2008 Larry Reid:
"...Oh, and the term “artist-architect” should be immediately consigned to the gallery of oxymorons that includes “military intelligence,” “jumbo shrimp,” and “glass art.”
XO, Larry Reid"
Reid, L. The Stranger Slog (blog) February 27, 2008 "Letter of the Day". Accessed April 27, 2009. http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/letter_of_the_day_55
"Think of Venetian glass, and the image that probably comes to mind is a cheerful knickknack in swirling hues of red and blue. But take one look at the work of rising Milan-based glass artist Franco Deboni, and that image quickly goes to pieces. “I wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before,” says Deboni, whose distinctively dark, earthy vases are catching on among collectors of contemporary glass. With their craterlike surfaces and saturated, metallic-flecked hues—from charcoal gray to ruby red—his pieces exploit the possibilities of shape, color and texture. “I like mixing minuscule quantities of different particles and oxides because the end result hardly looks like glass,” he says.
Deboni’s glass vases.
According to Tina Oldknow, modern glass curator at New York’s Corning Museum of Glass, Deboni is “among the few contemporary artists to have broken out of the rather ossified Italian glass scene.” Along with higher-profile glass artists Laura de Santillana and Yoichi Ohira, Deboni, says Oldknow, is “showing us new directions.”
Sitting in his all-white living room in Milan’s artsy Brera district, the elegant, soft-spoken 57-year-old looks little like an up-and-coming artist, though that’s more or less what he is. In fact, it was just a decade ago that Deboni was known only as a glass expert and collector. After a brief stint in his 20s learning the glassmaking craft under Albino Carrara, a Venetian glassmaker who had worked with Picasso and Cocteau, he turned to scholarship, eventually writing the definitive work about Paolo Venini, the fabled glassmaker whose embrace of innovative design helped arouse international interest in Venetian glass. Over the years, Deboni also amassed an authoritative collection of art glass by such masters as Venini, Archimede Seguso, Aureliano Toso and Giacomo Cappellin, a portion of which he sold at Christie’s in 2000. But in 1996, says Deboni, whose pieces are sold at the Rossella Junck Gallery in Venice, “after having studied glass of all kinds, I wanted to do something for myself.”
These days, in his workshop, Deboni operates mostly on instinct. Because of his pieces’ rich hues and textures, he favors “simple” shapes and never makes sketches, preferring a spontaneous approach. Smiling, he says, “I like to act on a whim.”"
Ilari, A. "Through a Glass Darkly: Franco Deboni makes glass pieces that are anything but transparent." W Magazine. April 2008. Accessed April 19, 2008. http://www.wmagazine.com/artdesign/2008/04/franco_deboni
2008 ArtKnowledgeNews.com:
"PITTSBURGH, PA.- Carnegie Museum of Art’s permanent collection has been bolstered by the acquisition of several significant works of art in line with its collecting strategies. Included in these plans are the purchase of art from and related to the Carnegie International; adding to areas of strength, such as contemporary art, photography, regional art, and art after 1985; and acquiring works of art that contribute to the museum’s exhibition program.
[...]
Department of Decorative Arts
[...]
Harvey K. Littleton
American (b. 1922)
Blue/Lemon Sliced Descending Form, 1989
Glass
13 1/4 x 12 1/2 x 5 in.
5 x 5 x 3 1/2 in.
Bequest of Maxine H. Block
Harvey K. Littleton is considered the father of the American Studio Glass movement. This is the first work in the museum’s collection by Littleton. Since 1996, William and Maxine Block have given or bequeathed 93 contemporary glass objects to Carnegie Museum of Art, including this work; their gifts comprise nearly half of the contemporary glass collection for which the museum is nationally recognized."
Tuesday, 09 December 2008
© 2009 - Art Knowledge News
Author unknown on ArtKnowledgeNews.com. "Carnegie Museum announces Recent Acquisition of Works to the Collection." December 9, 2008. website accessed May 10, 2009. http://artknowledgenews.com/Carnegie_Museum_of_Art_Recent_Acquisition.html
2008 Greg Stacy:
""An Indian and an Irishman Walk Into a Bar," the title of a new exhibit of work by Eoin Breadon and Jason Chakravarty at @Space Gallery, is obviously the start of a joke. It sets you up to think that this show is going to be something goofy and satirical about ethnic tensions. The exhibit's poster reinforces all of this, with its crude cocktail-napkin drawing of a stick figure with a shamrock on its belly standing beside another stick figure with a dot on its forehead.
But then you get there, and the show doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with Breadon being Irish or Chakravarty being Indian. This weird, wonderful art could've been made by two guys from Beijing, two girls from Berlin, or a pair of conjoined twins from Nome.
So what's up with the goofy, provocative and misleading title? Maybe Breadon and Chakravarty were brainstorming names for the show, and one of them did the doodle on a cocktail napkin, and they were just buzzed enough to think the whole thing was hilarious. I guess the joke is on us—the joke being that there is no joke.
If we can put that title aside (and please, just let it go, already), we must admit that the work itself is gorgeous stuff. Breadon makes things out of glass that look like relics from a civilization of the future that has long since collapsed. Hang on while we try to untangle that sentence: It's as if you travelled 2 million years into the future; Breadon's art looks like the few artifacts that would survive from the legendary Golden Age just before the Android Uprising of A.D. 5525.
Breadon specializes in shiny, humanoid heads covered with colorful patterns that simultaneously look like tribal tattoos and glowing circuitry. They're stunning, even putting aside the fact they're made out of goddamn glass. You ever see somebody try to sculpt with glass? Making anything nice out of glass is impressive, but making stuff like this out of glass is impressive to the point of being . . . not right. One can only conclude that Breadon actually is a time traveller from 5525, and he's using some sort of stolen, android technology to create these eerily beautiful glass sculptures as a grim warning of things to come. But in so doing, has he prevented the Android Uprising from ever happening? Or has he doomed us all?!?
There's nothing sci-fi about Chakravarty's art. He's not from the future, just a modern guy . . . who consorts with ghosts. His work features little glass domes with weird, vexingly enigmatic objects in them—tiny toilets, statues of Abraham Lincoln, stuff like that. As if the jars themselves weren't already creepy enough, they also happen to be full of crackling lightning. The real deal, apparently accomplished with xenon and other toxic gases. Done poorly, the effect could come across as very Spencer's Gifts. But the reality is very . . . unreal. Obviously, Chakravarty's art is haunted. He has somehow trapped the souls of the damned in these little domes, and his horrible, EC Comics-esque retribution is bound to hit any day now.
"An Indian and an Irishman Walk Into a Bar: Eoin Breadon/Jason Chakravarty" at @Space Gallery, 2202 N. Main St., Santa Ana, (714) 835-3730; www.atspacegallery.com. Open Sun. & Wed.-Thurs., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Through Wed. Lee Price's "Recent Works" at Sarah Bain Gallery, 411 W. Broadway, Ste. C, Anaheim, (714) 758-0545; www.sarahbaingallery.com. Open Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Call to check availability."
Stacy, G. "Eoin Breadon and Jason Chakravarty Haunt @Space Gallery. Also: Lee Price at Sarah Bain Gallery" April 30, 2008. OC Weekly, Orange County, CA. website accessed May 12, 2009.http://www.ocweekly.com/2008-05-01/culture/certain-doom/
2008 Lisa Fondo:
"Glass and metal art are not the first mediums that come to mind when considering an art gallery's offerings. However, many galleries have round that carrying these niche mediums has been a profitable investment that bas diversified their sales and overall clientele.
Although glass and metal art are sometimes considered crafts, and its practitioners craftsman, the work by the fine artists in this article certainly challenges the generalization.
Craft Vs. Fine Art
The debate continues among many gallery owners and artists as to the distinction between craftsman and artist. "We straddle the line of art and craft, engineering and design," says Angelique Jackson of Jancik Arts International. "Craft is round in the shop drawings and glass and metal frame fabrications while art is found in the interpretations and results."
Livia V. Garson of Glass Place Gallery in Jackson Hole, Wyo., has been specializing in glass art sculptures since the 1980s when artists working behind the Iron Curtain were able to introduce their work to American galleries and collectors. She is of the opinion that glass art offers a myriad of possibilities for an artist and gallery. "The glass medium gives infinite possibilities to be played with; the tire of life is given the chance by artists to create new and unique pieces each day, from classic to contemporary shapes."
Dale Chihuly is arguably the best known, living glass artist in the world. He is an interior designer, ceramic artist and painter, but it is his work in the medium of glass that has garnered the most acclaim. Chihuly offered the following advice to anyone considering a career as a glass artist in the fine-art realm. "I would tell them to figure out what they want to do," he says. "Do they want to be an artist, designer, or do they want to be a craftsman? Naturally, the hardest thing to be is an artist."
The Transition to Fine Art
Initially a student of interior design and architecture, Chihuly realized he wanted to concentrate instead on glass. Chihuly enrolled in the University of Wisconsin's hot glass program--the first of its kind in the United States--established by Harvey K. Littleton, founder of the Studio Glass Movement. After receiving a degree in sculpture, Chihuly enrolled in the ceramics department at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and later established the renowned glass program at RISD.
"Back when I first started, I wanted to get a job as a professor, which I got at RISD, so that allowed me to have a glass shop and earn an income and be able to do my own work," he explains. "Some professors can do that, but some can't; it is not an easy thing to do."
Artist Max Gold, known as "The Father of Fusion Art," began his career as a glass artist for a more pragmatic reason. "I ran out of canvas, and there were some sheets of glass in the apartment building I was living in; I loved the way the reverse painting looked," Gold says.
The process then evolved into something different--sculptures that merge digital art and original reverse glass paintings. "My first glass sculptures came about a few years later when I would layer multiple sheets of painted glass; I only painted about 20 percent of each sheet, negative space was as important as the painted part."
Metal artist Jason Mernick started his career working in glass but made the transition to metal. "I like the element of tire in my creative process--there's no hesitation," he says. "I have been given credit in the industry for developing 'torch painting;' that is, I use tire the way painters use paint."
From Concept to Finished Works
Working in hard metals and glass can prove challenging, at times, for fine artists.
Mernick works with stainless steel, aluminum and copper at his studio in Lake Mathews, Calif. The designs he produces are free flowing and spontaneous. "I just begin, and the process takes me," he explains. "One thing leads to another. The keys are knowing when to stop and how one works with spontaneous developments."
Chihuly works with hand-picked teams in his Seattle studio to create works of art that vary in scale from small free-flowing pieces to large-scale installations that require serious planning.
Jancik Arts International provides large pieces for corporate and private clients. Known for its stained-glass domes, most pieces require strict specifications. "The right and left sides of our brains need to work together in order to create a work with structural integrity; we must use calculus to determine the surface area of a curved dome," Jackson says.
Brad Lorang, a metal sculptor from Oregon, incorporates various techniques, including engraving and heat-applied patinas, to create textural and reflective effects on the metal.
"The work I am now doing has really been more than a 30-year process of adapting techniques I learned along the way for my own specific purposes; each new corner I turned has taken my work a little further off the beaten path," Lorang says.
Defining Form and Function
Las Vegas-based artist Dale Mathis creates high-relief wall sculptures that challenge and defy many physical and artistic boundaries. A typical Mathis artwork is mechanical with hand-carved, moving gears and neon-lit areas. Weighing 80 pounds or more, the metallic mixed-media sculptures are created with what the artist has dubbed a Steampunk style.
"Steampunk is a mixture of old and new, Victorian era meets today," Mathis explains. "It's a blending of different forms and ideas, materials and function. I'm an artist and an engineer."
Artist Henry Jerome has also taken a unique approach to the functionality of his work. He has made a townhouse his personal gallery, allowing potential clients to view his glass and granite works in a home setting.
Works by many fine glass and metal artists can be found in private collections while corporate collections, museums and sculpture gardens hold pieces of monumental scale.
Translation to Sales
Maggie Munro, owner of Munro Gallery in San Diego, uses the glass art she features in her display window as a way to attract a diverse clientele into her store. She came across some fine-art glass and jewelry at an industry trade show a few years back and began carrying it in her gallery as a way to pick up some additional income and diversify her clientele. The initiative took off, bringing her an increase in holiday buyers and purchases from homeowners, corporations and interior designers.
Kelly's Fine Art Gallery in Joseph, Ore., has been offering hand-blown glass and metal art, in addition to bronze sculpture and paintings, for the past 10 years. Owner Kelly Wick began offering the two niche mediums as a way to add more color and variety to her offerings. She says glass and metal art appeal to collectors with contemporary and more rustic home settings and offers the following advice when selling these genres.
"For glass, proper lighting is very important," she explains. "I recently purchased a well-lit display case for some of my glass, and my sales went up significantly. Selling glass and metal require a personalized sales approach, like any other type of art. I stay in tune to what the client is interested in, tell them why I love the artwork and get excited about it with them.""
Fondo, L. "Glass & metal art: in a time when new business is paramount, these niche mediums offer glaring possibilities." Art Business News. November, 1, 2008.
2008 Gather gallery and Erich Woll:
"A quick peak at the work in Erich Woll's exhibition entitled, "It Takes 10 Squirrels To Make A Squirrel Pie".
[All Photos by Gather.]
Gather Blog. Gather Gallery [closed April 10, 2009] owner Jenn Jones, post: Thursday, June 19, 2008. website accessed June 4, 2009. http://gatherseattle.blogspot.com/2008/06/quick-peak-at-work-in-erich-wolls_3046.html
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