1996 Geoff Wichert:
"The three gaffers represented in A New Generation have a lot in common. They learned their skills over a decade of experience, working for and with the world's best glassblowers. They know how to make anything, over and over again, precisely the way it's supposed to look. It gives them great freedom, but also a particular idea about what the work is. They tend to produce variations on a theme, the glass world1s idea of a 'series.' They invoke the vocabulary of vessels, but for sculptural use, not for utility. They leave no fingerprints, and acknowledge gravity only by resistance. Shapes range from controlled to severe. Glass is thin. Colors run from strong to brilliant. [...]
Janusz Pozniak shows a dozen pieces twice the size of anything else. Aggressively colored with contrasting studs, they are blatantly sexual, and though they jest at male posturing, it's still one man teasing another. Jester, a large flask covered in bright yellow-on clear harlequin, has two counter-balanced necks, each spouting a chain of black balls. This is bravura glass making, accomplishing the more difficult feat of being genuinely funny without satire. Pozniak forgoes all but vestigial utilitarian references. Yes, these shapes could have become vessels, and those could be stoppers, but the real parallel is to human bodies with symbolic heads. This is a generation too ironic to admit a metaphor but too sharp not to make one."
Accessed from http://www.januszpozniack.com/articles.htm "A New Generation: Preston Singletary, Paul Cunningham and Janusz Pozniak" by Geoff Wichert
Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly, No. 64, Fall 1996, p.53, ill.
1996Robin Updike:
"Josiah McElheny, Three Alter Egos," Donald Young Gallery, through Feb. 22....McElheny also in this show is continuing his exploration into the authority of presentation. If art or artifacts are presented in a museum-like setting, in official-looking cases with typed-out 'labels' full of historical-sounding information, does that make the art or artifacts "real?" Does it make them 'honest?' Does it make them more artful or valuable than reproductions?
McElheny provides no answers. But mystery and ambiguity, along with some top-rate craftsmanship, are precisely what make this show seductive. Though highly trained in glass-making, McElheny is really a conceptual artist. Anyone expecting exploding color and extravagant beauty of the kind most associated with Northwest glass art will be disappointed."
"LOOKING THROUGH THE GLASS AT ART HISTORY AND AUTHORITY. " The Seattle Times (Seattle, WA). (Dec 26, 1996): H16. General OneFile. Gale. Seattle Public Library. ACCESSED 1 Apr. 2009.1996 Sherry Stripling:
""Clearly Art: Pilchuck's Glass Legacy" begins today at the Museum of History & Industry...The show focuses on current glass being made by artists who live in Seattle and the evolution of glass since Pilchuck designers began. Herman said he asked former teachers and artists-in-residence to provide pieces they were doing at the time they were at Pilchuck.
"I wanted to look at the people who have taught there because that's where the influence has really come from," he said. The marvel of glass art is that it springs from something so utilitarian, so much a part of our everyday lives, said Herman. One aim of the MOHAI exhibit is to take some of the mystery out of the transition.
"We wanted to create a multi-sensory effect," said lead designer Bruce Christofferson, "so that not just young people but everybody will remember the experience.""
"CLEARLY PILCHUCK GLASS SCHOOL IS A CLASS ACT, ONE OF THE NORTHWEST'S SIGNATURE ENTITIES. " The Seattle Times (Seattle, WA). (Feb 10, 1996): F1. General OneFile. Gale. Seattle Public Library. 1 Apr. 20091996 Robin Updike:
"'Murrine Storia,' group show of glass art, through April 6 at Elliott Brown Gallery...Elliott has assembled historical pieces created by some of Italy's most renowned murrine makers, and as the name of her show suggests, she is trying to tell the "story of murrine." Some of the pieces on display date to the late 19th century, some were made in the '50s. Other works are contemporary, made by young American and Italian artists who are once again intrigued by the time-consuming, unusual process. Works by Seattle glass artists Richard Marquis, the region's murrine expert, and Dante Marioni are included.
Like many art styles and techniques, murrine has gone in and out of style since it was first used by the ancient Romans as a decorative technique in glassmaking. The Italians have always been the experts, though in recent decades some younger Americans and younger Italians have revived it. These days there is something of a murrine renaissance under way, though because of the patience and practice required to master it, it's unlikely it will ever be a commonly used technique."
Updike. Robin. "THE STORY OF MURRINE YOUNG ARTISTS REVIVE OLD, INTRICATE GLASS ART. " The Seattle Times (Seattle, WA). (March 7, 1996): D22. General OneFile. Gale. Seattle Public Library. 1 Apr. 2009
"Clay, a Continuing Tradition," sculpture by the University of Washington ceramics department faculty... Back in the days when the idea of Seattle as a capital of glass art was little more than a gleam in Dale Chihuly's good eye, Seattle was known in art circles as a ceramic city. In the '70s and early '80s, the University of Washington's ceramics department was on the leading edge of the ceramic-sculpture movement. The department was home to a gang of influential ceramic artists, including the late, much-acclaimed Howard Kottler, who created ceramic art that had little to do with the arts-and-crafts-fair aesthetic of hand-thrown mugs and platters.
While ceramics was enjoying a renaissance by hobbyists who took evening classes to learn how to use a kick wheel, the U.W. gang was making sculpture - often big, heavy, figurative funk-art pieces - that happened to be made of clay. Reminder of ceramics legacy. In more recent years, the glass art phenomenon has overshadowed Seattle's ceramic-art scene to the point where many newcomers to the city aren't aware of the U.W.'s still highly-regarded ceramics department. But at an exhibition this month at his gallery, William Traver says he wants to remind art fans of U.W.'s ceramic legacy.
The group show includes work by Kottler, who died in 1989, and by Robert Sperry and Patti Warashina, both of whom received their ceramics education at U.W. before going on to teach in the department. Though both are now retired from U.W., the husband-and-wife pair remain the area's best-known ceramic artists. Since Traver is trying to show a continuum in this show, the exhibition also includes work by three younger ceramic artists, Jamie Walker, Akio Takamori and Doug Jeck, all of whom are part of the new, current generation of U.W. ceramics faculty.
In her essay that accompanies the show, U.W. art historian Patricia Failing writes that the U.W. ceramics department, and those who run it, has always displayed "an openness to an active engagement between ceramics and broader trends and development in the contemporary art world." By looking beyond the traditional artistic uses of clay, and by making artworks with intellectual content, Failing says, the U.W. ceramics department has set itself on a higher plane than more tradition-bound ceramics departments.
Certainly the works on display at William Traver Gallery seem to be about ideas, though sometimes it's difficult to fathom what they are."
Updike, Robin. "GLASS ISN'T THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN UW CERAMICS FACULTY SHOWS ARTISTRY IN CLAY. " The Seattle Times (Seattle, WA). (August 15, 1996): G23. General OneFile. Gale. Seattle Public Library. 1 Apr. 2009
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