the institution has changed over the years, and the accomplishments she's most proud of.

An upcoming sale of 20th-century glass art at Rago is promoted on the auction house webpage.

Wednesday April 12, 2017 | by Andrew Page

The secondary market for glass heats up with online auctions, new players

FILED UNDER: Art Market, Auction, News

With glass a relatively new art material (Harvey Littleton's seminal Toledo Workshop took place only in 1962), it's perhaps no surprise that the secondary market for work in glass is only now experiencing a maturation as resales pick up in volume. The value of works in glass, once mostly set in private transactions brokered by glass dealers or by appraisers documenting museum gifts, is being hammered out at public auction as an increasing supply of works at all price levels comes up for sale. As the generation that championed Studio Glass as it was ascendant in the 1980s and 1990s has reached an age where many are looking to sell or donate works, the supply of secondary works is growing, and sales are increasingly taking place in the open air of an auction with both established and new players. New York City auction houses such as Sotheby's and Bonham's organized Studio Glass sales throughout the 1990s and early-2000s, but in recent years, much of the activity has coalesced around Lambertville, New Jersey-based Rago Auctions, which studiously publishes sales prices of its glass-art auctions and provides exhaustive condition reports at all price levels.

The cover of the upcoming edition of New Glass Review features work by Thaddeus Wolfe.

Tuesday April 11, 2017 | by Andrew Page

Summer issue of GLASS Quarterly will again include bonus of latest edition of New Glass Review

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Museums, New Work, Print Edition

As a special bonus, current subscribers to GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly will once again receive the latest version of The Corning Museum of Glass's annual exhibition in print of notable new work for no extra charge. Overseen for the first time by Corning's new curator of modern glass, Susie Silbert, New Glass Review 38 will identify the 100 most important new works in glass from over 1,000 submissions from around the world. Subscriber copies will arrive in mailboxes on June 1st, 2017, poly-bagged with the extra bonus of the beautifully printed 2017 edition of New Glass Review. Newsstand copies will also include the extra bonus issue, but the retail cover price will be higher than the typical $11/copy. Subscribers, who already enjoy a discount off the cover price, pay nothing extra to receive this definitive publication that has successfully picked some of the most important new artists to emerge in its nearly two-decade run.

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.

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.