1996

In this time line I pull quotes to illustrate a thread in popular and scholarly writing and criticism about glass. Here we will see current glass artists defending their art against the accusations and separating themselves from these stereotypes and, hopefully, find out how and where the now-common opinion was born. Fundamentally, the general thesis seems to be born of the question, What Is Art? This question I will leave to others to answer, here I am only documenting the written history of a popular way of thinking and a popular taste.

1996 Jonathan Lerner:

" Few gifts are as timeless or exhilarating as a piece of fine art. And these days, the most intriguing new work is being done in glass. Think not of etched panels or crystal figurines from art-glass factories like Lalique or Steuben but of unique works with bold shapes, unexpected textures and luminous hues - the creations of contemporary studio - glass artists. Dale Chihuly, for instance, an a edged master, builds enormous abstract vessels and sculptures that blaze with color yet seem nearly weightless. Rising star Dante Marioni, who at 32 is no older than the contemporary art-glass movement itself, achieves a fine balance between austerity and exuberance. His pitchers, vases and bowls share a breathtaking classical symmetry, but their exaggerated height and saturated colors give them a cartoonlike playfulness.

If the range of art glass expresses contradiction, so does glass itself. It is molten when worked but later cool and hard to the touch, sensuous yet brittle, fragile but strong - and plastic enough to assume virtually any shape. These qualities - plus plus its beguiling ability to transmit, hold and reflect light - male studio glass the hottest thing in the world of arts and crafts today. "Oh, it's seductive," says Jean Sosin of Birmingham, Michigan, who has been collecting art glass since 1971. "The first time I saw it was in a storefront gallery. A tremendous amount of light was focused on all this glass. The color! I was overwhelmed."

Modern art glass originated thirty years ago, when two things happened. Thanks to new technologies, glass with a lower melting point became available, freeing glassworking from almost blast-furnace temperatures. At the same time, Harvey Littleton, then a professor of art at the University of Wisconsin, put forth his vision of designer and craftman as one person. Littleton's ideas developed out of familiarity with the Corning Glass Works, where his father was director of research. There, as was typical in other factories, pieces were made by skilled workers following the plans of designers who often had little personal knowledge of glassmaking. "Harvey put the artist back into the factory," says William Warmus, a former curator at the Corning Museum of Glass, who publishes a specialist newsletter called The Value of Glass.

Many of the early pioneers - Dan Dailey, William Carlson, Mark Peiser, Joel Philip Myers, Mary Shaffer and Dante Marioni's own father, Paul, among others - came to glass from ceramics, metalwork and other craft backgrounds. At the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine and the Pilchuck Glass School outside Seattle, and at a growing number of university programs, they spent the early years learning, and pushing, the limits of the medium.

"The technical tools were in place by 1980 or so," observes Warmus. "Now the new generation is saying, `OK, we can do the techniques; let's have meaning.'" As glass matures as a medium of artistic expression, its sculptural and narrative possibilities are being explored. Many artists now mix glass with other media, including metal, wood and fibers. The opening of glass-specialized commercial galleries and important recent museum acquisitions - like the Toledo Museum of Art's prize, the collection of George and Dorothy Saxe of San Francisco - signal the mediums arrival and usher contemporary glass from its roots in the crafts to the realm of fine art.

Compared with crafts, glass art is expensive. You can easily pay $25,000 to $100,000 or more for the work of such renowned masters as Chihuly, Howard Ben Tre, Christopher Ries and Tom Patti, and $7,000 to $15,000 for pieces by other established artists. Even students just emerging in the field ask four-figure prices.

The high prices reflect the enthusiasm of the growing market. But glass is also costly to work with. Artists study and apprentice for years to become skilled. Once they have equipped a studio, they run up staggering utility bills to keep their furnaces fired. There's always the risk of breakage. Hiring skilled colleagues also ups the cost, few glass artists actually work unaided, despite Harvey Littleton's enchanting image of the solitary artist/craftsman. As many as a dozen people might be needed to produce an especially complex piece like one of Chihuly's diaphanous yet intensely colored "basket sets," in which many smaller vessels seem to be afloat within a large one.

For the beginning collector, people in the glass world unanimously stress self-education. "The material is so beautiful in itself," says Benjamin Moore, longtime educational coordinator at Pilchuck, whose own work runs to rigorously geometric and stunningly simple sculptural pieces and light fixtures. "Even a broken chunk of glass passes and refracts the light. But for collectors, this is a big drawback. It just doesn't take much of an eye to respond to it."

"Read. Go to conferences. Look at a lot of glass," advises Jean Sosin. "Then don't be influenced by anyone. I decided at the start that rather than try to get something from every artist, I would collect only who I thought was good, and I was fortunate because these turned out to be the masters. I still collect in depth: when an artist's work changes, I purchase a piece."

To learn more, "Go directly to the artists," urges Martha Drexler Lynn, former curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "But if you do, play square. If you knock out the commercial galleries, the artists ultimately lose their venues and the validation of the dealer's eye. Besides, you do not make a world-class collection by bargain hunting."

Strong ties have developed between glass artists in this country and elsewhere. The international exhibition "Venezia Aperto Vetro," which closed last month, featured the work of some 100 top-flight talents from a dozen nations. "The show's name literally meant `Venice Open Glass.'" says London-based organize Dan Klein. "But we MA mean, `Opening our minds to what can be done in glass.'"

How open is your mind? A spectacular part of the Venice exhibition comes to Kansas City this month. Dale Chihuly, working for more than a year with traditional glass artisans in Finland, Ireland and Mexico and on the Venetian island of Murano, produced enormous, fantastically colored "chandeliers" that were hung above Venice's canals, from palazzi and in public squares. Now they will be displayed at the Kemper Museum. "I'm obsessed with color," says Chihuly, whose personality is as flamboyant as his art. "I never saw one I didn't like.""

Lerner, J. Lerner, Jonathan. "Hot glass.(studio glass)." December 1, 1996. Town & Country. 1996. Retrieved November 05, 2009 from accessmylibrary: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-18918665/hot-glass-studio-glass.html