There is a collection of GlassArt Magazines, it looks like it was published by glass artists, but I don't have too much history on it. Here's some of the 1973 publication. One interesting point is made by Harvey Littleton about artists joining arts organizations because they do the promotion of your art and your material and artists writing for the 'straight' newspapers to promote their art as well.
(This is also the start of the Technique vs. Concept debate-- a subset of which was artists purposfully disfiguring the beauty of glass because it was too easy-- which came before the Art vs. Craft debate.)
1973 GlassArt Magazine:
Glass Art magazine. January-February 1973.“John Bennett has been collaborating with Robert Coleman in a series of works involving hand-blown glass and poetry. “Coleman does the glass,” he says, “and I write the poetry for it and apply it to the glass.” Mr. Bennett has published poetry in a number of literary magazines…He has also completed two books of poetry, one of which, Found Objects, will very shortly be published by The New Rivers Press in New York. Robert Coleman’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States….Mr. Coleman is currently teaching assistant in the MFA program at Kent State Univeristy, Ohio."
“My dog is barking in me
My eyes in teeth in passage through
The air biting me this hot cold
It is so difficult to speak to my wife
To my hand or tongue or shoelace
This is a fiction,
The one I want to speak to isn’t,
As if he were no one hiding in the closet
Around the bend of stirs
The dog barking in the next block
The distant freeway a coffin rushing back again
Tehe air hissing through its teeth which never move
I am speeding paralyzed toward a
Greater motion of ice in mirrors
Of frozen wind in sworls like brain like glass
Like breathing a peace a balance a terror….”
Citation: GlassArt Magazine. Jan-Feb, 1973.
1973 Jerald Pilcher:
“Why should an art department or an art teacher want to have a glass blowing facility for a high school? It’s not a normal medium that all students should have a chance to work in, but then maybe that’s a good reason why one could be beneficial. Glass blowing is a good incentive medium because it is so different and so interesting that it makes good all-around students of some people who otherwise would have to interest in art or school in general….”
Pilcher, J. "Valdosta High: Blowin’ glass, insteada class” GlassArt Magazine. April 1973.
1973 Mike Cohn:
“Michael makes unfat glass. He manipulates the medium to bring forth cool, serene forms which fit together in interlocking patterns. He admits that he was originally turned on by the seductive qualities of glass, but it is precisely because he finds it so inherently beautiful that he turned in another direction. ‘Glass,’ he says, ‘is so beautiful you can just pile it on the floor. It has a lot more going for it than, say, ceramics, where you start with a lump of clay.’ he sees the exploitation of this organic quality as, ‘sort of a riff, like in music.’ so he reacted against this, tried to force the medium out of its natural path. His glass began evolving into machine forms.
Mike no longer sees this as forcing the glass into a path it doesn’t want to take. The images he is producing are ‘Natural to what’s in my head’, and he is comfortable enough with the medium to not feel guilty about exploiting all of its potential. He sees glass as an animated and energetic medium which is perfect for the forms he is producing, both machine-like and organic.
Unlike many people working in glass today, Michael did not come to the medium from ceramics, but rather from sculpture. He is understandable concerned with producing art with a capital A, and is almost apologetic about his functional creations. He says he tries to think of them merely as small sculptural statements, and is, in fact, actively involved in the fragmentation of these forms.”
Citation: GlassArt Magazine. August, 1973.
1973 Joel Weinstein and Harvey Littleton:
“…The modern scientist really, I think, has tuned himself in much more to the artist and really understands that his directions are creative in the same sense that the artist’s are. He regards the experimental data and so on to prove his creative thoughts, his creative ideas, but he basic concepts come in the same way that an artist conceives and realizes his individual concepts. It’s a very direct, almost subconscious kind of thing.
Q: Last night, you said at one point that you were more interested in questions of impact rather than questions of technique.”
A: Well, impact; impact is perhaps a bad word. Concept; much more I’m interested in concept than technique. Why you do it, what it is, how it fits in, who you are as an artist…I don’t really think of art as communication. I think that it’s more expository, if you want to draw a parallel to speech, rather communication. The artist doesn’t really give a damn if anybody likes lit or understands it, if he’s really into it. You know, he does it because he has to do it. There’s a compulsion, as in compulsive talk. It’s not communication.
[…]
Q: Someone suggested that many buyers were unable to distinguish well-crafted wares from schlock at art fairs, for example.
A: Who is it who develops consumer consciousness? What is the public relations of the artists? The public relations of the artists are, among other things, organizations of artists. How many of those people belong to organizations of artists? To the American Crafts Council? They want public relations, they want to be able to sell, but will they join the outfits that’re promoting them?
How about museum support?…Newspapers…how many people are drumming up articles for the newspapers so that there’s a weekly column on the scene? They’ll write for the underground papers, but will they write for the straight papers? They’ve got to put energy into it if they’re going to get anything out….
Q: Assuming you can get people to buy your stuff, what kinds of things do you expect to be going on in their heads? Why would they buy your stuff, for example?
A: In my opinion, the artist’s concern is to get rid of the stuff so he can make more, and when he’s finished with a piece, he should be finished with it….And his concern is to be able to live and to be able to work, make more…
Q: So it really doesn’t matter what kind of effect…
A: No, it’s not your business. If they identify with a piece and they want it, it’s their concept of how they’re going to live with that thing. You’ve got to five them the chance to see something in your stuff…
Q: Why do you deserve to continue? Why should people support you?
A: Well, that’s the test that everybody has to make. You produce a piece, is anyone interested in it?"
Weinstein, J. "A Conversation with Harvey Littleton." GlassArt Magazine. August 1973.
1973 Antone Gasparetto:
“In a word, all the trends of modern art--from distant cubism, futurism, figurative expressionism and action printing, to op art and multiple ‘vasareliani’--are today present in the non-utilitarian form of glass sculpture.
...in conclusion, we can say that having overcome the distinction between industrially-produced items (wherein a series of objects for everyday use is created by industrial designers) and of pure works of fine art (those non-useful objects created by artists directly, by means of a ‘translator’, or alongside a great craftsman), modern criticism acknowledges any creative process that is truly autonomous whether or not an object is purely expressive. It must only reflect the dignity of art. Consequently, between utilitarian sculpture in glass (useful glassware) and non-utilitarian sculpture int glass (the so-called glass artworks) one cannot establish a hierarchy. There are perfect works of art in the first type as well as in the second. If a negative limit is applied to the art in the first instance regarding its expression of content, of the function on the form , then in the second case (nonutilitarian) the negative limit may be is sensualist, estheticism of material, its technique and resulting effects, or of the free form itself.”
Accompanied by photos of Salvador Dali/Jacques Daum “Bande de Moebius, 1970
Jack A. Schmidt “Game Board 25” 1973
Joel Philip Myers “In My Garden” 1973
Jean Cocteau “Face (reality)" 1966
Gasparetto, A. [the director of the Instituto Veneto per il Lavoro] "The Tendency of Modern Glass Sculpture”. GlassArt Magazine. October 1973
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