Online Art Auction for Nicole Puzan

>

The Glass School’s Nicole Puzan is very sick, and her family has created “Art On A Wire“, a virtual art auction to raise money for Nicole’s medical and living expenses.
26 year old
Nicole is a life-long Northern Virginia resident, a graduate of Richmond’s VCU School of the Arts, and is an uninsured glass artist who was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer.
The auction will be held through eBay, and is scheduled to begin on March 13th, Nicole’s 27th birthday, and will run approximately 10 days. The auction will include art of all kinds: sculpture, painting, drawing, glass, photography, ceramics/pottery, music, video/film, textiles, mixed media, and anything in between. Please donate to this effort to help Nicole fight and win the battle with ovarian cancer! A number of glass artists and friends of the Glass School are participating in the auction – here is your chance to get one of their works and help someone out!

Click HERE to jump to the eBay link. It is starting today, & items are being added in an ongoing basis – so check back often!
You can also follow along on a blog that has been setup with other ways to donate or updates on Nicole –
Click HERE to jump to fiercegrrl fund blog.

Nicole needs help in other ways besides monetary – on Tuesday, March 2nd she started chemotherapy. Chemo eliminates cancer cells. However, chemo can also attack healthy red blood cells (RBCs) and negatively impact the body’s ability to make red blood cells. One way to counteract the negative effects of anemia is through blood transfusions and donors are being called into action right now to donate locally in Nicole’s name.
Nicole is blood type A+.
Click HERE to jump to information on how to donate blood.

Preview of New Class Schedule for Spring & Summer

>The long anticipated Spring & Summer Class Schedule is just about finished – here is a sneak peak at the class list. There are some exciting seminars planned – have a look!
Some classes are not listed below – the photo sessions, welding, Bullseye Glass rollup and more, but they will all be online soon!
Click HERE to jump to the website listing.
Spring & Summer Glass School Classes

Beginner’s Glass Lover’s Weekend

groups

Our most popular class, this is the fastest way to learn all aspects of warm glass in the shortest amount of time! Under the supervision of several professional glass artists you will learn the fundamentals of fusing, slumping and dimensional kiln casting. Everything from bowls and plates to sculptural objects… this is the perfect way for a beginner to learn the basics of glass… and you will leave with several very cool items! Offered twice this semester.

Instructors Tim Tate / Michael Janis
Dates Offered 4 times this semester:
Section 1001C : Sat/Sun Mar. 27 and 28
Section 1014A : Sat/Sun May 22 and 23
Section 1014B: Sat/Sun June 26 and 27
Section 1014C: Sat/Sun Aug 7 and 8
Time 1pm to 5pm each day
Tuition $300 per student (all materials included)

Special Seminar Offering :
Social Networking and Marketing Your Art

social network

This special seminar will be held during CraftWeek DC and in cooperation with the James Renwick Alliance’s spring Craft Weekend. Come explore with us the possibilities for advancing your artwork using today’s popular social networks. Get shows, sell your work, approach galleries, blogs, newspapers……so many forms for the new face of art to investigate.

Instructors: Rania Hassan / Tim Tate / Lenny Campello
Date: Sat. April, 24
Time: 1pm to 3pm
Tuition : $20… Email RSVP to: washglassschool@aol.com

Special Free Demonstration :
Matt Szosz – Inflating Fused Glass

matt szosz

This fascinating and unusual FREE demo will be held during CraftWeek DC and in cooperation with the James Renwick Alliance’s spring Craft Weekend. Come join us while Matt Szosz shows us an amazing kiln formed experience. Great for Bullseye or Float Glass. A wondrous technique to add to your personal arsenal…..or just really fun to watch as well!

Instructor: Matt Szosz
Date : Sat. April 24th
Time: 11am till 1 pm
Tuition : FREE

Lighting Solutions For Your Home

red lamp

This class will bring some serious color to your life, and brighten up your living space. This is yet another installment in the popular lighting series, and will focus on ceiling lamps. You will design your own glass, create your own shape, and have your choice of several different hanging or mounting options. For considerably less than the price of a designer fixture, you can put your own name on one. Tuition will include mold materials, glass, and mounting hardware. Some glass experience is useful, but not necessary and electrical experience will be provided.

Instructor: Erwin Timmers
Dates: Wednesday evenings in May/June (19, 26, 2)
Time: 7 to 9:30 pm
Tuition: $350

Beginning Sculptural Flameworking

marble



Learn the basics of making objects in the flame from borosilicate (Pyrex) glass. This 2-day class will focus on skills that are the basis of working with glass on the torch. You will come away with knowledge and some fine objects too! Rob is an energetic, knowledgeable instructor and artist who is ready and willing to help anyone learn this fascinating art form. The materials fee provides student with initial pack of glass, fuel for the torches and the loan of a full set of hand tools. Additional glass and supplies are available for purchase as the class progresses. Take this class more than once to reinforce your skills!


Instructor : Robert Kincheloe
Dates: Offered 3 times this semester :
Session A : Saturdays in May (29) and June ((5)
Session B : Saturdays in June 12/19
Session C : Saturdays in July 10/17
Time: 10am to 5pm (pack a lunch)
Tuition : $200 (plus a material fee of $50 due the first day of class)

The Next Step in Sculptural Flameworking – Working Hollow

robert k

This is a student driven class that will promote techniques not displayed in the beginning class.

In this 2-day class, students will learn to work with tubing to create glass sculptures. (materials cost of $50 payable at first class meeting)
Instructor : Robert Kincheloe
Date: Saturdays in August (14/21
Time: 10am to 5pm (pack a lunch)
Tuition : $200 (plus materials cost of $50 payable at first class meeting)


Bowls, Bowls, Bowls

Blue Bowl

One of our more popular classes – everybody appreciates a well made bowl! Work with different types of glass (Bullseye, float, dichroic) and learn some cool techniques for fusing and slumping. This is a great class for beginners to learn and for those with more advanced skills to expand on their glass vocabulary. This is the class where art and function live happily ever after!

Instructor : Michael Janis
Dates: Tuesday eves in May (18, 25) and June (1)
Time: 6:30pm to 9pm
Tuition: $325

Get Your Imagery In The Glass

janis. imagery in.glass

Want a focused class that shows how to get your artistic images fused into glass? In this one-day workshop, glass artist Michael Janis will show you what processes he uses to gets his incredibly detailed artwork – and some alternate methods. This hands-on class will deal with high-fire enamels, powders, fusing image transfer and more!
Class Limit: 6 students

Instructor : Michael Janis
Date : Saturday, June 5th
Time: 1:30 to 5pm
Tuition: $200

Basics Of Lost Wax Casting

debra ruzinskydeb ruzinsky

In this class we will make a sculptural vessel form in the “lost wax” method. Students will begin with a pre-made wax form that they learn to carve and alter. Students are asked to research surface design ideas prior to starting, bringing sketches, magazine clippings, xerox’s, etc. No experience is necessary (wear clothing that can get messy and closed toed shoes).
Instructor: Debra Ruzinsky
Dates: Saturdays and Sundays in June. (19,20,27)
Time: 9:30am to 1:30 pm (bring a lunch!)
Tuition: $350

Class – Open Studio at Your Own Pace

open studio
Already know the basics of casting or fusing? Open Studio gives each student the opportunity to work independently in a world class studio. Tuition includes a kiln firing per session, clear base glass and colored scrap glass, use of studio tools.

Instructor : Studio Staff
Dates : Wed/Thurs/Sat afternoons (call to confirm appointment)
Time : 1pm to 5pm
Tuition : $300 for 4 sessions

Laurel Art Guild Reception

>

The Laurel Art Guild’s 41st Open Juried Exhibition opened this past week, with a reception that featured an awards ceremony. The opening had a great turnout, with standing room only during the juror talk about the artwork and the selection process.

Juror Michael Janis awards the first place award to Sylvia Valentino for her work “Walk At The Pond”.


all photos by Natalya Parris

First-place winner was Sylvia L. Valentino for her mixed media work, “Walk at the Pond.” Second place was awarded to Kimberley Bursic for “Cimabue Lived Here,” also mixed media. The third-place honors went to Nic Galloro for the wall-mounted sculpture, “Sorcerer.”

Congratulations to all the artists that were selected to exhibit in the show!

Laurel Art Guild
41st Annual Open Juried Exhibition
Montpelier Arts Center
9652 Muirkirk Road
Laurel, MD 20708
Thru March 28, 2010

* Click HERE for a link to the Gazette.net profile of one of the artists in the exhibition.

"The End" of Glass. An essay

>

Even befor the term “Post-craft Art” a New York based writer William Warmus described the “end” of the Studio Glass Movement – way back in 1995. The following essay appears on William’s website and this essay appeared in Glass magazine, Autumn, 1995

The End?
Studio glass has its beginning and end in America, where the present situation offers opportunities in two directions. Looking back, historians have an obligation to write the history of studio glass and establish its key figures, its first wave. Looking to the future, artists have the opportunity to incorporate the technical legacy of studio glass into new narratives.

Studio glass is at a pivotal point in its history. The recognition of established masters including Tom Patti and Dale Chihuly (the alpha and omega of technique and marketing), Richard Marquis and Dan Dailey (our humorists), Paul Stankard and Mark Peiser (pioneering naturalists), Howard Ben Tre, Mary Shaffer and Marvin Lipofsky (all sculptors) and the increasing attention paid to their work by writers, museums and collectors indicates the passing of the era of isolated innovation within the field. First wave work has the fresh, innocent quality typical of profound innovation and when the history of studio glass is written, the period from roughly the founding of the Glass Art Society in 1971 into the late 1980s will be theirs as originators and educators. And as innovators, they became the ones to challenge.

Originally, the concept of the glass artist working alone in the studio made sense as a way of moving beyond the meaningless and unproductive traditions that Harvey Littleton and others sought to escape, as they existed in the confines of the 1950s glass factory, which had become highly commercialized and unresponsive to artist’s needs. This led to a period of intense technical and stylistic innovation as studio glassmakers slowly reinvented the factory concepts of continuous technical experimentation, teamwork, efficient organization of space, refinement through repetition. Now the early masters of studio glass have become the champions of its traditions. The criticism leveled against many of these artists–that they do not change–no longer seems valid as time reveals the diversity of work produced during their careers. Significantly, these pioneering figures may now be seen as justified in consolidating their positions: they almost have a duty to perfect and publish techniques that took decades to refine.

We have perhaps forgotten that studio glass is largely about technique and broadening the definition of the factory: although it began in the United States as a way to get the creative glassmaker out of industry and into a pristine studio, it was also a way to put the artist back in control of techniques and some kind of factory. Today artists like Dale Chihuly and Dan Dailey are the direct heirs to Tiffany and Galle who, in the words of Harvey Littleton, “were trained as artists and had chosen glass, but [who] chose to work within the framework of factories that they founded, factories that were totally under their control so that they made very exciting things”. This is why studio glass begins and ends in America, where glassmakers first felt expelled from industry and where many now control their own homemade factories.

Most art movements last only a generation and the styles grouped together under the term studio glass are not exempt. Exceptional is the fact that new waves of studio glassmakers and collectors often behave as if their world will continue to evolve at the rapid pace set by the early innovators. This leads to the marketing of “innovations” that repeat, sometimes unknowingly, the early successes of the first wave. The terrain of studio glass is only now being charted, its circumference and boundaries measured, our susceptibility to imitations lessened. Criticism of glass exists, but is sporadic and tends to be published in specialized journals. We need forceful criticism as a gauge of originality and corrective to excesses, whether of taste, price, or commercialism. Forget the endlessly distracting quarrels over “Is it Art?” We need critics and historians to engage in the debates from which consensus will emerge about the key artists and objects of the studio glass era, even if some turn out to be industrial designers, some objects made by production studios. And we desperately need critics who will generously champion and defend the individuals they support.

I would venture to suggest that when the history of studio glass is written, significant accomplishments will include the growth of a community, the emergence within this community of innovative approaches to the marketplace, and the cultivation of maximum diversity within the medium itself.

Communities grow from a mixture of common attributes and interest, and I challenge readers to find any art communities that are more unified than the one focused on glass. As the American art scene expanded from the 1960s onward it became increasingly difficult to capture the sense of community shared by earlier groups such as the abstract expressionists, unified by location (New York and the Hamptons), dealers (Peggy Guggenheim), collectors, and critics (Greenberg and Rosenberg). The current art situation mirrors the present political situation in the United States: it is too diverse and factional to be called a community in the traditional sense. But the glass world, the glass ghetto so disparaged in some circles, is not. It has remained a community on the order of the earlier ones that are now disbanded. That is something to celebrate, not dismiss and discourage. If you are an insider and have forgotten the warmth of individual members and the strength of the crowd, or a newcomer and want to see for yourself, visit any of the great gatherings of the clan (the phrase of one prominent critic): the October Pilchuck School benefit auction, the springtime Glass Art Society conferences, the great exhibition and collector reunion at SOFA Chicago every fall.

The market for studio glass matured from roughly 1979-1989, led by legendary dealers, notably Ferdinand Hampson and Douglas Heller, who in many ways took the place of art critics as promoters of the “new glass”. In my mind, the key innovation in this market was the development of a close knit and highly involved community of collectors on a national (not regional) scale, unlike anything in the artworld, who for many reasons found that they enjoyed each other’s company, enjoyed taking glassblowing lessons, founding philanthropic societies to support emerging artists, etc.. Many were couples who collected as a means of enhancing a relationship, and many collectors were successful business people who brought a benignly competitive approach to acquiring studio glass.

Since 1990, stagnation has been evident. Many of the founding collectors have built large, mature collections and consequently are less active. Impersonal forces, primarily discounting and studio sales, drive the nineties market and have taken the lead away from pro-active dealers and collectors: who are the new Hampsons, Hellers and Saxes of the nineties? What are the bold moves, such as opening a gallery in SoHo or energizing a major art museum (Toledo) to renew its support for contemporary glass? There are certainly signs of optimism, as some members of the new generation of studio glassmakers have been able to raise their prices by showing in a fine arts context where prices are traditionally higher. But should we be optimistic that the studio glass community and market is increasingly driven by external forces, and no longer by its own internal momentum, which now seems dissipated?

Art communities are defined more by shared aspirations than shared achievements, which tend to be recognized as individual. As leading figures in studio glass achieve national attention and distance themselves from their origins, the aspirations of the community become diffused and susceptible to sentimentalizing. Now, as younger artists working with studio glass techniques develop stronger roots in the art world, signs of disintegration are only emphasized. Their aspirations lie elsewhere, as may their community ties. This is inevitable: communities are destined to dissolve or evolve. And while the ever present fear in political communities, republican or democratic, is that they will succumb to tyranny, art communities might rightly fear more the effects of neglect and marginalization. The pond may be drying up.

The glassmakers who came after the first wave and matured in the 1980s, as well as those now entering the field, face a daunting situation. Stagnation, exhaustion and lack of direction are words applied in the 1990s not only to studio glass, but to all aspects of life in the United States. The end of the cold war has unmasked the decay of moral values in nations on both sides of the iron curtain. Artists, aware of the changes within society, have documented this corruption. Pathological art, art about the sickness of society, has replaced the avant-garde art in the mainstream. Are we witnessing the desperate end of an era, or a stillborn birth?

Studio glass itself is not stagnant, it is complete. There is an uncanny parallel between the development of studio glass and of glass blowing in ancient Rome. As Donald Harden noticed, in writing for The Glass of the Caesars, “There must have been some experimenting before glass-blowing became accepted and well understood by glassworkers… but …within twenty or thirty years they proved capable of developing almost all the inflation techniques still present nearly 2,000 years later in the workshops of their modern successors.” I believe the argument can be made that the period of innovation in studio glass, roughly from 1962 through the end of the nineteen eighties, was the most significant period in the history of glass since Roman times.

The significance of studio glass may be its cultivation of and openness to diversity, not in an ethnic sense but in a technical, material one. The preserve of glass is everywhere, not just in the artworld. Sometimes it seems that glassmakers make things for no reason at all except the technical challenge, but in fact studio glassmakers are willing heirs to a long and mixed tradition of craftmakers, artists, souvenir shops, anomalous extra-artistic stuff, stuff so beautiful or unusual or peculiar that glass has become a loose cannon among media: it is unpredictable how any glass object will be appreciated once it is made. The unpredictable beauty inherent in glass means that an extreme surplus of value may at any moment be attached to any object: a factory made souvenir or the damaged 200 inch telescope mirror blank on display at The Corning Glass Center. This suggests that some of the best works in glass are not necessarily magnificent works, but those that inspire magnificently. These may be turned out by many different kinds of studios, and it is the willingness of many to accept this diversity that has kept the community vital.

Will another 2,000 years be required before the word new can again be applied to glass making? The confused and incomplete styles of art we see emerging from glass studios today are indicative of experimental, transitional, rococo and mannerist work that, in moving away from studio glass traditions, has yet to establish its own identity. Some of the best work has simply taken its place in the art world in general and is unrecognizable as studio glass: Christopher Wilmarth, never a studio glassmaker, led the way in this direction.

Despite the success of Duchamp’s “Large Glass,” glass as a material for art has never been comfortable in association with the avant-garde or its pathological successors (even Galle, the sickliest of glassmakers, asserted the vitality of nature through his symbolism). Art glass that imitates the look and actions of the avant-garde appears immature and kitschy or stale and pompous. Maybe glass is too inherently healthy, glassmakers too accepting of diversity, to fully participate in the current art scene. Tiffany and Galle may yet emerge as more central to glass than Duchamp or neo-expressionism.

Perhaps the most promising glassmakers are now renovating venerable glassmaking traditions by producing vessels and figures within a narrative art that has links to traditional storytelling. Maybe the word renovation will come to replace the word deconstruction as a mantra for the nineties. The interest in narration, in narrative art, is significant for renovation: retelling is a means of renewal. Narration promises to be the tool that is added to the “technical” tools developed by studio glassmakers over the last 30-odd years, a tool that is necessary for retrieving lost legacies and for opening up future horizons. As Paul Ricoeur, the essential philosopher of narrative, wrote: “Making and narrating have become the two sides of one process.”

Today, making glass and narrating are the two sides of one process. Yet narrative studio glass should not be weakened by narrowing its definition to a sort of three-dimensional storytelling or by appropriating to itself the roles of painting and sculpture as documentarians of the pathological and the unhealthy. The role of narrative in glass, like the role of telescopes in astronomy, should be nothing less than the humanization of time and space, so that we can make a home in the expanding universe. This project promises to establish for glass a role independent from the other arts.

William Warmus, Ithaca

June, 1995

For a link to William’s website essay:
http://www.warmus.us/The%20End%20essay%20Warmus.htm

Washington Glass School History Project

>

1338 Half Street ca 2005

The area is now under the Washington Nationals Baseball Park

Glass artist Diane Cabe is creating a history of the studio glass movement in the Washington, DC area, and had contacted members of the Washington Glass School to get comments on how times have changed, what direction does glass art and craft seem to be going towards and sought other forms of historical documentation.
The Washington Glass School celebrates its 9th birthday this coming May, and I want to start planning now for the 10th anniversary next year by going thru old photos, show announcements, class schedules, etc. and have the WGS history recorded.

Float Glass Class, 2004

Glass 3 exhibition 2007, Georgetown
Three glass centers (Washington, DC, Toledo, OH, Sunderland, UK) combined for an international show.

Tim Tate, Erwin Timmers, Michael Janis 2005
Glass Gallery at Art-O-Matic, 2004
Where the Washington Post’s Blake Gopnick’s scathing review of the all-media show titled ‘Hanging’s Too Good For It’ included the commentary: “… the glasswork looked all right. Glass is such a gorgeous medium it’s hard to screw it up, and you need some basic training even to begin to work in it.” High praise indeed!

3700 Otis Street, Mount Rainier, MD, 2007

As such – if any of you out there have old photos or other ephemera of the glass school – please send them in!

Tim Tate in Manifest Equality

>Tim Tate is one of the featured artists in the huge LA show “Manifest Equality”, which opens this week. Some superstar artists will be participating, including Gary Baseman, Herb Williams, Marc Williams, Shepard Fairey, Kelly Towles and of course, our Tim Tate.

From the Manifest Equality website:

Overview:
Throughout history artists have lent their creative expression to the ideas and issues that shape life in our communities, our country and our world. The MANIFEST EQUALITY Gallery gathers together a diverse array of over a hundred of the nation’s most talented visual artists under one roof to celebrate that role and join with our gay (LGBT) friends, family members and co-workers to demand full and equal rights for all Americans.


Mission:

We believe that all Americans must be granted FULL & EQUAL RIGHTS with no exceptions.

The MANIFEST EQUALITY Gallery, issues an inspiring, visual call-to-action, with hundreds of artists motivating public energy toward true reform on a local, state and national level.

MANIFEST EQUALITY will be open to the public, Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 through Sunday, March 7th, 2010 between the hours of 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM with extended hours Friday – Sunday.

Show Details:
March 3rd – March 7th, 2010
Wed & Thurs – 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Friday – 11:00 am – 10:00 pm
Sat & Sun – 10:00 am – 6:00 pm

1341 Vine Street
(between Hollywood & Fountain)
Los Angeles, CA 90028-8141


website: http://www.manifestequality.com

Introducing Washington Glass School’s New Studio Coordinator

>

Robert Kincheloe (right)

The Washington Glass School welcomes its new studio coordinator: Robert Kincheloe. Robert has been working with glass since 1997, with a strong background in borosilicate glass. He has studied furnace glassblowing, flameworking, scientific glassblowing, sculpture, murrini, encasements, casting and coldworking. Over the years he has helped to set up several glass studios and has spent the last two years as a studio artist at the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, VA.

Robert’s work centers on the use of combining hot, warm and cold glass processes, and he takes a mathematical approach to design. This encourages him to repeat a technique over and over in search of perfecting the logic of the design and controlling its process.

Robert hopes to expand the glass community through his works, classes, demos and lectures, and as such, he will be creating a new series of flameworking borosilicate classes here at the glass school.

Floral Cube by Robert Kincheloe

photo: AnythingPhotographic

Robert was part of the Washington Post’s article on the opening of the Workhouse Arts Center in 2008 – click HERE to read the article.

Robert at his torch @ Lorton. He has since escaped the former prison.

Photo: Dayna Smith for the Washington Post.