2007 part four

Pittsburg, Huntington Beach, Tacoma, Louisville, Corning, Wagga Wagga, Wanganui, Waterford...what do all these places have in common? They use glass as a tourism draw, invest a lot of city dollars into the theme, and hope for the best. City funds feel like Miracle Gro, would we rather the movement grow organically at equal pace with the talent and innovation? Plus, the bonus money that comes in from the visitors, does it even go to the glassblowers? (Further qualitative study is obviously needed...)

Does a city-wide promotion help the glass community or does it increase the top of that pyramid, gradually increasing the number of non-artists who benefit from the tourists, inverting it and unbalancing it?

2007 Wendy Solomon:
"Pittsburgh used to be synonymous with steel. But few people outside Western Pennsylvania know that before this former industrial city was called Steel City, it was the country's leading glass manufacturer, earning it the nickname America's Glass City.

Those industries and tag lines died out long ago, but this dynamic city is capitalizing on its historical and contemporary ties to glassmaking in a year-long celebration called Pittsburgh Celebrates Glass!

This multi-faceted event kicks into high gear this Thursday with a major exhibit of renowned Seattle-based glass artist Dale Chihuly's work at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. A Victorian glasshouse, garden and tropical forest conservatory, the Phipps will provide a dramatic backdrop for Chihuly's fanciful glass sculptures.

Since Chihuly installations in other major cities have set attendance records, the Phipps will issue tickets with specific times and dates to regulate the crowd flow.

Over the next eight months, the city will host hundreds of first-rate exhibits, performances, lectures and demonstrations with glass, with Pittsburgh's connection to it, front and center.

"The history of glass is so embedded in this region, so it was a platform by which to go out to all these cultural organizations and get them all on board," explains Marguerite Jarrett Marks, director of Pittsburgh Celebrates Glass!

The city is rolling out the welcome mat for the 400,000 people it expects the event will draw and the $20 million it could pump into the local economy.

The year-long celebration gives visitors an opportunity to view glasswork by leading artists seldom seen en masse, at one time and in one city. It includes a number of must-see exhibits, including "Allure of Japanese Glass," which features the work of 17 leading Japanese glass artists rarely seen in the United States.

Pittsburgh has emerged in recent years as a hotbed of glassmaking, due in large part to the Pittsburgh Glass Center, one of the country's leading glass facilities. Established in 2001, the center has been at the forefront of Pittsburgh's emerging glass art scene and revitalization of the Friendship section of the city.

The connection between Venetian and American glass will be explored at a new exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art called "Viva Vetro! Glass Alive! Venice and America" that opens Saturday.

Organizers have taken and run with the concept of all things "glass," playfully including an opera by Philip Glass at the Andy Warhol Museum and offering special "Glass, Glorious Glass" hotel packages that include VIP tickets to some of the exhibits.

In June, downtown Pittsburgh will be transformed nightly into a spectacular artistic display of color and light designed by French artist Lucette de Rugy and her team from Artlumiere, and one of the largest installations of its kind in the country.

The excitement continues next month when more than 1,500 glass artists from around the world descend on the city June 5-7 for the Glass Arts Society's 37th annual international conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

Therman Statom, one of the most famous contemporary glass artists, will teach glassmaking to local underprivileged youth and work with them on a piece in public view throughout May in a storefront window on Fifth Avenue Place.

For people seeking a better understanding of Pittsburgh's historical ties to glassmaking, which date to 1797, the Sen. John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center offers a permanent exhibit, "Glass: Shattering Notions," that chronicles glass's role in local history.

Clearly, Pittsburgh wants you to get to know the place. Its homage to its glassmaking tradition comes on the heels of Pittsburgh Roars, a celebration of the city's rich cultural, philanthropic and civic institutions, and dovetails into Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary celebration in 2008."

Here's an article from 2007 about Lino Tagliapietra's Dinosaurs. It's sort of an apology for the glass world in general and places Tagliapietra's work in the larger context of art history. He also uses the phrase "sybaritic indulgence" and I had to look up in the dictionary... it means loving luxury and sensuous pleasure... a lot.

2007 Alan Artner:

"Glass sculpture seldom gets more seductive than the work of Lino Tagliapietra, the 73-year-old master from Murano who has a large exhibition of pieces completed mainly since 2000 at the Marx-Saunders Gallery.

Vessels, abstract screens and representational pieces both free-standing and hanging -- all are here, making up a prodigious display of craft by which the artist measures himself against a centuries-old Venetian glassblowing tradition.

The work represents in color, form and surface some of the most extravagant decorative art created today, which draws from many cultures and epochs. It has echoes of J.M.Whistler's "Peacock Room," the Byzantine mosaics of Ravenna, gold paintings by Gustav Klimt and shields of Masai warriors. What's more, everything coexists comfortably, as if in Charles Baudelaire's 19th Century dream of luxury, calm and voluptuousness.

Many might say that because such opulence does not express our period, Tagliapietra's art is only backward-looking. It certainly is a sybaritic indulgence from which hard-core modernists would recoil. But we are in the most artistically conservative era of the last half century, and if painters can look back while indulging the delusion that their "concepts" will make the past fresh, so can creators of glass sculpture.

The works Tagliapietra calls "dinosaurs" are among the most personal in form and lyrical in expression. Their sole purpose is to win us over, and that they instantly do. Today's viewers are supposed to hate the ease of that process, preferring to be affronted by art that demands they sacrifice optical gratification. Hence, work like this that makes an appeal to pleasure is tacitly dismissed by thinkers who see it to be of interest only to the rich and brainless.

You know who you are."

Artner, A. "Pretty glass sculpture may confuse some." Chicago Tribune, August 31, 2007. Accessed through the Tacoma Public Library at Accessmylibrary.com November 5, 2009. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-32766428_ITM

2007 Rosemary Ponnekanti:

"Hot glass. Dammed rivers. The two may not seem to be linked, but they are -- and the connecting thread is Maya Lin. The internationally known architect, sculptor and artist has made her career by creating unique works of landscape art -- sculptures and installations that, both indoors and out, echo and enhance natural environments. This weekend, she's coming to Tacoma for an artist residency at the Museum of Glass hot shop, before heading down to Celilo Falls, Ore., for a blessing ceremony as part of her Columbia River Confluence Project. The common factor? Water. "We're going to be creating clear glass drops, for an installation to look like scattered water on a surface," says Lin from her New York studio. The installation will be part of MoG's fifth anniversary exhibition, "Mining Glass," which opens June 16.

[...]

The final installation will be around 20 square feet, depending on the space available in the museum. Lin will be working on design and directing the museum's resident team of gaffers: Benjamin Cobb, Alex Stisser and Gabe Seenan. Will she blow any glass herself?

"No!" says Lin with a laugh. "It's incredibly hard, and last time I did it I nearly burned my eyebrow off." From the intricacies of glass droplets, Lin will then move literally to art on the scale of an entire river: the Columbia. Her ongoing Confluence Project, commissioned in 2000 by American Indian tribes and civic groups from Washington and Oregon, is part of the bicentennial commemoration of the Corps of Discovery journey in 1804-06 of Lewis and Clark. From dialogues with tribes, land users and locals, Lin is designing art installations along the Columbia's length that blur the lines between nature, science, art and history. The only stage so far completed is at the river's mouth at Cape Disappointment: a text-inscribed boardwalk and trail, a contemplative cedar grove, a wetland viewing platform and a polished basalt fish-cleaning table create an environment imbued with an awareness of both native and non-native history. Further upriver, Celilo Falls (near The Dalles, Ore.) is another of Lin's Confluence Project sites. It's one of several slated to be completed this year, and on the day after her MoG residency Lin will be heading there to take part in a public blessing ceremony of the land. The traditional ceremony marks the 50th anniversary of the drowning of the falls by the rising waters of The Dalles hydroelectric dam and, like Lin's installation, is intended to honor the American Indian history of the site. Lin is presently planning the artwork for the site.

[...]"

Excerpted From:

Ponnekanti, R. "Sculpting water: Famed artist Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, visits the Museum of Glass as artist in residence." News Tribune (Tacoma, WA). March 13, 2007. Retrieved November 05, 2009 from accessmylibrary: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-160474476/sculpting-water-famed-artist.html

2007 Caroline Tell:

"NEW YORK - Jewelry and art clashed last weekend here at the Sculpture Objects and Functional Art New York show that featured 59 international fine art galleries, 12 of which housed contemporary jewelry displaying ceramic, glass and decorative textile objects.

The crowd was an eclectic mix of artists, shoppers and purveyors.

Mark Lymon, who started SOFA New York in 1998 as an offshoot of the bigger Chicago show he founded in 1994, wanted to support young artists working with original materials in innovative ways.

"People think of jewelry as one thing," said Lymon. "But there are so many viewpoints. These artists are making jewelry that isn't after a certain style, but their own ideas. It's not necessarily based on gems or metals, but it's about the thought and vision they are presenting."

Highlights of the show included Melanie Bilenker's ebony and resin pendants of a woman's silhouette that she threaded with her own hair. They were priced from $2,500 to $3,200 and were represented by the Sienna Gallery in Lenox, Mass. Gallery owner Sienna Patti noted the difference between jewelers and the craftspeople, like Bilenker. "We represent artists working with ideas that are prevalent in jewelry," she said.

[...]"

Excerpted From:

Tell, Caroline. "ART AND ACCESSORIES COLLIDE AT SOFA.(Sculpture Objects and Functional Art)." WWD. 2007. Retrieved November 05, 2009 from accessmylibrary: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-31333300_ITM

2007 Rosemary Ponnekanti:

"Q: What do Tiffany, Chihuly and Blaschka have in common, other than that they all work(ed) in glass? A: Nothing. This seems precisely the point of "Contrasts," a three-year exhibition that's been up since November at the Museum of Glass. Guest-curated by Vicki Halper, "Contrasts" offers itself as a "glass primer," arranging a potted history of glassmaking from antiquity to the Studio Movement primarily in pairs: contrasting, say, the voluptuous vulgarity of a Chihuly with the austerity of Libensky/BrychtovEaAi. Yes, it's education. It's also, aesthetically, completely boring. The exhibit reduces the multidimensionality of art to two polar opposites: Heavy or Light? Thick or Thin? This reductive, you-need-to-be-educated approach may help beginners develop an appreciative vocabulary, but as a long-term gallery show it's a serious waste of space. And it's a compelling visual argument for the necessity of a full-time curator, something the museum hasn't had in three years, and now -- thank goodness -- says it is prepared to find.

[...]

Halper begins the slippery slope of exhibiting an artwork by one single, basic term. It's like showing someone a Rembrandt and saying, this is an oil painting. Well, yes, but that's not exactly all. Seeing Richard Marquis' "Marquiscarpa #99-16" as the opaque piece of glass, for example, it's easy to forget about its other parameters. What about form -- those whimsical mosaic dots that twist around the stem but statically grid the bowl of the vessel? What about content -- why those curving, childlike animal friezes? Or Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka's intricately fashioned, gray-green "Invertebrates" -- contrasting them (fact) with Salviati's ornate, lettuce-edged dragon (fiction) may reduce them to accuracy, but what about their own ornateness, their depth of color? Beyond this blinkering, there's another, deeper problem. Siting one artwork next to another creates an immediate dynamic. It's a statement that this piece has something to say in that position. This is one of the challenges of curating, and one of the most important artistic contributions of a curator. In pursuing the either/or dichotomy, Halper has taken a certain magic away from these gorgeous works.

[...]

But there are better ways to do it, and three years is a long time to have a gallery filled with a show that's as appealing as a reference book. Halper has fulfilled her mandate to create a teaching show for history and technique, yet just think of the possibilities this would offer were the items part of a permanent collection and masterminded by a long-term curator. "Contrasts" is an interesting precursor to how the Museum of Glass can utilize a collection: educational, informative," says director Tim Close, who with board and staff is mapping out a blueprint for a full-time permanent curator and a permanent collection. If it is a precursor, it speaks volumes about the need for an intelligent, committed, creative vision to marry both the education and aesthetic expansion of the museum's visitors. "Contrasts" certainly makes a good primer. But don't stick too closely to the text. After all, there are thousands of other adjectives."

Excerpted From:

"Review Textbook solution 'Transparently Built' adds interest to foyer: The Museum of Glass' educational show ?Contrasts' is orderly but boring and more limiting than inspiring." News Tribune (Tacoma, WA). 2007. Retrieved November 06, 2009 from accessmylibrary: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-158066124/review-textbook-solution-transparently.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.

Photo of the Day

Lino Tagliapietra and Hilltop student Donovan Strange-Pruss at the Museum of Glass, Tacoma.
PhotoCredit: Kathy Traxler Anderson

2008 Stanford University Show

2008 Ben Marks:

"This summer, with little fanfare, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University borrowed fewer than 20 rather superb works of Contemporary Glass from local collections and put on a show. The reason for this modest endeavor was not to respond to the gargantuan scale of Chihuly at the de Young. Rather, it was to call attention to the connection between Stanford University and the Venetian glass firm of Salviati & Co., whose mosaic murals grace Stanford Memorial Church. Jane Stanford herself gave the Salviati company the commission, for which the Salviati company gave Mrs. Stanford some 200 glass vessels as a thank-you gift.

As conceits go, this one's predictably precious, but Stanford is not the only august institution of higher learning to be somewhat taken with itself, so it's in good company. More interesting than the self-congratulatory reason for the show is the art and, like it or not, how this exhibition compares to the three-ring circus to the north.

The pieces in Contemporary Glass are displayed in the circular Oshman Family Rotunda (the balcony overlooking the Rodin sculptures) and the long H. L. Kwee Galleria (the second-floor passageway adjacent to the main galleries of contemporary art). The show begins at the nexus of both spaces with a hand-painted, lampworked piece from 1995 by Ginny Ruffner. Like many of Ruffner's sculptures, this one, called Double Dutch, is built on an open armature of glass, which, in this case, resembles a six-sided diamond pointing up. Attached wherever it seems convenient and aesthetically sensible is a heart, fish hook, picture frame, flower, and pair of frontward and backward capital Ds, whose voids have been filled in with almost naive copies of the couple in the famous Jan van Eyck painting from 1434 called The Arnolfi Portrait. Never mind that van Eyck was not Dutch; Ruffner is more interested in poetry than precision. The surface of Ruffner's work is the thing that continues to get me. I just love the way her colors alternately hide or accentuate the sand-pitted surface of her fragile, occasionally unwieldy, forms.

Just down the hall is a lovely piece by Richard Royal, who spent a couple of decades (or maybe it just felt like that) as a gaffer on various Chihuly teams. Part of the Relationship Series, this 1992 work consists of a pair of bowls, one a soft blue, the other an equally quiet green, whose bases, if you can imagine this, are shaped like snaking tails or tendrils. The tails face each other so that one bowl rests on its rim while the other is open at the top. In the middle, simultaneously being caressed by and holding these two mirror images together, is a traditionally shaped purple vase, suspended in space by the embrace of the green and blue tendrils. Like much of Royal's work, this deceptively simple piece does not call undue attention to itself. Certainly there are countless more fantastic examples of these sorts of snaking shapes, in a shamelessly varied range of colors, up at the de Young, but Royal is not going for volume here. For him, it's quite enough, thank you, to do one thing with modest perfection.

Toward the end of the hall is one of two works in the show by Richard Marquis. This one is a teapot from 1977, which was selected, no doubt, because of Marquis's use of murrine, which are slender threads of glass that have been collected and then fused to reveal patterns or designs when they are cut into cross sections (picture sushi, with white glass for the rice, purple glass for the tuna, green for the cucumber, etc.) Marquis's murrine designs lean to hearts, stars, and checkerboards, which he applies to his vessels when they are still hot. As the vessel expands and is deliberately distorted, the murrine become blurry and irregularly shaped, all of which gives the teapot the look of something you might find in the kitchen cupboard of one of the Freak Brothers.

Other pieces to spend some time with include Yellow and Ferrari Red Palla by Benjamin Moore, who has also done his time working for Chihuly, and two untitled forms by Lino Tagliapietra, the Venetian master who taught a number of the artists here more than a few of the most important secrets of the Venetian glass trade. Tagliapietra's pieces, both from 1997, have a mid-century-modern sensibility that's unique in this group. The pink and blue colors are deliberately dull while the shapes (the blue one is weirdly tall while the pink lozenge-shaped piece feels vaguely feminine) are just plain odd. The vertical black pinstriping on the surfaces of the pieces completes their retro feel, but it's the surface beneath the surface of these curious objects that catches you by surprise. Using a technique called battuto, Tagliapietra has carved lines resembling the marks for a woodcut into small sections of his pieces. The rest of the surface below the pinstriping has been painstakingly chipped away to give the objects the look of a pair ancient hammered copper urns.

The Chihulys in the Rotunda are handsome enough, although by now we have been well trained by the artist to expect a great deal more, as is the Petroglyph Vessel from 1990 by William Morris (another Chihuly factory alum). But the objects you are most likely to fall in love with are the bowls from 1995 and 2006 by Mary Ann (Toots) Zynsky. Unlike Ruffner, who paints in a fairly traditional manner on her surfaces, Zynsky's pieces are all paint, built entirely from the wire-like threads of pure colored glass that Marquis and others use to create murrine. Instead of forming her threads into rods that are meant to be sliced, heated, and then expanded, Zynsky works with the threads themselves, painting in three dimensions with their colors and then slumping and fusing her compositions into organic, bowl- or basket-like shapes. Resembling nests created by a bird with a highly developed sense of color and a serious case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, Zynsky's work remains singular amid the gloss of much contemporary glass. Her pieces don't shine, but oh how they glow.

Contemporary Glass runs indefinitely at Cantor Arts Center, Lomita Drive and Museum Way, Stanford. Admission is free; closed Mondays and Tuesdays. For information visit museum.stanford.edu or call 650-723-4177."

Marks, B. "Contemporary glass at Stanford." August 31, 2008. accessed August 12, 2009 http://www.kqed.org/arts/visualarts/article.jsp?essid=23258. KQED, Northern California Public Broadcasting.

Heineman Collection at CMOG

2009 Stuart Low:

"A 95-year-old railroad magnate just shipped his most fragile cargo to a new home: Corning Museum of Glass.

Ben Heineman’s sumptuous collection of contemporary glass art is in residence until Jan. 3. Best of all, these glittering guests will stay for dinner.

Heineman and his wife for the last 75 years, Natalie, have donated all 240 pieces formerly displayed in their Chicago apartment. Next year, the museum will spread these works throughout its permanent collections.

This is the largest single gift of modern glass ever donated to a museum, Corning officials believe.

“Overnight, our collection has become 500 percent better,” says Tina Oldknow, the museum’s curator of modern glass. “I love everything they had.”

A photo at the new exhibit shows the Heinemans at home in 2007, blissfully imprisoned by scores of vases, bowls and sculptures. Their designs range from miniature skyscrapers to a scowling alligator and a crab topped by angels — a true glass menagerie. Two Rochester glass sculptors, Michael Rogers and Michael Taylor, are represented in this array by 87 international artists.

Ben Heineman formerly headed the Chicago & North Western Railway Co. and expanded it into a conglomerate that included Lone Star Steel and Fruit of the Loom.

His corporate rsum instantly evokes a stuffy life spent in board rooms and country club wet bars. However, both his politics and his artistic tastes were adventurous.

In 1952, he backed Adlai Stevenson (a classic lost cause) in his doomed presidential race against Dwight D. Eisenhower. More recently, Heineman had better luck campaigning for a fellow Chicagoan named Barack Obama.

A certain brash enthusiasm also marks his glass collecting. In 1984, he fell instantly in love with avant-garde glass sculptures shown in a Georgetown shop window. They were made by pioneering American artist Harvey K. Littleton, whose daughter, Maurine, happened to be the saleswoman. Heineman bought two, launching his 21-year search for other trailblazers in glass.

He and his wife (a nationally renowned social worker) — who have a policy of not giving media interviews — had a sidewinder missile’s instinct for closing in on hot talents. They brought home experimental pieces by Dale Chihuly, Italian master Lino Tagliapietra and many masters not yet labeled investment grade. Along the way, Ben became a trustee at the Corning — one reason for his recent gift.

Visitors eyeballing the wildly diverse collection will feel like kids gawking in a toy shop. But most of the art shares one paradoxical quality: labor-intensive spontaneity. Dazzlingly imaginative shapes and textures were slowly crafted with homegrown techniques.

Connoisseurs eager to learn how they were made might feel frustrated. The labels are bare-bones, because no museum wants to bombard viewers with long texts on 87 artists. Instead, the Corning offers an audio tour, videos of glass artists at work and live demonstrations on glass molding.

The 240 artworks repose in a spacious re-creation of the Heinemans’ 71st-floor apartment in Water Tower Place, which Oprah Winfrey also calls home.

Guests can relax in white chairs by French designer Philippe Starck and wiggle their toes in shag carpets. The mood is casual elegance, but security is tight: This is not a hands-on display.

No prose can give a fair notion of this indecently opulent exhibit. It’s full of self-contained worlds that keep a sense of mystery even as you peer through them.

Peter Aldridge’s Astrolabe resembles a telescope mirror pierced by prisms. Made of cold, glistening optical glass, it may remind older viewers of Superman’s icy Fortress of Solitude. Rainbow hues filter through the prisms, giving Astrolabe’s austere geometry a touch of warmth.

Swedish artist Bertil Vallien’s Cargo Seed is a thin, sleek canoe suspended from the ceiling. Its interior is solid glass encasing tiny sea creatures and colored stones.

“Vallien modeled it on a Viking burial ship,” says Oldknow. “It evokes a state of suspended animation.”

The figural art is just as challenging. Dan Dailey’s Serpentina is a whimsical queen with a gold crown, bee-stung lips and royal purple robes. But this queen is built from junk. Dailey scavenged early 20th-century Vitrolite glass from dumps and factories to create this regal bust.

No visitor should miss Tagliapietra’s virtuosic sculpture, Spirale. A hypnotic swirl of black and yellow rods, it lures you into an Op Art vortex.

Here and there, recent photographs of the Heinemans line the walls. He was born in 1914, she in 1913. You can’t help feeling what Oldknow did when she invited them to see the exhibit.

“I thought: ‘Please, let them live until it opens,’” she says. “They arrived, and they were enchanted. They said it made them see their pieces very differently.”"

Low, S. "Corning Museum now home to eclectic glass art collection." posted July 26, 2009 at RocNow, published by Democrat and Chronicle. website accessed July 2, 2009. http://rocnow.com/article/arts/2009907260302

BIGG best in show: Hyun Sung Cho

2009 Chris McGregor:

"From Carbondale to Columbus, Ohio, Hyun Sung Cho is best in show.

Cho, a graduate student from Seoul, South Korea, in the glass program, had his work selected as Best in Show at BIGG: Breakthrough Ideas in Global Glass. The exhibit featured work from 43 artists; which was narrowed down from more than 800 applicants. Of the 43, Cho was one of 10 artists to earn Best in Show.

“The exhibit is a way of discovering the next generation of glass artists,” said Kelly Stevelt, deputy director of Ohio State University’s Urban Art Space program.
The exhibit, which runs through Oct. 10 at Ohio State University, is a way to foster creativity locally and internationally, she said.

“Part of what we are hoping to come out from this is an international community of artists who stay connected and support and challenge one another in the field,” she said.

The opening night of the event featured more than half the artists’ work and Stevelt said it was a great way for artists to communicate their ideas with each other.

Three jurors — Lino Tagliapietra, Tina Oldknow and Tom Hawk — narrowed the applications down to 93 selected works by the 43 artists.

“We all got together and sat through quite a few applications and juried the works on their individual merits,” Hawk said.

The judges looked for an overview of worldwide artists with innovative ideas using glass as a medium, he said.

“We just felt his (Cho) work sort of stood out, he said. “The group of the ten (artists’) work was head and shoulders above a lot of the others.”

He said it was interesting to learn about how Cho was now living in the country and missed the hustle and bustle of city life.

“When I lived in the big city, the city was a very crowded and not a very joyful place,” Cho said. “However, now as I am living in the countryside, my feeling about the city is shifting a little.”

He said he wanted to showcase his feelings for the city with his artwork.

“The city is a little bit different than the countryside, there are many people, cars and buildings,” he said. ”It makes for many different situations.”

He said he uses his work to express the unique images, which only a city can create.

“Mainly, I am creating the imaginations which the scenery of the city inspires in me,” he said.

Cho created the award-winning piece by blowing glass and applying an image of Seoul over the glass.

This is the first year of BIGG’s existence but Hawk said there are already plans for a show in 2012."

McGregor, C. "SIUC glass artist has BIGG breakthrough." July 21, 2009. Daily Egyptian, south Illinois. accessed July 22, 2009. http://www.siude.com/pulse/siuc-glass-artist-has-bigg-breakthrough-1.1775945

International Film Festival on Clay and Glass selection process begins for 2010

2010 FIFAV:

"Created in 1998 by Ateliers d’Art de France, the festival was originally entirely dedicated to clay, portrayed in all its facets. In 2006, the festival was expanded to include another fire-based art : glass, and became the International Film Festival on Clay and Glass. The common denominators of all the films, clay and glass are depicted through a broad spectrum of subjects ranging from portraits of creators and studio visits, techniques, artistic performances to archaeology, ethnology, the history of civilisations, history of art, heritage and architecture.

"Whether slow or quick, moving or still, the camera captures the multiple facets of a glance and the anxieties of the creative mouth and lips of so many artists and craftsworkers that we dare not glimpse alone. Poetically modest, sometimes audacious and violent, animated images can sometimes help us to grasp the unfathomable dimensions of creation", wrote Loul Combres, Artistic Director, in the editorial for the Festival's 10th anniversary."

http://www.fifav.fr/festival.php?lg=EN

"

Since it began, the International Film Festival on Clay and Glass has welcomed on each occasion film directors and producers, ceramic artists, glassmakers, artists, archaeologists, ethnologists, museum curators, gallery owners, architects, teachers, journalists, enlightened amateurs, students etc.

The aim of this biennial event is: To develop the creation and distribution of films on clay and glass, supporting their makers the world over. To stimulate international cultural exchanges, deepening technical knowledge of ceramics and glass creation across the world, together with the various forms of artistic expression and the history of civilizations. To increase the influence of clay and glass, and by implication that of the arts, the prime mission of Ateliers d’Art de France.

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2010 Festival: preselection has started ! The next edition of the festival will be held on the 19th, 20th and 21st of March 2010. As it has been every 2 years since 1998, we hope to receive 130 films for pre-selection of which around 35 will be selected by a viewing comitee composed of professionals from audiovisual and crafts fields. The materials clay and glass can be threated in a variety of ways : portraits of artists, techniques, traditions, art performances, history of art, ethnology, heritage, architecture… All genres and lenghts of films are accepted. To be presented « For competition » films must have been produced after 2002, any others shall be included « Out of competition » in the programme.

Films directors, producers, professionals or amateurs, send your films in now ! To submit a film, please fill in the entry form and send it in asap with a DVD or VHS tape of your film to the address below. Kindly note that the deadline for all entries is September 15th 2009. Download the entry form and the rules of the competition Contact Françoise Aitgougan - Ateliers d’Art de France, 6 rue Jadin , 75017 Paris, France francoise.aitgougan@ateliersdart.com | tél : +33 (0)1 44 08 30 | fax : +33 (0)1 44 01 08 35

"International Film Festival on Clay and Glass" website accessed June 23, 2009. http://www.fifav.fr/index.php?lang=EN&PHPSESSID=f835cfeabc2369c9dad28355fcdd736e

2008 Awards for the 6th edition of the festival:

"At this sixth edition, the jury and the public voted in large numbers for the film "L'Etre et la forme" by Jeanne Hadorn, a revealing and moving portrait of the ceramist Jacqueline Lerat filmed at her home in La Borne, which won the Ateliers d'Art de France First Award and the Festival-Goers' Award. John F. Wyver's portrait of Grayson Perry, an extravagant contemporary ceramist who has no hesitation in challenging the notions of traditional pottery, won the Contemporary Award.
Ceramic traditions were also high on the agenda, since two awards (Heritage and UNESCO) were presented to "Pottery and dragon kiln", a documentary by Chinese film-maker Jiansheng Li portraying the age-old pottery traditions of the Chinese village of Tao Yao.
Finally, the Glass Award went to the film "Aux âmes envolées – L’histoire d’un vitrail" by Vincent Lauth, which traces the creation of a stained glass window by Emmanuelle Grand for the crematorium in Dijon.
The four award-winners were presented with trophies created by ceramist Daphné Corregan, as well as prize-money."

"Awards
Prices for directors comprise a financial reward to encourage film-making on glass and clay.

Grand prix - Ateliers d’Art de France | exceptionnal work
Heritage award | ceramic or glass traditions through the ages and cultures
Contemporary award | contemporary ceramic or glass creation
Clay award - Unesco | use of clay as a means of cultural exchange
Glass award | glass as a source of creation
Festival-goers award | winner selected by vote"

Jury

"... Members of the jury since the festival began include leading audiovisual experts like: David Ferré, director; Alain Jaubert, director; Nicolas Petitjean, producer; Anhony Dolan, director (United Kingdom); Annie Chevallay, director; Nathalie Semon, delegation for cultural action, Arte...

... And professionnals from the arts like: Jean-Luc Olivié, curator of the Paris Museum of Decorative Arts; Mark Lyman, president of SOA (USA); Claude Champy, ceramist; Setsuko Nagasawa, ceramist; Yan Zoritchak, glass-maker (Slovakia); Lino Tagliapietra, glass-maker (Italy); Claudi Casanovas, ceramist (Spain)"

in 2008, John de Wit was a jurist...

http://www.fifav.fr/jury.php?lg=EN

2008

"FILMS SELECTED IN COMPETITION
A journey in Glass: Marvin Lipofsky | Paul McKenna | United States | 2003 | Documentary | 18’08 min. GLASS
L’art et la manière : Richard Deacon | Frédéric Le Clair | France | 2006| Documentary | 26 min. GLASS
Aux âmes envolées - l'histoire d'un vitrail | Vincent Lauth | France | 2007 | Documentary | 36 min. GLASS
Céramique fiction | Véronique Hillereau & Yann Rudler | France | 2005 | Documentary | 36 min. CLAY
Claudi Casanovas - Memorial 1936 | Heloisa & Leonardo Alvim | France | 2006 | Documentary | 9’30 min. CLAY
Dante Marioni | Patricia O’Brien | Etats-Unis | 2007 | Documentary | 9 min. GLASS
Emile Gallé : la nature dans l'art | Damien Fritsch | France | 2005 | Documentary | 26’ min. GLASS
L'être et la forme | Jeanne Hadorn | France | 2006| Documentary | 20 min. CLAY
La femme d'argile | Manuel Deiller | France | 2007 | Experimental Film | 8’30 min. CLAY
Habitons la terre | Alexandra Ferdinande | France | 2007 | Documentary | 12’33 min. CLAY
Indian Activity – Népal - Kumbharwada | David Asterisco | 2006 | Spain | Documentary | 12 min. CLAY
Jour d'été | Christian Dumas | France | 2007 | Documentary | 8’10 min. CLAY
Malformance Performance | Tomislav Gregl | Croatia | 2007 | Animated film | 3’49 min. CLAY
Minotauromaquia, Pablo en el laberinto | Juan Pablo Etcheverry | Spain | 2004 | Animated film | 9’20 min. CLAY
On the night of February 5th
John Davis, Alex McErlain, Stephen Yates | Great Britain | 2007 | Documentary | 11’45 min. CLAY
Paso Doble | Miquel Barcelo et Josef Nadj | France | 2006 | Documentary | 41 min.CLAY
Pottery and dragon kiln | Jiansheng Li | China | 2007 | Documentary | 22’20 min. CLAY
Sound in clay | Sylvain Thirouin | France | 2007 | Experimental Film | 5 min. CLAY
Teapot | David Cushway | Great Britain | 2006 | Experimental Film | 4 min. CLAY
Terra incognita | Grégory Boutière | France | 2007 | Animated film | 3’33 min. CLAY
The eye : Grayson Perry | John F. Wyver | Great Britain | 2007 | Documentary | 26 min. CLAY
Visions de l’ordre – Colin Rennie
Robert Duprez, Nejma Chebah & Mourit Raki | France | 2006 | Documentary | 5’20 min. GLASS
Les vitraux de Miquel Barcelo | Daniel Viguier | France | 2007 | Documentary | 14’12 min. GLASS
Yixing, the queen of teapots| Luc Bouery & Patrice Valfré | France | 2007 | Documentary | 52 min. CLAY

FILMS SELECTED OUT OF THE COMPETITION
White spotted n°1 | Roy Maayan | Israël | 2006 | Experimental | 10 min. CLAY
Carreaux de Gironde | Abra & Jean-Jacques Picot | France | 2006 | Documentary | 16 min. CLAY
Ceramica, un novo olhar | Heloisa Alvim | France / Brésil | Documentary | 12 min. CLAY
ClayTV | Christian Gonzenbach | Switzerland | 2006 | Animated film | 4 min. CLAY
De mains en mains | Jean-Pierre Thomas & Jérémie Zacharias | France | 2007 | Documentary | 52 min. CLAY
Sylvia Hyman : eternal wonder | Hahn Curt | United States | 2007 | Documentary | 23’31 min. CLAY
Jardin céleste-Annie Cantin | Mourit Raki & Nejma Chebah | France | 2007 | Documentary | 3’54 min. GLASS
Pottery seller | Giang N’Guyen Truong | Vietnam | 2004 | Documentary | 36 min. CLAY
Potières de Farako | Michel Gardelle | France | 2005 | Documentary | 47 min. CLAY
Shibam: Chicago of the desert | Thomas Wartmann & Stefan Tolz | Germany | 2004 | Documentary | 53 min. CLAY
La terre de Pierre Dutertre | Emmanuel Roy | France | 2007 | Documentary | 18’17 min. CLAY"

http://www.fifav.fr/programmation.php?lg=EN

BIGG 2009

From the OSU Arts and Humanities website:

"Exhibition Date: Friday, July 10, 2009 - Saturday, October 10, 2009
Reception Date/Time: Friday, July 10, 2009 - 5:00pm - 7:00pm

BIGG: Breakthrough Ideas in Global Glass is a dynamic collaboration among The Ohio State University Department of Art's Glass Program, OSU Urban Arts Space and Hawk Galleries. This exhibition is sponsored by Steuben Glass.

Together we will discover and introduce to the public a select group of artists with a conceptual and working engagement in glass. These artists will have completed their formal training in art beyond the baccalaureate (MFA or equivalent) since the beginning of the new millennium. This collaboration demonstrates a commitment to advancing new and innovative glass art worldwide. Through an international juried selection process and critical writing about work in the field, we intend to expand the discourse about glass art globally.

The exhibition will be presented from July 10th through October 10th, 2009 at the OSU Urban Arts Space and Hawk Galleries [hawkgalleries.com] in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Afterward, select works from the BIGG exhibition will travel to SOFA Chicago 2009 [sofaexpo.com] on exhibit November 5th through the 8th.

Artists selected for the 2009 BIGG: Breakthrough Ideas in Global Glass are:

Veronika Beckh – OSU Urban Arts Space
Berlin, Germany
Laura Birdsall – Hawk Galleries
North Yorkshire, UK
Christopher Bohach – OSU Urban Arts Space
Lexington, KY USA
Bridget Boss – OSU Urban Arts Space
Greenwood Lake, NY USA
www.bridgetboss.com
William Breitbart – OSU Urban Arts Space
Madison, WI USA
Sabrina Cant – OSU Urban Arts Space
Middlesex, UK
www.sabrinacant.com
Hyunsung Cho* – Hawk Galleries
Carbondale, IL USA
www.hyunsungchoglass.com
Eun-Suh Choi – Hawk Galleries
Rochester, NY USA
www.choiglass.com
Michael Crowder – Hawk Galleries
Houston, TX USA
www.michaelcrowderart.com
Vanessa Cutler* – OSU Urban Arts Space and Hawk Galleries
Southsea Hampshire, UK
www.vanessacutler.co.uk
Scott Darlington – OSU Urban Arts Space
Bowling Green, OH USA
www.scottydarlington.com
Steven Durow* – Hawk Galleries
New Orleans, LA USA
www.stevendurow.com
Robert Geyer – OSU Urban Arts Space
Calgary Alberta, Canada
Darren Goodman – OSU Urban Arts Space
Waynesville, OH USA
www.darrengoodman.net
Charlotte Hughes-Martin - Hawk Galleries
Stourbridge, West Midlands
www.charlottehughesmartin.com
Johanna Jansson – Hawk Galleries
Stockholm, Sweden
www.johannajansson.com
Ditte Johansson – OSU Urban Arts Space
Gothenburg, Sweden
Ben Johnson* – OSU Urban Arts Space
Cicero, IN USA
John Kiley* – OSU Urban Arts Space
Seattle, WA USA
Sungsoo Kim* – Hawk Galleries
Danville, KY USA
www.sungsookimglass.com
Andrew Kosorok – OSU Urban Arts Space
Provo, UT USA
Helen Lee – OSU Urban Arts Space
Oakland, CA USA
Einav Mekori – OSU Urban Arts Space
Toronro , Canada

Stine Mikkelsen – OSU Urban Arts Space
Copenhagen, Denmark
www.stinediness.dk
Martie Negri* – OSU Urban Arts Space
Mamaroneck, NY USA
www.martienegri.com
Quincy Neri – OSU Urban Arts Space
Madison, WI USA
Andrew Newbold – OSU Urban Arts Space
Ravenna, OH USA
Yuka Otani – OSU Urban Arts Space
New York, NY USA
www.yukaotani.com
Elizabeth Perkins – OSU Urban Arts Space
Richmond, VA USA
www.elizabethperkinsglass.com
Richard Price* – Hawk Galleries
Amsterdam, Netherlands
www.richardprice.nl
Karen Reid* – OSU Urban Arts Space
Dalton, PA USA
www.karenreidsculpture.com
Marie Retpen – Hawk Galleries
Hoejbjerg, Denmark
www.retpen-glas.dk
Kait Rhoads – OSU Urban Arts Space
Seattle, WA USA
www.kaitrhoads.com
Mielle Riggie – OSU Urban Arts Space
Seattle, WA USA
www.mielleriggie.com
Amy Rueffert* – OSU Urban Arts
Urbana, IL USA
www.amyrueffert.com
Debra Ruzinsky – Hawk Galleries
Pittsford, NY USA
www.debraruzinsky.com
Charlotte Sale – Hawk Galleries
Banstead, Surrey, UK
www.charlottesaleglass.co.uk
Nadine Saylor – OSU Urban Arts Space
Bowling Green, OH USA
www.nadinesaylor.com
Erika Tada – OSU Urban Arts Space
West Henrietta, NY USA
Hiromi Takizawa – OSU Urban Arts Space
Richmond, VA USA
Suzannah Vaughan – Hawk Galleries
Salthill, Galway
Christopher and Sarah Watts – OSU Urban Arts Space
Boston, MA USA
wattshotglass.com

*These 10 artists were selected by the Jury as the 2009 BIGG Best in Show exhibitors: Hyunsung Cho, Vanessa Cutler, Steven Durow, Ben Johnson, John Kiley, Sungsoo Kim, Martie Negri, Richard Price, Karen Reid, and Amy Rueffert. Each artist is awarded a $1,000 travel stipend to attend the opening reception.

Awards
Awards valuing more than $100,000 will be presented to accepted artists as determined by juror selection. Award assignments will be made after the installation of artwork. Award recipients will be notified before the opening reception.

Awards will include:
- Up to ten (10) artists will be awarded a $1,000 travel stipend to attend the opening reception on July 10th, 2009.
- A number of artists will be selected for representation by Hawk Galleries at the 2009 SOFA Chicago. [sofaexpo.com]
- One artist will be invited for a year-long OSU Department of Art Post-MFA Fellowship.
- Selected artists will be eligble for Steuben Glass Residency Fellowships.

Jurors
- Lino Tagliapietra , Italian glass Maestro
- Tina Oldknow, Curator of Modern Glass, Corning Museum of Glass
- Tom Hawk, Director, Hawk Galleries"

Ohio State University Urban Arts Space website. "BIGG: Breakthrough Ideas in Global Glass, Sponsored by Steuben Glass." Accessed June 19, 2009. http://uas.osu.edu/bigg

Venice Projects: Glass Stress

From Berengo Fine Arts:

"Glasstress is the evocative and provocative title of this exhibition on the use of glass in contemporary art.

The exhibition proposes following the story of the increasing affirmation of glass as the stuff of modernity.

Originally a noble material used for functional purposes, over the centuries, glass has had to exert great pressure and to expend enormous effort to free itself from the clichés that have imprisoned it and have relegated its uses to limited contexts.

A state of continuous stress and tension has therefore characterized this material. Its presence in the world of contemporary art is a recent conquest.

The exhibition brings together some particularly important works from the first half of the 20th century along with works and installations by artists active in the vibrant landscape of the last few decades, in such a way as to create ensembles rich with cross-references and harmonies or ones characterized by a diversity of approaches and aims.

The arrangement of the works unfolds in neither a rigid chronological order nor a theoretically exhaustive one but rather one that is emotionally pregnant, that allows the onlooker to understand the wealth of this extraordinary material's expressive potential, a material traditionally linked to the city of Venice."

"GLASSTRESS Collateral event 53rd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia" website accessed June 9, 2009. http://www.berengo.com/?visibile_cont=&id_pagina=85&id_news=78&Lang=_2&&events-02-06-2009-GLASSTRESS-Collateral-event-53rd-International-Art-Exhibition-La-Biennale-di-Venezia.html

From ArtDaily.org:

"VENICE.- Glasstress, an official exhibition of the 53rd Venice Biennale that celebrates the use of glass in contemporary art, will be held at both the historic Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti at the Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti (Campo Santo Stefano – San Marco, Venezia) and at the Scuola Grande Confraternita di San Teodoro, (San Marco, Venezia), from June 6 – November 22, 2009. The exhibition will be presented by Venice Projects, an organization dedicated to presenting the work of internationally recognized artists who work with glass. There will be a press preview on Thursday, June 4 from 11 am to 6 pm. The opening reception will be on Friday, June 5 at 6:00 pm. In addition, “Matter”, a symposium organized by Artist Rene Rietmeyer, will be held at the Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti during the Glasstress Press Preview on June 4 from 1 PM to 4 PM.

Glasstress will feature both specially commissioned new work and selected pieces by forty-five modern and contemporary artists, many of whom are working with glass for the first time. The exhibition will explore each artist’s unique approach to working with the glass, the technical limits inherent in the material, and the synthesis between the artist’s ideas and the glass master’s skills. Glasstress is organized by Murano-based art impresario Adriano in collaboration with Laura Mattioli Rossi and Rosa Barovier Mentasti. The exhibition is sponsored by The Mjellby Konstmuseum of Halmstad, Sweden in collaboration with Susan Scherman of Susan Scherman Fine Arts, San Francisco.

Glasstress represents Berengo’s dream of examining the expressive possibilities of glass by presenting a global survey and critical look at its use by modern and contemporary artists. The exhibition will showcase original and innovate work by artists, who traditionally work in other media, such as, Luciano Fabro, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Kosuth, Kiki Smith, Fred Wilson and Tony Cragg. These artists were and are fascinated by the formal and conceptual possibilities of the material. In addition, there will be work by glass artists, such as Lino Tagliapietra, who have taken the forms and technical traditions of Murano glass production to new and exciting extremes. Dan Graham, who uses glass to create contemporary environments and installations, is also part of this important and historical presentation.

Glasstress is the link between the Venetian fine art glass movement of 1950s, Venice Projects and the 2009 Venice Biennale. As a young man, growing up in Venice, Berengo was aware that Peggy Guggenheim was fascinated by the artistic possibilities of glass – she felt that Venetian glass was too important to be used only for decorative purposes.

Guggenheim encouraged Kokoschka, Picasso, Braque, Chagall and Max Ernst to experiment with glass by working with Egidio Costantini (“Fucina Degli Angeli” – The Forge of Angels). He was the master who could help them express their artistic ideas using glass. Following in Costantini’s footsteps, Berengo started helping artists, many of whom have never worked with glass, discover the artistic possibilities of the material - many of these artists are in the exhibition.

Participating Artists – Glasstress: Josef Albers, Arman, Jean Arp, Barbara Bloom, Louise Bourgeois, Sergio Bovenga, Daniel Buren, Lawrence Carroll, Cèsar, Soyeon Cho, Tony Cragg, Marie Louise Ekman, Jan Fabre, Luciano Fabro, Lucio Fontana, Francesco Gennari, Dan Graham, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Hye Rim Lee, Charlotte Hodes, Mimmo Jodice, Marya Kazoun, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Raimund Kummer, Federica Marangoni, ORLAN, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Luca Pancrazzi, Anne Peabody, Giuseppe Penone, Anton Pevsner, Bettina Pousttchi, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Rene Rietmeyer, Silvano Rubino, Sandro Sergi, Kiki Smith, Jana Sterbak, Lino Tagliapietra, Koen Vanmechelen, Fred Wilson, Kimiko Yoshida and Chen Zhen."

ArtDaily. "Glass Stress - Collateral Event of the 53rd International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia" June 7, 2009. http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31148

From Whitewall Magazine:

Koen Vanmechelen, "The Accident" (2005). Photo Credit, Whitewall Magazine.

“Glass Stress,” an exhibition that celebrates the use of glass in contemporary art, opens this week as a collateral event of the Venice Biennale. Work by Josef Albers, Louise Bourgeois, Tony Cragg, Dan Graham, Lino Tagliapietra, and Lucien Fabro have been brought together by Venice Projects, an organization founded by Adriano Berengo that has been bringing together artists and glass masters for two decades. Nearly half of the exhibition will be commissioned work by artists working with glass for the first time. Through Venice Projects, Berengo hopes to link the Venetian art glass movement of the fifties to the Biennale, while securing glass as a respectable material for contemporary artists to use. We spoke with Berengo on a recent trip to New York about his pitch to contemporary artists and why glass has been negatively associated with craft and function.

WHITEWALL: What is a typical reaction when you approach an artist to work with glass. Are there certain artists that you approach because you think they might work better with it?

ADRIANO BERENGO: I work better with painters. You know why? Because painters are, at least at the beginning, more flexible. A sculptor normally make pieces himself so he is more aware. Whereas the painter, when he sees the transformation of a flat surface into a tri-dimensional sort of thing, he is amazed. So, how do I choose the artist? Some artists have overcome their prejudices [about glass] and they approach me. I will also approach artists. This is the most difficult part of the job: to convince them that glass could be a medium for their expression. Sometimes, I succeed, sometimes I fail but in general now, they approach me. I think that it’s very interesting that in the art world the use of glass is becoming more and more frequent and more and more important. I don’t want to say that I am responsible for this, but I think I have contributed a little bit to this.

WW: How many artists were commissioned specifically for the show?

AB: I think 50%. Every time for me is a new experience. It’s a fascinating experience.

WW: So the artist comes up with a concept, you pair them with a glass master, and let them run with it?

AB: Well, whatever they have in mind and whatever is feasible of course. But I think that an intelligent artist pretty soon understands the possibility and the limitations of the medium.

WW: Why does glass have a bad reputation? Why isn’t it used by as many artists? Do you think artists are turned off because of it’s ties to “craft”?

AB: Yes, because glass is such an old material that has been frequently used for decorative purposes and for functional purposes. You make a chandelier in glass, we drink out of glass. That known function of decorative things has created, in my opinion, an obstacle to the use of it. But look at what happened to photography. At the beginning, all the attention was on the medium. But pretty soon we realized that the camera was not enough. There was a concept behind it. So photography became very popular. I think that the more glass is used by artists, the more this barrier, this reluctance, this resistance will disappear. I think that glass will be one of the noble materials for contemporary artists.

Donaghue, K. "Venice Biennale: Glass Stress." June 3, 2009. Whitewall Magazine website. accessed June 7, 2009. http://www.whitewallmag.com/2009/06/03/venice-biennale-glass-stress/

From TheArtNewspaper:

"No other city in the world is more closely associated with the art of glassmaking than Venice, so it is fitting that "Glass Stress", a new survey of modern and contemporary glass art, opens on 6 June. The show brings together commissioned pieces by artists such as Fred Wilson, Tony Cragg and Orlan with rare objects made by Jean Arp, Louise Bourgeois, Jan Fabre, Mona Hatoum, Man Ray, Robert Rauschenberg and Lino Tagliapietra, among others.

Who is showing where - download Venice map

Adriano Berengo, a local curator and art dealer, devised the exhibition to draw attention to the use of glass in installation and sculpture art today. Mr Berengo has been committed to revitalizing the art of glassmaking since the 1980s when he founded Berengo Studio, an organisation designed to help artists learn about the potential uses of glass in contemporary work. Since that time he has invited over 140 international artists to his studio to collaborate with expert glassblowers, many of who are included in the show.

The exhibition is co-organised by Mr Berengo, Laura Mattioli Rossi and Rosa Barovier Mentasti and is sponsored by the Mjellby Konstmuseum of Halmstad, Sweden, in collaboration with Susan Scherman Fine Arts, San Francisco.

Glass Stress, Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti at the Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti and at the Scuola Grande Confraternita di San Teodoro, San Marco (6 June–22 November 2009)."

Picard, Charmaine. "Major collateral event focuses on glass." May 29, 2009. The Art Newspaper. website accessed June 7, 2009. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Major-collateral-event-focuses-glass/17443

1995 part two

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.

1995 Robin Updike:

"Cameras click and video cameras hum as William Morris, Dante Marioni and Lino Tagliapietra, all stars of the glass art scene, trot through their repertoire of crowd-pleasing skills.

They plunge molten glass globes into fiery furnaces. They spin the globes on rods like circus performers whirling plates on sticks. They wedge slab-sized wooden spatulas against the twirling, glowing glass. Flaming sparks fly through the air. Murmured oohs and aahs drift through the 50 or so onlookers at the Pilchuck Glass School hot shop in Stanwood. It's a mesmerizing show.

Meanwhile, just outside the hot shop, Dale Chihuly is being interviewed by a camera crew from CBS' "Sunday Morning." The shop is an open-sided, shake-roofed, octagonal pavillion that night and day hums with activity. Nestled as it is in the woods - a pleasure dome for glassblowers - there may be no more idyllic hot shop in the world.

A crowd has gathered to watch. Chihuly is unmistakable with his black eye patch, Trotskyite hair and trademark paint-splattered shoes. And he is, after all, not only the most famous glass artist since Louis Comfort Tiffany, but the founding spirit behind Pilchuck.

A little later will come the smoked-salmon feed for 400 served on paper plates, picnic-style, on the clearing in front of the rustic lodge - a Pilchuck potlatch - and the ceremonial burying of the time capsule, to be dug up in the year 2021 on the school's 50th anniversary. The school is this summer celebrating the beginning of it's 25th year, and calling it an anniversary.

There is also a ritual crowning of Anne Gould Hauberg on the back of a flat-bed pick-up. Hauberg and her former husband, John Hauberg, donated the 64-square-mile, bosky Stanwood site to found the glass school in 1971, and she is still considered the fairy godmother of the place. A glass crown has been made for her. She grins and vamps as it is placed on her head.

This is followed by a brief speech cheerleading for the school's $3.4 million capital campaign. The speaker: Jon Shirley, former Microsoft president and vintage car collector/mechanic, and now a Pilchuck advisory council member. The school needs improved kilns and a staff bath house, among other physical improvements, and it wants a $2 million scholarship endowment. Mark Haley, former college art student, one-time sculptor of fountains, current president of Brown & Haley candy company of Tacoma, and Pilchuck board president, also makes a few remarks.

Pilchuck has long attracted board members who are not only wealthy, successful and relatively youthful but, to a certain degree, hip.

Watching from the sidelines, a famous art critic who has been flown up to Seattle for a Seattle Art Museum seminar on glass art, seems baffled by the cheerful camaraderie and air of congratulatory goodwill. The day-long party strikes him as "tribal."

He wasn't far from the mark. The July 21 party was a ceremonial rite of passage of the Northwest clan of glass. Pilchuck has turned Seattle into the glass art capital of the U.S. Even, some say, of the world.

Woodstock for art hippies

Since 1971, Pilchuck has gone from a primitive summer camp for counterculture glassblowers with artistic aspirations - a Woodstock for art hippies - to a world-reknowned school of glass. Each summer the school attracts a teaching lineup of some of the world's leading glass artists, as well as acclaimed non-glass artists drawn to Pilchuck's ecumenical philosophy about art.

Tagliapietra, for instance, was a master glassblower at the legendary Venini glass factory in Murano, an island off Venice, Italy, before Chihuly brought him to teach at Pilchuck. Bertil Vallien, a Swedish master of cast glass sculpture and a Pilchuck regular, is one of the head designers at Kosta Boda glass factory in Sweden. This year Pilchuck students came from 24 countries and 36 U.S. states.

It's not uncommon these days to hear comparisons between Pilchuck and the glass art scene it has spawned in Western Washington, and the historic glass community around Venice, where for centuries master craftsmen produced some of the world's most sought-after goblets and glassware. Even the aesthetics of traditional Venetian goblets and vessels have been imported to Pilchuck. Marioni's classic forms are considered direct descendants of the Venetian style.

Says Douglas Heller, owner of Heller Gallery in New York, one of the nation's most established glass galleries, "The Pilchuck culture, which is an outgrowth of Tagliapietra and Chihuly, is a return to Venetian classicism. Tagliapietra represents a lifetime of achievement. He's an Italian maestro.

"But suddenly there is a bunch of these Pilchuck-trained Young Turks challenging his work," said Heller. "All of a sudden Pilchuck is like a little Venice, and that's a brilliant achievement."

The Seattle emphasis

Even casual observers of the regional art scene know that Seattle and glass art are synonymous. Walk into an upscale retail building, such as City Centre on Fifth Avenue, or a hotel, such as the Seattle Sheraton, and instead of seeing paintings on the walls you're likely to see glass sculpture in cases. Such individual tastemakers as Jeff and Susan Brotman (he co-founded Costco), Jon and Mary Shirley, and Jack and Rebecca Benaroya (he is one of the area's major real estate developers) all have sizable collections of Northwest glass.

Seattle's role as the nation's glass art center has been particularly noticeable this summer. There have been glass shows virtually every month at several galleries. Pilchuck anniversary banners hang everywhere. The Seattle Art Museum organized a special glass exhibit (still on view) and hosted a day-long seminar on glass art last month. The next day many of the 300 or so glass artists in Western Washington opened their studios to the public.

One of the art exhibits at Bumbershoot next weekend will be a 25-year retrospective of the work of Pilchuck-affiliated artists. When the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner re-opens in October, a gallery donated by the Benaroyas will be devoted solely to glass; the opening show will be works by Pilchuck's big-name artists. And though it is still some years in the future, plans are under way for for a museum of contemporary glass in Tacoma, Chihuly's hometown.

And the nonprofit, private Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle has become an in-city glass center. Many of its instructors and staffers also are affiliated with Pilchuck. In the Seattle glass community, all roads eventually lead back to Pilchuck.

Not since the ascendancy in the '40s and '50s of the so-called "mystic painters of the Northwest" - Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Anderson and friends - has Seattle been so closely associated with a particular art movement. And it's fair to say that without Pilchuck, there would be no Seattle glass culture. Some say that without glass, Seattle's entire art scene would be less dynamic.

"I think Pilchuck is really more essential to this city than the museum," said Linda Farris, owner of Linda Farris Gallery. "Pilchuck constantly has groups of people coming through here on this quest for glass.

"But they buy other art, too," said Farris. "One of the glass collectors who was in town for the last Pilchuck auction bought one of Sherry Markovitz's abstract works," she said, referring to a Seattle sculptor who makes beaded works.

The glass detractors

That's not to say there aren't plenty of people who dismiss glass as pretty but dull. Crowds flock to see Chihuly exhibits; SAM's '92 Chihuly show drew two to three times as many people as nearly any show since. But there are painters, sculptors, print makers and others who roll their eyes at the mention of glass.

Though by now it's a weary debate, there are those who still consider all glass art to be craft, a supposedly less intellectual pursuit than art. The same detractors describe glass artists as buff glassblowers making oversized candy dishes and paperweights.

In part it's sheer envy. Glass artists seem to have more fun. Judging from the attention they get and their sales, they're also popular.

Working at something that for practical reasons must be accomplished in teams, glass artists not only make art together but often share social lives. On First Thursdays, clusters of them make the rounds of gallery openings. While painters toil alone in their studios, glass artists, especially those who work with blown glass, buzz around in their undershirts, their studios cozy and warm from the furnaces, boom boxes turned up. Chihuly's Lake Union factory, called The Boathouse, is legendary for its parties.

SAM and Pilchuck, eager to validate glass' artistic merit, called their July seminar "Contemporary Glass: Seduction vs. Intellect." But judging from the growing collections of contemporary glass at museums, many curators already have decided glass belongs in art museums.

The Tacoma Art Museum has a Chihuly collection and SAM continues to acquire glass. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, works by Seattle-area artists Ginny Ruffner, William Morris, Flora Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick, as well as Chihuly, will be among those exhibited in a show of contemporary glass to open at the museum in April and run through next fall. The pieces are from the museum's collection.

Jane Adlin, Metropolitan Museum research associate of 20th-century design, said the U.S. is where the most innovative contemporary glass is coming from, and that Seattle "is the country's glass center. Pilchuck is the big place for glass," she said.

"We all talk about the Pilchuck spirit, but don't know how to define it," says Haley, the Pilchuck board president. "It's a sense of community, and the fact that not very long ago the art form was relatively unknown, so there's still a pioneer sense about the place . . .

"It's more than Dale Chihuly's Pied-Piperish personality. There's a sense of pushing new boundaries, finding new opportunities, of breaking through.

"Until Pilchuck, glass was an unsung art. That's no longer true."

Updike, R. "Capital Of Glass -- Pilchuck Puts Seattle On The Map -- With Ceremony And Fun, A Family Of Artists Celebrate A Major Milestone In Their Movement" The Seattle Times. August 27, 1995. Website Accessed May 27, 2009. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?slug=2138386&date=19950827

1995 Regina Hackett:

"

If Dale Chihuly's name passes into the language, as Thomas Bowdler's did in honor of his zeal as a censor, it will mean to dazzle (or daunt) with excess.

After making forests, giant butterflies, mutant swamp flowers and multiple clusters of swollen, pendulant breasts, the country's No. 1 glassman now plans to hang five of his 2,000-pound, vividly colored chandeliers over the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy.

Son of a Tacoma meatcutter, 53-year-old ((age)) Chihuly is now in residence with his crew in a tiny Finnish village called Nuutajarvi, population 400. With the blessings of the government, he has taken over the town's traditional glass factory and turned it into the temporary headquarters of Chihuly Inc.

Saying he owned the place would be understatement. Not satisfied with his shower, he commanded the Finnish army to build him a bathtub. Two hours later, it was ready for his leisurely soak. When he mentioned that a helicopter might be useful for his film crew, one was provided, an old, lumbering, camouflage-green Russian model that made canoes rock as it hovered overhead.

FINLAND IS the first stop on what Chihuly hopes will be a five-city glass-blowing tour. At each stop he plans to create a 2,000-pound glass chandelier, among other things. These are the chandeliers that will hang over Venice's Grand Canal, giving the gondoliers below something to worry about besides rain.

Actually, they won't have to worry much. Nobody is likely to be felled by a falling Chihuly. The man is excessive but he's not careless. If he hangs his pieces above the canal, they'll stay there until he takes them down.

Who's paying for all this?

``I am so far," he said, speaking from a portable phone down by the Nuutajarvian river as he directed a film crew to shoot an installation and sent various assistants scurrying with a seemingly endless series of requests.

``It cost me $200,000 for the Finnish trip," he continued. ``All I have to do is sell one chandelier and it's paid for. The studio work (for the five-city tour) will run about $1 million, and if I do a film in each place, the films will be a million each."

Money doesn't worry him. Expenses at his Seattle headquarters, known as the Boathouse, ordinarily run anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000 per month, he said.

Of course, a project such as ``Chihuly Over Venice" takes more than dough. He doesn't have permission to hang his chandeliers in Venice but feels confident he can get it. ``We're talking to the appropriate people," he said.

After spending two weeks in Finland, Chihuly plans to fly to Berlin to see the Bulgarian-born artist known as Christo wrap the Reichstag, the city's war-scarred old parliament building, in silvery fabric with blue ropes for bows. Afterward Chihuly goes to Venice where he hopes to nail down his installation plans.

``Christo is a big influence," Chihuly said. Christo is certainly the model Chihuly needs now. For this project, Chihuly will need Christo's organizational skills.

``I'm taking it one step at a time," he said, and then got distracted. ``Check the light in those trees," he called out to photographer Russell Johnson. ``It's too late to shoot. You need to be here at dawn."

CHIHULY ISN'T just directing teams of glass blowers in Finland. He's making installations as he goes. At his request, a crew stripped the leaves from a pair of 40-foot trees by the river and hung long, translucent glass cylinders on the straight, bare branches, ruby red on one and turquoise on the other.

As he spoke on the phone, three different film crews (one Finnish, one from KCTS-Channel 9 in Seattle and one hired by Chihuly) were focused on parts of the chandeliers, reportedly shaped like squashes or sides of ham, that were floating down the river in a series of photo opportunities.

Chihuly took 35 people with him to Finland, including eight Seattle glass blowers. He's being assisted by 12 Finnish glass-blowing students and 10 master Finnish blowers. They work in four teams, blowing an average of 2,200 pounds of glass daily, with a top figure of 3,000 pounds last Tuesday.

THE SUCCESS of art production isn't usually measured by its poundage. But while Chihuly set weight goals for the teams, he also set high standards for shape, volume, color brilliance and overall impact.

He has the show-business skills of a P.T. Barnum, and yet he's also an artist of consequence. He's the single most important force in elevating the status of glass art from fringe to something close to mainstream. He has forced the art world to reconsider its patronizing attitude toward decorative arts in general and proved that decorative arts have vast appeal to the general public.

His retrospective in 1992 at the Seattle Art Museum broke attendance records and proved exceedingly popular in each venue to which it traveled.

Chihuly and his crew plan to set up shop in Ireland this fall, followed by glass-blowing stops in France, the Czech Republic and Italy."

Hackett, R. "Euro Chihuly, America's premier glass artist is set to dazzle the continent." Seattle Post Intelligencer. June 19, 1995. accessed September 8, 2009. http://www.seattlepi.com/archives/1995/9506190064.asp