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World’s top scholars speak in Sunderland
Released: Thursday 15th March 2012 at 10:16
Two of the world’s most renowned glass artists have spoken about their work to students at the University of Sunderland.
Fulbright Scholars Tim Tate and Michael Janis gave a talk and met staff and students at the university’s National Glass Centre this week. The Fulbright Scholarship, founded in 1946, aims to promote cultural understanding through educational exchange. Both artists travelled from Washington DC to work with the Sunderland Creative Cohesion Group, the University of Sunderland and the wider community, to share their glass and ceramics practice and art work.
Michael Janis specialises in layering glass and using glass powder to create pictures, while Tim Tate blends the traditional craft of glass making with new media technology. Both work closely with artists in Washington DC to create public sculpture using the latest glass and ceramics advances.
Professor Kevin Petrie, Glass and Ceramics Team Leader at the university, says: “This is one of several recent visits by distinguished artists and scholars from around the world to the National Glass Centre, reflecting our international status in the fields of creative Glass and Ceramics.
“Tim and Michael offer our students, local schools and representatives from the region’s cultural sector important insights into methods for making glass art, perspectives on the art world in the USA and the work of the Washington Glass Studio where they are co-directors.”
The Washington Glass Studio is focused on providing public art projects and private commissions incorporating glass as a sculptural element, through collaboration with artists working in different media in the US capital.
The Fulbright Program is one of the most prestigious awards programs worldwide, operating in over 155 countries. Forty-three Fulbright Scholars have won Nobel Prizes, and seventy-eight have won Pulitzer Prizes. More Nobel laureates are former Fulbright recipients than any other award program.
Fulbright Travelers Check In
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University of Sunderland poster for the visiting Fulbright Scholars.
Tim Tate and I have been powering through our stay here at the University of Sunderland in the beautiful northeast of England. This is a blog update of some of the adventure we have participated in whilst on our Fulbright Scholarship to the UK.
The University of Sunderland Glass Centre and the glass roof deck.
Kevin Petrie, Head of the Glass & Ceramics Department
We arrived on Thursday, met at the airport by the University’s head of the Glass and Ceramics Department, Kevin Petrie. Kevin took us on a whirlwind tour of the massive building complex. The centre, built in 1998, has a glass panel roof – where one is invited to walk across and watch the blowing facilities down below.
Tim Tate takes a walk on the glass.
The size, equipment and state-of-the-art facility was overwhelming. It was great to see some old friends that had come to DC in years past waving a welcoming hello from across the acreage of studio space. We would be coming back to the University after a couple workshops in town.
Some of the many huge kilns at the university.
The beach in front of the hotel in Seaburn.
Our hotel could not have been better – sweeping views across the North Sea, with Seaburn beach in front of our hotel. Nice.
Creative Cohesion’s new studio and exhibition center in Sunderland.
The arts organization, Creative Cohesion, held a cocktail reception to welcome us and inaugurate the new hotshop at their new facility in Sunderland city centre . For those of you from DC, you might remember the organization and its many talented artists that participated in the 2006’s Glass 3 exhibit in Georgetown, organized by Artomatic. In 2009, many more artists from Sunderland participated in the Artomatic held near the Navy Yard/near the new Nationals Ballpark. The non-profit arts organization began over 10 years ago, initially designed as a way to help for glass artists coming from the university mature into professional artists. The success of the organization’s mission has expanded and now includes ceramic and visual arts, performance artists, and poets in its umbrella of services.
Our arrival coincided with the center’s celebration of the opening of their new hotshop – our workshop would be the first for the glass shop. Upon arrival – we see a familiar face – a poster of the UK artists working in Dave D’Orio’s DC Glasswork’s hotshop is in the window.
The artists from Sunderland listen with intent.
The big burly electrician Richie tries fusing for the first time. And shows real talent.
Roger Tye gets the glass into shape.
The next day, Tim Tate and I were welcomed at the University of Sunderland. We first gave a lecture about our work, the Washington Glass School & Studio and the Glass Secessionism movement.
Professor Tim Tate speaks about his work and influences.
Coming up soon – a posting or two about the workshops at the National Glass Center, touring around the area and the London Affordable Art Fair! Stay posted!
London’s Calling (Tim Tate & Michael Janis)
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Bon Voyage Guys!
For those of you in the land of John Bull, here are the dates and location of the show in London’s Battersea area:
London Affordable Art Fair
Cohesion Glass Network Booth
Battersea Park
London
SW11 4NJ
15 -18 March 2012
Tim Tate & Michael Janis – Fulbright Recipients
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This March, WGS Professors Janis and Tate will be heading over the pond to Ye Olde England as Fulbright Scholars – heading to University Of Sunderland and the The Institute for International Research in Glass (IIRG).
Sponsored by the US Department of State, the Fulbright Program is a program of competitive, merit-based grants for international educational exchange for students, scholars, professionals, scientists and artists, founded by US Senator J. William Fulbright. The Fulbright Program is one of the most prestigious awards programs worldwide, operating in over 155 countries. Forty-three Fulbright alumni have won Nobel Prizes, including two in 2010.
The University of Sunderland has the largest glass and ceramics department in Europe. The Glass & Ceramic department is housed in the National Glass Centre’s landmark £17million building, adjacent to St.Peter’s Campus.
The UK National Glass Centre has interesting glass shop procedures. Above is photo by Anna Liukas from Sunderland’s 2010 calendar featuring shots of students at work in the hot shop.
Above, a flamework studio student pictured hard at work. photo: Anna Liukas
Apparently, the North East of England is much hotter than we were led to believe. Traveling light should be the bywords for our two intrepid scholars.
Bullseye Gallery Features Painter(ly) Glass Artists
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Michael Janis Observation of Signals
2011 Kilnformed glass
Jeff Wallin Kate
2008 Kilnformed glass
Bullseye Gallery – located near the Bullseye Glass Center in Portland, Oregon – has a special exhibit opening soon that focuses on artists that work.
Titled “FACTURE -Artists at the Forefront of Painterly Glass” the exhibit asks what advantages do the materials and processes found in glass provide that can’t be found in other painting media.
“FACTURE -Artists at the Forefront of Painterly Glass”
January 4 thru February 25, 2012
Bullseye Gallery, Portland, OR
Works by Michael Janis, Kari Minnick, Martha Pfanschmidt, Ted Sawyer, Abi Spring, and Jeff Wallin
Artist Reception: Wednesday, January 4, 5:30 – 7:30 pm
A panel discussion will be held with the artists moderated by Bullseye’s Michael Endo on Sunday January 8 from 2pm–4pm.
Bullseye Gallery offers contemporary art objects and experiences examining the potential and complexity of kilnformed glass. The gallery also explores glass in the built environment, inviting art into architecture through collaborations with artists, designers, architects and clients.
The gallery hosts artist lectures, panel discussions, and events which encourage dialogue about the concepts and processes driving contemporary art.
Bullseye Gallery
300 NW 13th Ave, Portland, OR 97209
Phone: 503.227.0222
Gallery Hours: Tues – Sat 10:00AM – 5:00PM
The Process: Setting Up a Museum Solo Exhibition
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As part of an ongoing series, we focus on the process of an event or artwork as the basis for the blog posting. Today, the blog posting is a two-fer where the photo documentation is both about Michael Janis’ creative process and info about Michael Janis’ solo show at Fuller Craft Museum, opening this Saturday, August 6, 2011.
The Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts
The lead time for a museum show is very long – the Fuller Craft Museum contacted Michael in 2009 requesting a solo show at the museum in 2011, so Michael has been planning some aspect of the work for well over a year and features twenty five of his glass artworks. This posting will focus on his site specific sculpture in the show – titled “Unpredictable Factors”.
To help visualize the space, images of previous exhibitions and a floor plan of the gallery space within the museum were sent to Michael to help plan out the show.
Floor Plan of Fuller Museum’s Tarlow Gallery
Marc Petrovic’s exhibition in Fuller’s Tarlow Gallery 2007.
Michael said that he wanted to create a large scale work for the museum show, and had focused on using one of the 8′ wide floor-to-ceiling window areas as the location, with the idea that the light and view beyond could be integrated into the work.
Sketches were integrated with photos of the gallery as the studies advanced.
Michael focused on the design with a central image sculpture and proceeded forward with creation of the other artwork pieces for the show. Working with noted metalsmith Chris Shea, the architectural metal work for the large sculpture was created.
Firing of separate layers of the components within the sculpture and the fitting to the metal framework took place in late spring of 2011.
In August, all 25 works by Michael Janis were crated and packed for shipping to the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton – about 20 miles south of Boston, Massachusetts.
Fuller Registrar Donna Eleyi inspects the incoming work.
The condition of each piece is noted and the packing is documented. Here Donna Eleyi photographs the unpacking by Preparator Jason Ram.
The works are placed to allow for the arrangement by Fuller Museum curator Perry Price.
Installation of the steel framework for Michael Janis’ large sculpture “Unpredictable Factors” proceeds.
The exhibition opens Saturday, August 6, and there is a public reception August 7, from 2-5 pm. For more info on Michael’s lecture at the museum- click HERE.
Reception Aug 7, 2011, 2-5pm
455 Oak Street
Brockton, MA 02301
Michael Janis’ Solo Exhibition @ Fuller Craft Museum
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Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts
Founded as a traditional fine arts museum and cultural center, over the past four decades the Fuller Craft Museum has transformed itself into a collection devoted entirely to crafts, one of only eight such museums in the US.
New England’s only museum of contemporary craft presents A Lighter Hand: The Glass Drawings of Michael Janis, on display Aug. 6 – Nov. 6, 2011.
One of the new works Michael has made for the exhibition is a site-specific sculpture that measures 8′-0″ and will be installed in floor to ceiling window of the exhibition space.
Michael Janis Unpredictable Factors
3′-0″W x 8′-0″H x 4″ fused glass, glass powder imagery, steel
Michael Janis Unpredictable Factors (detail)
3′-0″W x 8′-0″H x 4″ fused glass, glass powder imagery, steel
From the Fuller Craft Museum press release:
Building on the legacy of Surrealist artists of the early 20th century, in particular Giorgio de Chirico whose paintings juxtaposed disparate objects in moody and indistinct landscapes, Janis is able to construct a contemplative feeling from the layering of seemingly inanimate objects and ambiguous characters. His images in glass, particularly those examples in a tall and narrow format, also allude to the narrative quality of stained glass.
The juxtaposition of text, symbols, and figures seem to imply a hidden message or meaning, but like an ink blot or word association Janis leaves the viewer to provide their own conclusions.
Janis lives and works in Washington, DC, where he is Co-Director and an instructor at the Washington Glass School. He first began working with glass as an architect, evident in his dedication to sheet glass and the precision draftsmanship in his drawings. Fuller Craft will celebrate the opening of A Lighter Hand, with a public reception August 7 at 2 p.m. at the Museum. The reception is free for members and free with museum admission for all others.”
A lecture by Michael Janis precedes the public reception – click HERE for more information.
The Fuller Museum is located at 455 Oak Street, Brockton, MA 02301
GlassWeekend 2011 Biennial Features WGS Artists
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GlassWeekend is a major contemporary glass event that runs from June 10 to 12 at WheatonArts in Millville, New Jersey. The three-day biennial weekend, first organized in 1985, brings together an international community of leading collectors, museum curators, gallery dealers, and artists for lectures, demonstrations and exhibitions. The event is organized by The Creative Glass Center of America at WheatonArts (CGCA) and the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass (AACG). Over the course of three days, Millville, New Jersey, will be ground-zero for glass art auctions, workshops, and lectures.
Glass art legend Dan Dailey will speak Saturday. Other highlights of Saturday’s lectures include a round-table of museum curators discussing their approach to exhibition planning moderated by Newark Museum decorative arts curator Ulysses Dietz and including Elizabeth Agro, Philadelphia Museum of Art associate curator of American modern and contemporary crafts and decorative arts; Renwick curator Nicholas Bell; and the fast-rising Ron Labaco, recently appointed curator of decorative arts and design at the Museum of Arts and Design.
Washington Glass School will be represented at the Biennial by Tim Tate, Allegra Marquart and Michael Janis – Michael will also be named “Rising Star” by The Creative Glass Center of America at WheatonArts and the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass.
Millville, New Jersey has long been associated with glass. In 1739 when Casper Wistar founded America’s first successful glass factory near Alloway Creek, glassmaking and South Jersey became inextricably fused. From humble entrepreneurial beginnings, glass manufacturing ultimately became the region’s major innovative industry by the late 19th century.
In 1904, the celebrated poet, Carl Sandburg, proclaimed:
“Down in southern New Jersey, they make glass. By day and by night, the fires burn on in Millville . . . Big, black flames shooting out smoke and sparks; bottles, bottles, bottles, of every tint and hue . . . that marks the death of sand and the birth of glass.”
Although the production of window and bottle glass may have left Cumberland, Salem and Gloucester counties, the studio glass movement has been flourishing. WheatonArts and the Creative Glass Center of America (CGCA) in Millville have nurtured a growing number of talented individuals to use glass as their primary medium by offering its facilities to artists from around the world.
Click HERE to jump to GlassWeekend’s program.
June 10th – 12th, 2011
WheatonArts1501 Glasstown Road
Millville, New Jersey 08332
Tel: 800 998 4552
Website: http://www.glassweekend.com/
for some photos of GlassWeekend 2009 – click HERE.
Glass Sparks: Michael Janis
photograph by Tom Wolff
Michael Janis studied architecture at Mies van der Rohe’s IIT in his hometown of Chicago, IL. In 1993 he moved to Australia and there he worked on a number of large scale architecture projects, including work for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. It was in Australia that Michael first started working with glass, designing walls of cast glass.
Moving back to the United States in 2003, glass artwork became his focus. Michael began glass blowing at a Baltimore hot shop and was soon taking glass courses at art centers such as Haystack Mountain in Maine, North Carolina’s Penland School of Craft, and Urban Glass in New York.
Michael at Penland School of Craft
Attracted to the experimental and adventurous approach to the medium that defined the Washington Glass School, he soon became involved with the school as the Studio Coordinator.
L-R Washington Glass Studio directors Erwin Timmers, Tim Tate, Michael Janis. From the 2006 American Style article “Filling Glass With Meaning“. Photo by Roger Foley.
In 2005, Michael became one of the Co-Directors of the Washington Glass School, and he is the Director of Public Art projects for the Washington Glass Studio.
“The Gravity Between Us” Hotel Palomar, Washington, DC
Public Art sculpture for Prince George’s County Circuit Court
Michael continues teaching at the Washington Glass School, and also has taught glass art workshops at Istanbul’s Glass Furnace, the Penland School of Craft and the Bay Area Glass Institute (BAGI) in California.
Michael teaching fused glass technique class at Washington Glass School, 2005
Michael Janis teaching at California’s Bay Area Glass Institute, 2010
His kilncast bas-relief glass and steel sculptures were featured in the seminal “Compelled By Content” exhibition at Bethesda, Maryland’s Fraser Gallery. In this show, artists that used glass with narrative content showed how the traditional craft of glass was evolving.
“Liar Paradox” Collection of Susan and Fred Sanders. Photo: Anything Photographic
Michael began incorporating imagery into his glass works, and by manipulating crushed glass powder he has been able to create intricate detail images within the glass, layering the images to emphasize the depth within.
Text and imagery work their way through Michael’s artwork panels, similar to an architect’s diagrams, suggesting elements of stories not fully disclosed. Michael’s work references the Surrealist artists of the early twentieth century and Neo-Dada concepts as seen in the work of artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Cornell and Jasper Johns.
Click HERE to jump to a short documentary on Michael and his sgraffito frit powder technique.
From the catalog of the 2011 exhibit “Material World”:
“When viewers see images of Michael Janis’ work, they may not immediately recognize it as glass art…The virtuosity of Janis’ technique supports his imagery, which is often tinged with a nostalgia for days where innocence reigned and magic seemed possible. Janis is not simply naïve, for there is a darker undercurrent to these works that speaks to the loss of this sense of wonder.” Stephen Boocks curator, April 2011
Maurine Littleton Gallery space, SOFA Chicago 2009
In 2007, Maurine Littleton Gallery began exhibiting his glass artwork at international art shows such as Art Miami, SOFA Chicago and SOFA New York. Currently, his work is on exhibit at the Flemish Center for Contemporary Glass Art in Lommel, Belgium.
In 2009 he was awarded Florida’s “Emerging Artist” award by the Florida Glass Art Alliance, in 2010, he received the Saxe Fellowship from California’s Bay Area Glass Institute. This year, Janis will be named a “Rising Star” by the Creative Glass Center of America and the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass at the biannual glass art conference held at the Museum of American Glass at WheatonArts, in New Jersey.
The Memory of Orchids, 2011
His first museum solo show will open this year (August 6 thru November 6, 2011) at the Fuller Museum of Craft, in Brockton, Massachusetts. Michael Janis also was just awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, and will be at the UK’s University of Sunderland and National Glass Center in 2012.
Detail from “In the Evening Twilight”
Michael will be one of the featured artists in Long View Gallery’s exhibition of Artists of the Washington Glass School:
Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
LongView Gallery
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC May 19 – June 19,2011
Artist Reception, May 19th, 6:30-8:30 PM
For other Washington Glass School artist profiles:
If Its Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium
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Michael Janis’ glass artwork is on exhibit at Belgium’s Glazen Huis as part of an international show titled “The Glass Canvas”, curated by J. Maes. The gallery exhibition is seen as a meeting between old and new in a glass context of religion, architecture, art and entertainment. The show contrasts historical glass artwork with contemporary glass work, from 14th and 16th century stained glass, 19th century glass photo negatives to work from current art glass leaders.
“This exhibition is an investigation into the use of glass as a canvas. It is a series of confrontations of the glass canvas in its physical appearance (smooth-rough light-dark transparent screen-reflection miniature-monumental), but also in the psychological experience (accessible-unreachable reveal-blur protect-invite). Going from the canvas as a mediator between inside and outside, to the glass surface as an image former or transformer, as a classical canvas or carrier of a concept that appears as a rigid skin or as a flexible weaving. The glass canvas presents itself as a breakable membrane that gives access to the unreachable reality, which it reflects or deforms, fragments or defragments.The glass canvas is a virgin surface that is covered with paints and emulsions or damaged by chemical or mechanical attacks, but in its clear state can be used as a high gloss protector.”
Artists exhibited : J.Schaechter [US], A.Salvador [IT], W.Berckmans [BE], M.Dukers [IT], F.Jespers [BE], F.Federer [GB], L.Semecka [CZ], S.Peretti [DE/US],M.Janis [US], R.Hawes [CA], N.Sandberg [US], T.Lahaie [US], J.Röder [DE], D.Sandersley [GB], K.Vanderstukken [BE/CA], I.Rosschaert [BE], M.Martens [BE], G.Pierson [BE], J.Caen [BE], E.Leibovitz [BE], W.Delvoye [BE].
‘The Glass Canvas – Glass as a canvas, as carrier through history’
April 10 – September 25, 2011
Het Glazen Huis
Flemish Center for Contemporary Glass Art
Dorp 14b, B-3920 Lommel, Belgium
http://www.hetglazenhuis.be/
Click here to jump to Glass Quarterly’s comments on “The Glass Canvas”