Portland Glass Invitational reviewed in The Oregonian

This recent review on a glass show in Portland is pretty funny and at first makes me want to brave the I5 traffic to see it. "The show affirms that those who work in glass embrace, challenge and upend tradition and the status quo with the best artists."

2009 D.K. Row:

"Even in this decade of Gilded Age plenty -- when Portland art supposedly hit the Big Time -- glass gets little respect. If you blow, fuse or sculpt glass, you may be considered part of the art world's Rodney Dangerfield class.

That's an unfair dismissal, of course. Great art starts with craftsmanship, after all. Still, if you're a glass artist, you're fighting the perception that glass is somehow just decorative or useful.

This month's show at Elements Glass Gallery + Studio provides an opportunity to refute skeptics. About 12 glass artists of various approaches, philosophies and styles, including Andi Kovel, Justin Parker, Andy Paiko, Ken Petersen, and Opie Hileman, are showing work in the first "Hot Glass Studio Invitational." The show affirms that those who work in glass embrace, challenge and upend tradition and the status quo with the best artists.

[...]

What do these artists express about glass practice in Oregon? It's as heterogeneous as any other discipline, ranging from bad to good to great, and from facile to middling to sophisticated. That range testifies to the diversity of glass blowing as a technique, too.

[...]

To return to the previously posed question: What do these artists tell us about the glass art world here? Education is important. You can't just blow glass on your own. Many of these artists hail from respected schools and glass-specific studios.

One institution that figures prominently for the artists assembled for this show is the Pilchuk Glass School in Tacoma. Of course, the school is renowned for having Dale Chihuly as one of its founders. Chihuly's presence helped forge a market for glass art in Seattle and the rest of Washington state.

[...]

With this show, Elements Glass reminds us that it's just one more flourishing local glass studio that is stirring the future here."

excerpted from:
Row, D.K. "Review: Glass Invitational at Elements Glass Gallery + Studio." November 20, 2009. The Oregonian.http://www.oregonlive.com/art/index.ssf/2009/11/review_glass_invitational_at_e.html