William Carlson, glass artist and inductee into American Craft Council College of Fellows.

Thursday July 10, 2014 | by Lindsay von Hagn

American Craft Council Awards honor two glass artists and Corning Museum curator Tina Oldknow

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Award, News

The American Craft Council, a nonprofit public educational organization that promotes the understanding and appreciation of American craft, has announced the recipients of its 2014 Awards, which includes the induction of two glass artists, William Carlson, currently an Endowed Professor at the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami whose works include cast glass sculpture and architectural commissions, and Philadelphia-based stained glass artist Judith Schaechter into its College of Fellows.

Thursday July 10, 2014 | by Lindsay von Hagn

Glass Art Society presents new Technology Advancing Glass grant

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Call for Submissions, News

The Glass Art Society has announced a call for submissions for the recently created Technology Advancing Glass grant program. Generously funded by glass collectors Ted and Melissa Lagreid, the research grant of up to $5,000 will be awarded to an artist or group of artists to fund research into innovations that may benefit the glass art field. Ideas suggested on the GAS website include “new materials, production techniques, safe shipping techniques, new tools, adhesives, ways to create glass sculpture animated with electronics...”, but submissions are ultimately “limited by the imagination of [the] artists”. The winner of the grant will be required to share his/her research and developments at a subsequent GAS conference within the next three years.

Tuesday July 8, 2014 | by Elena Tafone

Exhibition to celebrate the life and work of Jaroslava Brychtová

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, News

“Celebrate!” an exhibition at the Heller Gallery, endeavors to do just that, celebrating the life and career of Czech artist and sculptor Jaroslava Brychtová, who will turn ninety on July 18.

L to R: Judges Louis Thomson, Clare Maddison, winner Harry Morgan, and judges David Reekie and Karen Murphy

Monday July 7, 2014 | by Elena Tafone

U.K. Glass Artist organization announces winners of design awards

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Award, Design, News

UPDATED 7/15/2014

Tricorni (detail), courtesy of Traver Gallery

Thursday July 3, 2014 | by Lindsay von Hagn

OPENING: Vibrant new work by Davide Salvadore debuts at Traver tonight

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work, News, Opening

New, vividly colored work by Muranese glassblower Davide Salvadore is the focus of a new exhibition at Seattle's Traver Gallery. Titled simply "Davide Salvadore: New Work," the show that blazes new chromatic ground for this artist best known for his sculptural stringed-instrument objects, opens tonight, July 3 and will be on view through Sunday, August 3, 2014. Salvadore, born into a family of glass workers, has devoted his career to reinterpreting and modernizing the traditional techniques and aesthetics he uses in his work. He often instructs students on non-traditional murrini-making techniques and how to employ the tiny detailed pieces in compelling ways. In his own work, he draws inspiration from ancient musical instruments, African symbols and textiles, and the colors of the African landscape. While many of the shapes in this exhibition are not new, Salvadore has added a number of intense new colors to his palette, using less of his characteristic earth tones in favor of bright turquoise, yellows, and oranges. Sometimes these colors fill the entire piece, and sometimes the colors jump out from a background of neutral colored, yet equally intricate patterns.

Eric H. Neil, currently director of the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland, will take over as director of the Chrysler Museum of Art in October 2014.

Thursday July 3, 2014 | by Andrew Page

Chrysler Museum of Art announces new director to replace retiring William Hennessey

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Museums, News

The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, has announced that Eric Neil, currently the director of the Academy of Art in Easton, Maryland, has been selected to replace the outgoing William Hennessey, who has led the museum since 1997. (Hennessey announced his retirement last fall). On October 6, 2014, Neil will take the reins of this recently renovated museum that has a unique focus on glass art, not only in its substantial holdings, but also in an adjacent working glass studio where performance art and demonstrations have been a focus of the institution's diverse efforts to involve the community.

Emily Nachison working with glass and fiber in the studio

Wednesday July 2, 2014 | by Lindsay von Hagn

OPENING: Emily Nachison links measurements to meaning in Bullseye Gallery exhibition

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work, Opening

An essential philosophy of Portland-based artist Emily Nachison is that “our world is one of transformation and not destruction.” Much of her previous work examines the transformation that takes place during lifecycles of growth and decay. She has also dissected mythologies of scientific (and even pseudoscientific) history, as well as contemporary spirituality. In addition to her work in fiber, in which she holds an advanced degree, Nachison also makes cast-glass sculptures, which will be the focus of her solo exhibition at the Bullseye Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Entitled “The Realm of Quantifiable Truths”, the exhibition opening is this evening, Wednesday, July 2nd, and it will run through August 30th, 2014.

The bench by Ginny Ruffner is created out of aluminum and sits in Olympic Sculpture Park, a 20- minute walk from the Seattle Art Museum. photo: carrie dedon. courtesy: seattle art museum.

Tuesday July 1, 2014 | by Andrew Page

Seattle Art Museum unveils memorial bench designed by Ginny Ruffner to honor the late Mary Shirley

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Public Art

On June 27th, the Seattle Art Museum unveiled a new sculptural bench at Olympic Sculpture Park that honors the life and legacy of the late Mary Shirley (1941 - 2014), a Pilchuck board member as well as a Seattle art patron and longime supporter of the museum. The aluminum bench was designed by Ginny Ruffner, and was completed in time for the museum's annual Party in the Park fundraising event last Friday night. Entitled "Mary's Invitation—A Place to Regard Beauty," the work is a functional piece of outdoor furniture offering impressive views of the sculpture garden as well as the nearby Puget Sound. But with its voluptuous swooping lines, it is also Ruffner's expression of the passionate approach to life and art of the art collector it memorilizes who died earlier this year at the age of 73. The bench is made of aluminum and measures 4-feet-high by 9-feet-long.

The first gallery is organized around works inspired by nature, and this exhibit will be anchored by Katherine Gray’s 2009 work Forest Glass.

Sunday June 29, 2014 | by Andrew Page

Corning Museum of Glass pushes back opening date for new contemporary wing

FILED UNDER: Design, Exhibition, Museums, New Work, News

Originally set for a December 2014 opening, the new North Wing of the Corning Museum of Glass is now going to open to the public on March 20, 2015. The construction of the ambitious expansion project with a $64 million budget is on schedule, according to a Corning Museum spokesperson, but the additional time is needed for installing the 70 works that will be the hallmark of the new 26,000-square-foot gallery dedicated to showcasing the larger scale typical of contemporary work in glass. "We will begin installing our objects in the galleries once the building is complete," writes Yvette Sterbenk, the museum's senior manager of communications in an email exchange with the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet. "As the caretakers of the world’s most important collection of glass, we want to make sure we give ourselves time to do this appropriately. Instead of opening in the winter, we set the opening around the vernal equinox – the start of spring – which gives us a great opportunity to celebrate the idea of light, as befits the new building."

Hirofumi Isoya, We only live, only breathe 2（detail), 2014. Glass. H 67, W 39 1/4, D 1/4 in.

Thursday June 26, 2014 | by Elena Tafone

OPENING: Artists in glass and other media take on a post-Fukushima Japan in New York exhibition

FILED UNDER: New Work, News, Opening

Opening tonight in New York City is a group exhibition of Japanese artists whose work in various media including glass wrestles with a new reality in the wake of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that unleashed their destruction on the Japanese coast in spring of 2011 and led to one of the world's worst nuclear accidents. The redefined landscape of the post-Fukushima era is the subject of the show entitled “Duality of Existence — Post Fukushima” and debuting this evening at Freidman Benda. Japan has a uniquely complex relationship with nuclear power as the only nation to have endured a nuclear attack (with the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagisaki in the waning days of WWII in 1945). Following the nuclear disaster and radiation release in 2011, the country struggled to understand the truth of the extent of the damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant which is considered a combination of natural and human factors, and the government control of information about safety created a firestorm of discontent and soul-searching.

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.