1996

In this time line I pull quotes to illustrate a thread in popular and scholarly writing and criticism about glass. Here we will see current glass artists defending their art against the accusations and separating themselves from these stereotypes and, hopefully, find out how and where the now-common opinion was born. Fundamentally, the general thesis seems to be born of the question, What Is Art? This question I will leave to others to answer, here I am only documenting the written history of a popular way of thinking and a popular taste.

1996 Jonathan Lerner:

" Few gifts are as timeless or exhilarating as a piece of fine art. And these days, the most intriguing new work is being done in glass. Think not of etched panels or crystal figurines from art-glass factories like Lalique or Steuben but of unique works with bold shapes, unexpected textures and luminous hues - the creations of contemporary studio - glass artists. Dale Chihuly, for instance, an a edged master, builds enormous abstract vessels and sculptures that blaze with color yet seem nearly weightless. Rising star Dante Marioni, who at 32 is no older than the contemporary art-glass movement itself, achieves a fine balance between austerity and exuberance. His pitchers, vases and bowls share a breathtaking classical symmetry, but their exaggerated height and saturated colors give them a cartoonlike playfulness.

If the range of art glass expresses contradiction, so does glass itself. It is molten when worked but later cool and hard to the touch, sensuous yet brittle, fragile but strong - and plastic enough to assume virtually any shape. These qualities - plus plus its beguiling ability to transmit, hold and reflect light - male studio glass the hottest thing in the world of arts and crafts today. "Oh, it's seductive," says Jean Sosin of Birmingham, Michigan, who has been collecting art glass since 1971. "The first time I saw it was in a storefront gallery. A tremendous amount of light was focused on all this glass. The color! I was overwhelmed."

Modern art glass originated thirty years ago, when two things happened. Thanks to new technologies, glass with a lower melting point became available, freeing glassworking from almost blast-furnace temperatures. At the same time, Harvey Littleton, then a professor of art at the University of Wisconsin, put forth his vision of designer and craftman as one person. Littleton's ideas developed out of familiarity with the Corning Glass Works, where his father was director of research. There, as was typical in other factories, pieces were made by skilled workers following the plans of designers who often had little personal knowledge of glassmaking. "Harvey put the artist back into the factory," says William Warmus, a former curator at the Corning Museum of Glass, who publishes a specialist newsletter called The Value of Glass.

Many of the early pioneers - Dan Dailey, William Carlson, Mark Peiser, Joel Philip Myers, Mary Shaffer and Dante Marioni's own father, Paul, among others - came to glass from ceramics, metalwork and other craft backgrounds. At the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine and the Pilchuck Glass School outside Seattle, and at a growing number of university programs, they spent the early years learning, and pushing, the limits of the medium.

"The technical tools were in place by 1980 or so," observes Warmus. "Now the new generation is saying, `OK, we can do the techniques; let's have meaning.'" As glass matures as a medium of artistic expression, its sculptural and narrative possibilities are being explored. Many artists now mix glass with other media, including metal, wood and fibers. The opening of glass-specialized commercial galleries and important recent museum acquisitions - like the Toledo Museum of Art's prize, the collection of George and Dorothy Saxe of San Francisco - signal the mediums arrival and usher contemporary glass from its roots in the crafts to the realm of fine art.

Compared with crafts, glass art is expensive. You can easily pay $25,000 to $100,000 or more for the work of such renowned masters as Chihuly, Howard Ben Tre, Christopher Ries and Tom Patti, and $7,000 to $15,000 for pieces by other established artists. Even students just emerging in the field ask four-figure prices.

The high prices reflect the enthusiasm of the growing market. But glass is also costly to work with. Artists study and apprentice for years to become skilled. Once they have equipped a studio, they run up staggering utility bills to keep their furnaces fired. There's always the risk of breakage. Hiring skilled colleagues also ups the cost, few glass artists actually work unaided, despite Harvey Littleton's enchanting image of the solitary artist/craftsman. As many as a dozen people might be needed to produce an especially complex piece like one of Chihuly's diaphanous yet intensely colored "basket sets," in which many smaller vessels seem to be afloat within a large one.

For the beginning collector, people in the glass world unanimously stress self-education. "The material is so beautiful in itself," says Benjamin Moore, longtime educational coordinator at Pilchuck, whose own work runs to rigorously geometric and stunningly simple sculptural pieces and light fixtures. "Even a broken chunk of glass passes and refracts the light. But for collectors, this is a big drawback. It just doesn't take much of an eye to respond to it."

"Read. Go to conferences. Look at a lot of glass," advises Jean Sosin. "Then don't be influenced by anyone. I decided at the start that rather than try to get something from every artist, I would collect only who I thought was good, and I was fortunate because these turned out to be the masters. I still collect in depth: when an artist's work changes, I purchase a piece."

To learn more, "Go directly to the artists," urges Martha Drexler Lynn, former curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "But if you do, play square. If you knock out the commercial galleries, the artists ultimately lose their venues and the validation of the dealer's eye. Besides, you do not make a world-class collection by bargain hunting."

Strong ties have developed between glass artists in this country and elsewhere. The international exhibition "Venezia Aperto Vetro," which closed last month, featured the work of some 100 top-flight talents from a dozen nations. "The show's name literally meant `Venice Open Glass.'" says London-based organize Dan Klein. "But we MA mean, `Opening our minds to what can be done in glass.'"

How open is your mind? A spectacular part of the Venice exhibition comes to Kansas City this month. Dale Chihuly, working for more than a year with traditional glass artisans in Finland, Ireland and Mexico and on the Venetian island of Murano, produced enormous, fantastically colored "chandeliers" that were hung above Venice's canals, from palazzi and in public squares. Now they will be displayed at the Kemper Museum. "I'm obsessed with color," says Chihuly, whose personality is as flamboyant as his art. "I never saw one I didn't like.""

Lerner, J. Lerner, Jonathan. "Hot glass.(studio glass)." December 1, 1996. Town & Country. 1996. Retrieved November 05, 2009 from accessmylibrary: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-18918665/hot-glass-studio-glass.html

Echoes, Fire, and Shadows @ the Tacoma Museum of Glass

2009 ABJ Seattle Glass Online:

Last year Preston Singletary was a selected artist in the youngest of three age categories at the Seattle Art Dealer’s show “Century 21: Dealer’s Choice.” One year later he has a mid-career “survey” at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. This demonstrates the challenging nature of being an artist in a medium that takes at least ten years to master the basics of… at age 45, he is both “young” and mid career.

Melissa G. Post curates his mid career survey, “Echoes, Fire, and Shadows”, with an honest approach that places Singletary humbly in both the lineage of the glass masters and in the traditions of his Tlingit heritage. The show suggests that his artistic voice, and thus his success, was found by melding two strong and interesting traditions, studio glass and Native art.

The correlation between glass technique and form and Native formline symbols and designs is striking: Both require a type of initiation and approval to be used. In glass that means proving that you learned from the masters, Italian, European, and American. In Native art the use of certain symbols, such as the eagle and the bear, is inherited through your family. Great care was done in this exhibit to show Singletary’s effort to achieve ability and also permission to use both certain glass technique and also the Tlingit symbols.

The path of his career winds from the simple, unadorned “Prestonuzzi” vases to the mythically charged “Land Otter Man.” “Echoes, Fire, and Shadows” repeats throughout how indebted he is to his teachers. Singletary learned glassblowing from Lino Tagliapietra and Benjamin Moore. He partnered with Dante and was influenced by him. He made vases inspired by Martinuzzi. Here’s a scribble vase that looks like a Jackson Pollock, the wall text states. Martinuzzi, Tagliapietra, Marioni, Moore, Asa Sundland, Joe David, Tony Jojola…even books, Singletary appears indebted to them all. The curator’s goal of establishing his place in the history of studio glass diminishes his personal identity.* But to validate him as worthy artist for a giant show is not necessary and Singletary’s work shines greater than the context it is sown in and grows out of the cement of academic history.

In a previous exhibition that included Singletary, “Fusing Traditions,” it was written, “[Singletary is] working in a cultural realm where the visible is not always legible to the uninitiated, yet even the culturally initiated will find these figures in glass startlingly new.“

The soft light that glows from within the pieces “Threshold Amulet”, “Land Otter Man” and “Soul Catcher” is the personal identity of Preston Singletary. This is his major contribution to the arts. Without knowing more about Tlingit art, this is all I can say with certainty: His technical mastery of luminous color (matte black and frosty/radiant color) is what makes him unique among artists.

Native artists of the Pacific Coast expressed their personal identities through they way they executed their art onto the object at hand. (B. Holm, B. Reid) The sharp formlines and minimal but effective coloring of “Raven” and “Wolf Hat” are in that style of art, from what I’ve seen. Glass artists have an infinite variety of shapes to work with now, not limited to functional vessels, but limited in the making process due to first the temperature and second to the fragility of the medium. Singletary’s eminence as an artist can only increase from working within the limits of these two art forms, and it will be interesting to see the innovations that come from him in the future.

There is a section of the show dedicated to his collaborations with other First People artist.

His collaborations with Ed Archie NoiseCat on ‘Frog Mask’ (1999) and ‘Frog Woman Mask’ (2000) produced a mold that Singletary still uses. The mold is of a face, broad and open with wide lips and prominent cheekbones. “Chieftain’s Daughter,” made in 2006, has black synthetic hair and abalone earrings.

Viewing the masks, I felt privileged to be gazing upon an exquisitely cared for group of Non-European faces, not in a history museum where they document the past, but in a contemporary art museum. Exquisitely cared for, but maybe the protective, dim-light made the museum seem more interested in the preservation of these “artifacts” than with their current importance in the world of contemporary art. This may have not been the intent; it would certainly be too blatant a cultural misstep.

Singletary’s works are not artifacts, nor simply contemporary translations of traditional forms. What are assembled in this show are careful, meticulous, spiritual pieces of sculpture heavy with the weight of responsibility taken seriously. As an artist and public figure charged with uncovering the truth to the world and as a man with multiple family names to do justice to, Singletary has a lot riding on his artwork. It is this well-shouldered responsibility to each world that makes him an interesting artist to examine mid-career. Whether Singletary steps out of the bounds of glass and Native art, or whether he develops new technology to work within them, he will become a great artist. In viewing this show, it is hard to see how that won’t happen.

*The exhibit was undergoing repairs while I was there; the guitar, baskets, and Clan House were unavailable to see. There wasn’t any mention that half the exhibit was gone. I didn’t know until I read Rosemary Ponnekanti’s review. So this point may be mitigated by what I wasn't able to view.

1982

In this time line I pull quotes to illustrate a thread in popular and scholarly writing and criticism about glass. Here we will see current glass artists defending their art against the accusations and separating themselves from these stereotypes and, hopefully, find out how and where the now-common opinion was born. Fundamentally, the general thesis seems to be born of the question, What Is Art? This question I will leave to others to answer, here I am only documenting the written history of a popular way of thinking and a popular taste.

1982 Dale Chihuly:
"Macchia Sea Form Group" by Dale Chihuly, assisted by William Morris, and Benjamin Moore, 1982, Providence Rhode Island. Corning Museum of Glass. ABJ photo, 2008.

1982 Grace Gluek:

"THE French symbolist, Stephane Mallarme (1842-98), is not the most accessible of poets, believing as he did that language shouldn't reveal, but veil. A friend of artists, he tried to get a number of them to illustrate his cryptic texts. Most confessed their bafflement; Manet and - much later - Matisse were among the few who succeeded. Now Christopher Wilmarth, a sculptor known for his austere, Minimal creations of steel and etched glass, has dauntlessly taken up the challenge. Inspired by the translations of the American poet Frederick Morgan, Mr. Wilmarth has responded wholeheartedly, producing not only a series of sculptures, but etchings, drawings and paintings that deal with the themes of seven Mallarme poems.

It wasn't easy. Like most Mallarme readers, Mr. Wilmarth had problems with the inscrutable texts. On a teaching job in California, he pored over the translations for several months. At first responding to the external images they conjured up, he finally discovered ''that the poems had a common denominator, Mallarme's own separateness.''

''His imagination and reverie meant more to him than anything that was actually of the world,'' Mr. Wilmarth said. ''His work is about the anguish and longing of experience not fully realized, and I found something of myself in it.''

This emotional discovery coincided with a physical one: idly sketching some dishes in the apartment he had rented, Mr. Wilmarth started moving his arm in ''a different rhythm,'' breaking a certain habit pattern. ''Working my arm in a way I hadn't before coincided with a realization of what those poems were about.'' More than a hundred drawings later, he was able to arrive at a series of connected images, whose basic component is an oval form that suggests an egg, a seed, a head. At first drawing in charcoal, then pastel, he became so engrossed in the project that he turned to sculpture before doing the etchings that accompany the printed Mallarme-Morgan texts. Later came paintings, and finally a small book of poems of his own, inspired by the Morgan translations.

But it's the sculptural part of this endeavor that really excites. For his dimensional images, Mr. Wilmarth has made new use of his familiar medium, glass. Working with a glass craftsman, Marvin Lipofsky, he has produced a number of variations of the fragile, ovoid shape in hand-blown, acid-etched glass, taking full advantage of the affinities of this material for light and delicate coloration. And here, at home in his own mode and material, he has succeeded wonderfully in conveying a sense of Mallarme.

For the poem that begins ''When winter on forgotten woods moves somber,'' for instance, possibly inspired by the death of a friend's young wife, the glass shape is an elongated bubble of misted blue, with a hole cut in its surface that seems to suggest an indrawn breath. For another poem, ''Saint,'' the ''pallid saint'' is suggested by a diminished oval in the shape of a pear, or maybe a skull, contained in the vise of a V-like collar in the steel plaque it rests on. An erotic poem, beginning ''Insert myself within your story,'' has inspired the placement of a full, robust oval on a steel support that opens like a book; one ''cover'' of the book thrusts directly into the oval. And in the most beautiful work of the series, ''The whole soul summed up when slow we breathe it out,'' Mr. Wilmarth has put a clouded oval, apple-shaped this time, in the center of a sky-blue outer ring of cast glass; the two elements are separated by a void of space.

It's a rare match, that of a sculptor and a poet, and the restrained eloquence of Mr. Wilmarth's work is very affecting. All of the varied elements in this Mallarme extravaganza are on view at the Studio for the First Amendment, 144 Wooster Street (through May 29). The show is accompanied by a beautiful catalogue, produced by Mr. Wilmarth himself, with a first-rate essay on Mallarme by the critic Dore Ashton.

Other shows of interest this week include: Juan Downey (Gallery Schlesinger-Boisante, 822 Madison Avenue at 69th Street): Mr. Downey, a man of many media, is gripped here by a fascination with mirrors as perceptual devices playing back to us both life and art. His set piece is a blown up, black-and-white detail after Velazquez's ''Venus and Her Mirror'' in which Cupid offers Venus not the painted mirror of the Velazquez version, but a live television monitor. On the monitor, we see a 28-minute videotape, a fast-paced ramble on the theme of -well, perception, I suppose. It includes running sight gags (a live Narcissus regarding himself in, then diving into, a pool); travelogue (the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles), interviews (a talk with a mirror salesman) and a brief discourse on Velazquez's ''The Maids of Honor'' in which the Spanish artist's masterly structuring of psychological space is analyzed by the critic Leo Steinberg. A heady divagation, this tape, whose deliberate discontinuities are often annoying. But not dull.

The same can't be said for Mr. Downey's drawings, which play with themes from the two Velazquez paintings and put didactics before pleasure. No thanks. (Through June 5.)

William King (Terry Dintenfass, 50 West 57th Street): Two towering figures, made of cast and plate aluminum, dominate the gallery space. They derive their considerable effect not only from their giant scale but also from the inventive play of abstract and figurative elements.

One figure, ''Patience,'' sits with hands on knees; the realistic face and hands are cast - a new element in Mr. King's work - by the lost wax method, from corrugated cardboard. The rest of the figure is formed of aluminum flats with two long slats for legs, another pair for arms, the back and lap of tilted aluminum planes. The same with the other figure, ''Narcissus,'' which bows, hands clasped, from the waist. More of Mr. King's giant cut-out figures are seen in elegant photographs on the gallery walls, disporting around the country in parks, private lawns, plazas and hospital courtyards.

The wittiest of sculptors, Mr. King has a sharp eye for the idiosyncrasies of human anatomy, and he manages also to imply for his solitary figures a whole social context. (Through next Thursday.)

Braque and His Contemporaries (Saidenberg Gallery, 1018 Madison Avenue at 78th Street): Next year we'll have a chance to see a major Braque show at the Phillips Collection in Washington, but meanwhile, here's a quiet small one in which Braque is also the focus, though not the sole exhibitor.

The range is from a rather saccharine Fauve landscape of 1906 to an almost cosy still life of 1948-1950, ''The Yellow Pot.'' In between, there are a militantly Cubist work of 1919, ''Still Life with Glass, '' another still life of 1947, an almost Van Gogh-like depiction of a vase with flowers, and the show's most impressive painting, ''La Gueridon'' of 1928, a big vertical still life in subdued colors with all the familiar Braque props (a fat guitar, a glass, yellow apples, etc.) in which depth is implied by means of flat overlapping shapes. It shows Braque at his best: a refined colorist poetically concerned with the ambiguities of objects in space.

Braque is in good company here, with works also by Juan Gris, Henri Laurens, Fernand Leger, Andre Masson and Picasso. A good show to browse in. (Through May 29.)"

Gluek, G. "Art: Mallarme poems inspire glass sculpture." May 14, 1982. accessed November 2, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/14/arts/art-mallarme-poems-inspire-glass-sculpture.html?&pagewanted=all