Corning Museum of Glass Awards Cheryl Derricotte BIPOC Residency

The Corning Museum of Glass in New York is a not-for-profit museum dedicated to exploring a single material: glass. With almost a half a million visitors from around the world each year, the Museum’s campus is home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of glass, the world’s foremost library on glass, and one of the top glassworking schools (The Studio) in the world.

One of the features of the Studio is Corning’s Artist Residencies. The Artist-in-Residence programs at The Studio provide artists the opportunity to research and experiment with new techniques and subjects in their work. Artists-in-Residence are invited to utilize the resources of the Museum’s campus including The Studio, the extensive collections and archives of the Museum, and the Rakow Research Library.

One of Washington Glass School’s illustrious alumni – Cheryl Derricotte – was awarded by Corning this coming year’s Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Residency (BIPOC).

Originally from Washington, DC, Cheryl now lives and makes art in San Francisco, CA. Her art has been featured in the New York Times, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, MerciSF and the San Francisco Business Times.

The BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) Residency is Corning Museum’s way of actively fostering a culture and community of inclusion that promotes, respects, and celebrates this community.

Artists spend a month at The Studio exploring new directions in glass art or expanding on their current bodies of work while using the immense resources of the world’s leading glass museum. During their residency, each artist gives a presentation about their work during a free public event in The Studio Lecture Room.

Congratulations Cheryl! Looking forward to your presentation and the works from the Residency!!

Richard Whiteley Joins The Studio at Corning Museum of Glass

Richard Whiteley: Senior Program Manager at The Studio

richard.whitleyCelebrated Australian artist Richard Whiteley joins The Corning Museum of Glass Studio as the Senior Program Manager, responsible for developing and managing new glassmaking programming. Richard has spent his life working with glass, developing a fascination for the material when he began apprenticing in stained glass at the age of 16.

Most recently, Whiteley has been working as Associate Professor: Head of the Glass Workshop and Foundation Studies at his alma mater, the Australian National University’s School of Art & Design. He earned his Bachelor of Visual Arts degree from ANU and then went on to earn an MFA in sculpture from the University of Illinois-Urbana.

e175a91ba5b581329beb2d9ba7b4c357Whiteley works primarily in kiln-cast glass and has presented more than a dozen exhibitions in the last decade. His work is represented in the permanent collections of many public institutions worldwide.

“We have experts in nearly all aspects of glassmaking working at The Studio,” said Amy Schwartz, Director of The Studio. “Now Richard will bring to us his extensive knowledge of kiln casting. I look forward to working closely with him to develop exceptional programming that will excite artists from across the world and entice them to come further their work here at The Studio in Corning.”

“The Corning Museum of Glass represents the very best in glass scholarship and research experience,” said Whiteley. “Throughout my career, I’ve been impressed with the quality and impact of the Museum’s projects and programs. It’s a real privilege to be invited to join this exceptional team. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I’m looking forward to making a contribution and shaping the conversations around glass.”

Whiteley joined the Museum on October 14.

Glass Art Remembrances of 9/11

On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes. In a coordinated attack, these events forever changed the face of modern-day America. Artists, like all of us, struggled to comprehend the unfathomable destruction and loss of innocent life. They responded the way they knew best – through their art.

Eric Fischl's "Tumbling Woman" Eric Fischl. “Tumbling Woman, Study,” 2012, glass, 12 x 18 x 14 in.

Eric Fischl; “Tumbling Woman, Study,” 2012, glass, 12 x 18 x 14 in.

Artist Eric Fischl‘s somewhat controversial homage to the 9/11 victims, was expressed in his “Tumbling Woman” sculpture series. The awkward, unnatural pose — the woman is on her back, her legs lifted and held together to her left side — is meant to evoke the bodies that leapt from the World Trade Center towers. It’s a powerful, striking, vulnerable visual -particularly in glass – even without knowing the reference. Fischl said he felt an urgent responsibility to address the terrorist attack through his work, for the public, to help people make sense of what had happened. That is what art does at its best, he said, adding he saw his sculpture as “a sincere gesture of expressing the pain and vulnerability. Those feelings were part of the tragedy.”

Michael Janis; "The Tower", 2009, glass, glass powder imagery, steel, 19" x 37"

Michael Janis; “The Tower”, 2009, glass, glass powder imagery, steel, 19 x 37 in. (photo by Pete Duvall)

In a similar tribute theme is Michael Janis’ “The Tower” from his tarot series of glass panels. That piece was selected in 2009 to be part the Corning Museum of Glass‘ (CMOG) ‘New Glass Review’. Tina OldknowCMOG’s curator of modern glass from 2000-2014, and the senior curator of modern and contemporary glass from 2014 until her retirement in September 2015, wrote this commentary on the Janis artwork and how the submissions that year showed a narrative influence. She wrote:

“To introduce my narrative category…(t)he more literal representations included the stories told by Debora Coombs, Ian Mowbray, and especially Michael Janis. … On the other hand, a truly big and dangerous event is depicted in Janis’s “The Tower” Tarot Card. Anyone familiar with the tarot knows that the tower, the 16th card of the major arcana, does not bring glad tidings. I was impressed by Janis’s powerful, sad, and appropriate interpretation of this card as a literal reflection of the tragic events of September 11, 2001.”

On this 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we are reminded that art can document a time and place forever, as it often represents an exploration of the human condition. It’s a memory device that tells a story that is multi-layered, complex and paradoxical. The stories told through art are vulnerable to interpretation and thus keep the moment alive.

Recalling the devastation that came that day is painful for many. Yet we must remember the past, or we deprive ourselves of its lessons for overcoming our present struggles and divisions.

Corning Museum of Glass Appoints New Curator of Modern and Contemporary Glass

The Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) today announced the appointment of Susie J. Silbert as curator of modern and contemporary glass. An independent curator, writer, and historian, Silbert has developed an encyclopedic knowledge of glass, and strong connections to people in the field. In her new role, Silbert will be responsible for the acquisition, exhibition, cataloguing, and research of the Museum’s modern and contemporary collection, a period ranging from 1900 to the present day. She will also oversee the programming of the 26,000-square-foot Contemporary Art + Design Galleries, part of a 100,000-square-foot addition which opened in March 2015. Silbert will join the Museum on April 18.

Susie SilbertSilbert fills the position following the retirement of Tina Oldknow, who was curator from 2000-2015.The modern and contemporary glass collection contains close to 18,000 objects, and expands annually through gifts and acquisitions.

With a background in craft, design, and glassmaking, Silbert has a passion for interpreting the built world. In her current role as an independent curator, Silbert has partnered with institutions and arts organizations including Parsons The New School for Design, UrbanGlass, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and the Center for Art in Wood, amongst others. She has worked on numerous exhibitions featuring diverse media, and has contributed to exhibition catalogues for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Chrysler Museum. Silbert has also worked with galleries and artists, most notably holding the position of curator and collaborator at the studio of glass innovator, Mark Peiser. She currently teaches history of glass at Rhode Island School of Design, and is a board member of the Furniture Society. She was also named a finalist for the inaugural American Craft Council Emerging Voices Award (2014) and an Emerging Leader of New York Arts (2014-2015).

Read more at the Corning Museum site.

Submit for CMOG New Glass Review

 

 

Submit Your Work To CMOG’s New Glass Review 

Published by The Corning Museum of Glass, New Glass Review is an annual survey of glass in contemporary art, architecture, craft, and design created in the previous year by emerging and established artists, as well as students. The works are chosen by a changing jury of curators, artists, designers, art dealers, and critics.

The Museum invites artists, craftspeople, designers, and architects worldwide to submit images of new works using glass. The deadline for submissions to New Glass Review 37 is October 1, 2015. Fee = $20.

Submit online – click HERE for link.

 

History and Evolution of Studio Glass Lecture Oct 5th

© Erwin Eisch / CMOG

Whats going on in the photo above? 
Is it a new 8 member boy band created from TV show “X Factor”? No.
Still photo from the latest sequel to a Hollywood slasher/gore film? Nope.
Some Portland hipsters gathering at a coffee café that doubles as a low-carbon-footprint bike shop? Wrong Again.

European glass innovator Erwin Eisch made the 8 mold blown works as a tribute to Harvey Littleton in 1976. Eisch’s non-traditional approach to glassmaking had a profound impact during the formative years of the American Studio Glass movement, and his relationship with American glass pioneer Harvey K. Littleton forged an important link between European and American studio artists working in glass. 

Want to know more about the history of Studio Glass? This Saturday, October, 5, from 1 pm, the Debra Ruzinsky of the Washington Glass School will talk and show images presenting a  broad international survey rooted in the early days of studio work. Works by artists Sybren Valkema,  Edris Eckhardt, Michael and Francis Higgins, Libensky and Brychtova, Ann Wolff, Erwin Eisch, Kyohei Fujita, Vera Liskova, to name a few early & influential artists — such as female glass artist Asa Brandt, who has been called the “Harvey Littleton of Sweden”.

This free talk is a great way to know who and where glass has come as we move boldly into a new future of the medium.

BLUE MADONNA by Ann Wolff

What Came Before / A Slide History Of The Studio Glass Movement

Lecturer : Debra Ruzinsky 

When : Saturday,October 5th  

From:1 pm

Cost : Free of charge…RSVP to: washglassschool@aol.com
Where: Washington Glass School
             3700 Otis Street, Mount Rainier, MD 20712

Oh, and the titles of the Erwin Eisch heads:
(A) Littleton the Gentleman: mirrored inside, with glasses, with marble base. (B) Littleton the Poet: with glasses and beanie. (C) Littleton the Teacher: mirrored inside, glassblower painted on right side of head; set on square black base. (D) Littleton, Man of Frauenau: cold painted in facial area and around base with scene of town. (E) Littleton the Worker: applied band of colorless glass across nose and around head, square black base. (F) Littleton’s Headache: painted with bandages surrounding head and chin area, etched in other areas, square black base. (G) Littleton the Fragile. (H) Littleton’s Spirit: with collar and tie.

Call For Entries: New Glass Review 35

Each year, the Corning Museum of Glass conducts a worldwide competition to select 100 images of new works in glass. Objects considered excellent from any of several viewpoints- such as function, subject matter, aesthetics, and technique – will be chosen. The works are chosen by a changing jury of curators, artists, designers, art dealers, and critics.

The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2013. In late November or early December, a jury selects 100 images from the submissions. New Glass Review is published every spring by The Corning Museum of Glass in conjunction with Neues Glas (New Glass), published by Ritterbach Verlag, Frechen, Germany, and GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly, published by UrbanGlass, Brooklyn, New York. 

You can apply online – (2013 is the last year for paper applications).   Click HERE to jump to Corning’s online application. Entry deadline – Oct 1, 2013.

Harvey K. Littleton and the Studio Glass Movement

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In 1962, two groundbreaking workshops led by artist Harvey K. Littleton and glass scientist Dominick Labino introduced artists to the material of glass as a medium for artistic expression. Littleton and Labino presented their development of a small, portable furnace and low temperature melting-point glass, providing artists access to glass and glassblowing techniques for the first time. These workshops kickstarted the Studio Glass movement, which emphasized the artist as designer and maker, with a focus on making one-of-a-kind objects.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the American Studio Glass movement, in 2012, a number of museums will be mounting exhibitions on the history and origins of the movement.

The Corning Museum of Glass has two exhibitions that opened November 17, 2011 and will run through January 6, 2013.

In the Spring 2012: Chazen Museum of Art (University of Wisconsin, Madison) has an exhibition planned, and there is an exhibition planned for November 2, 2012 thru December 21, 2012 at the: Visual Arts Center of Richmond (Richmond, Virginia)


The man called the father of the Studio Glass Movement was not at first a glass artist. Littleton was born in 1922 and raised in Corning, New York. Throughout his childhood, he had many opportunities to observe glassworking processes and to learn about the properties of glass at the Corning Glass Works. His father, Dr. Jesse T. Littleton, known as J.T., was an expert in the infrared properties of silicon and the first physicist to join the newly established research team at Corning Glass Works headed by Dr. Eugene C. Sullivan.

J.T. Littleton often discussed the properties of glass as dinnertime conversation, and Saturday morning visits to the glassworks were routine for Littleton when he was young. In 1936, he and his brothers witnessed, with his father and many others, the dramatic failure of the first casting of the 200-inch mirror for the Hale Telescope at Mount Palomar in California.

Littleton’s mother, Bessie Cook Littleton, was instrumental in developing Corning’s Pyrex cookware. J. T. Littleton had the idea that Corning’s low-expansion borosilicate glass, which had been developed for use in battery jars (used in rural areas before widespread electrification), could be used for cooking. He took home a battery jar that had been cut into a round, shallow pan, and he convinced his wife to bake a cake in it. Her success led to the development of Corning’s Pyrex housewares.


After receiving a master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Arts Harvey Littleton embarked on the career of potter. Littleton received recognition for his work as a ceramicist in a national exhibition sponsored by the American Crafts Council at the First International Exposition of Ceramics in Cannes, France.

In 1959 he began to investigate the possibility of glass as a medium, and in 1960 had melted glass and cold-worked lumps of cullet. In the summer of 1962 the Toledo Museum of Art invited Littleton to lead a glassblowing workshop. It was in that seminar that Littleton introduced the idea that glass could be mixed and melted, blown and worked in the studio by the artist. Up to that time it was widely believed that glass objects could only be made in the highly structured, mass-produced world of the glass industry where the labor of making glass is divided between designers and skilled craftsmen.


With Littleton’s active encouragement and promotion, glass programs sprang up at universities, art schools, and summer programs across the country during the late 1960s and early 1970s; and the Studio Glass movement became an international phenomenon. What began fifty years ago as a small group of artists who shared an interest in glass as an artistic material has grown into an international community of thousands.”

In 1984, his daughter, Maurine Littleton opened an art gallery committed to artists working in glass and ceramics in Washington DC’s historic Georgetown neighborhood.


Rizzoli Publications

Maurine advised on Joan Falconer Byrd‘s new book : Harvey K Littleton: A Life in Glass” – This new book has many previously unpublished archival photographs and a detailed chronology. Images and the history of Littleton’s early ceramic and glass vessels and his richly colorful glass sculptures, among them the late “Lyrical Movement” series are detailed in this beautifully designed book. The book includes work by his close friend and European counterpart Erwin Eisch and his former student and much-celebrated glass artist Dale Chihuly.


Below is “Pioneers of Studio Glass” – a video that was produced by WGTE Public Media for the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass. It is a fascinating look at the 1962 Toledo Workshops where Harvey Littleton and Dominick Labino first experimented with making glass outside of the factory setting.


Pioneers of Studio Glass from corecubed on Vimeo.

CMOG "New Glass Review 33": A Call for Entries

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Corning Museum of Glass has posted its annual Call for Entries in the museum’s New Glass Review publication.All glassmakers, artists, designers, and companies are invited to participate in New Glass Review 33. Only glass designed and made between October 1, 2010, and October 1, 2011, may be submitted for this annual survey.



From CMOG’s website:

Each year, The Corning Museum of Glass conducts a worldwide competition to select 100 images of new works in glass. A committee drawn from designers, artists, curators, and critics makes the selection. The publication is intended to keep its audience, which includes museums, artists, libraries, collectors, scholars, and dealers, informed of recent developments in the field. Objects considered excellent from any of several viewpoints—such as function, subject matter, aesthetics, and technique—will be chosen. The objects selected will be published in color with the names of the makers and brief descriptions of the pieces.

Participants are requested to complete the entry form, submitting a total of three digital images illustrating one work per image. Slides and transparencies will not be accepted. Three images of different pieces are preferred, although participants may send multiple views of one or two pieces. Digital photographs, which should be made using the highest-resolution setting on the camera, must be of actual objects designed and made between October 1, 2010, and October 1, 2011.

The New Glass Review competition will be judged in early December. All entries, accompanied by a $20.00 USD entry fee, must be postmarked no later than October 1, 2010, and sent to: New Glass Review Curatorial Department The Corning Museum of Glass, One Museum Way Corning, New York 14830-2253, USA.

For more info – click HERE.

For a look at some of the winners of New Glass Review 31 – click HERE.

Glass Sparks: Jeff Zimmer

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Washington Glass School alumn Jeff Zimmer had returned to the school for a visit in January. Now a resident of the UK, Jeff lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he received a MDES in Glass & Architectural Glass, at the Edinburgh College of Art, (ECA), where he is now an instructor.

In the UK, Jeff has been making quite a name for his artwork – recently featured in the British Glass Biennale and shown in a collaboration between Contemporary Applied Arts & Contemporary Glass Society This year he will be exhibitng at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery, in the UK .

Jeff’s work was selected to be part of the Corning Museum of Glass’ New Glass Review 31. Tina Oldknow, Curator of Modern Glass, The Corning Museum of Glass said of his work:

“… glass is not immediately apparent in Jeff Zimmer’s ‘1/1000th the Distance between Me and You (in a Deadrise)’, but it is an essential part of the work. A dark and dramatic object, it is constructed of 22 layers of enameled and sandblasted glass in a light box. In the obscured photograph, an object in the distance that emerges from black clouds under a clearing sky can be faintly discerned: is it a ship or something else? Using a box of cut glass sheets, Zimmer creates the depth and luminosity of a painting, but it is an image that undoubtedly changes every time it is viewed, depending on the angle and the ambient light.”

While at the Glass School, Jeff worked on a piece that will be shown at the WGS 10th Anniversary Exhibition to be held this May at Washington, DC’s Longview Gallery.

A strong narrative is created by meticulously layering imagery made from enameled and sandblasted glass.

The layered composition works in a tremendously subtle way; the depth of field changes as the viewer moves around the work, allowing one’s perception to shift and migrate.

Jeff evaluates and modifies each individual layer of glass as he fires the enamel onto the glass sheets.

Jeff constructs a box of glass for presentation, and installs LED lighting to illuminate the panels.
The box-like construction of each work creates an almost cinematic experience of space, volume and depth. One is drawn in by the emergent light from beneath the horizon or trailing into the distance like a wake.
Check out the final piece – titled “Fog Of Communication” at the 10th Anniversary Show!
Click HERE to jump to Jeff’s website.

For other glass artist profiles:

Diane Cabe

Sean Hennessey

Teddie Hathaway

Elizabeth Mears

Allegra Marquart

Jackie Greeves