Hot Sheet blog features ABJ post on Glass & Tourism

Photo Credit: David Harpe, Martha Hewett Gallery
Martin Janecky "Violin with Mask"
http://www.martahewett.com/detail.php?cid=janecky07&artist_id=Janecky&no_a=1&artwork_id=60609

Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet blog has two posts by ABJ Seattle Glass Online inspired by a Douglas Lloyd Jenkins article in the October 24, 2009 edition of the New Zealand Listener called "Art: the last bubble." You can read that article here.

In it, DLJ wonders if the city of Wanganui's promotion of glass will negatively affect the value of glass.

In refute of the Listener piece, The Wanganui Chronicle published a have-your-say here in which three in the NZ glass community argue for the promotion of glass in Wanganui, as the idea worked well in Wagga Wagga, Australia.

The blog of the New Zealand Society of Artists in Glass wrote a response as well, read here and here, challenging DLJ's premise that glass is bought as an investment, but also offering a few solutions to the problems of quality and over-production.

This debate, along with many recent developments in the United States and abroad in which production hot shops and art museums have begun to feature glass blowing as a cultural tourist attraction, led to questions which I put forth in two blog posts for The Hot Sheet:

Guest blogger: Glass as tourist attraction Part 1.

Guest blogger: Glass as tourist attraction Part 2.

This was a short journey into the world of tourism and glassblowing and there is a lot untouched on the topic. At the end of Part 2, my post concludes with the statement that glassblowing on the museum floor constitutes a performance, and as such, adds the public's pressure to produce more interesting glass work and theater show, to which the glass community will have to respond quickly to.

To explore this more, we will have to look at the economics of theater in relation to glassblowing, art, and cultural tourism.