Spring 2015 GASnews

GAS

news spring 2015 Vol. 26 No. 1

Inside

3 Letter from the President 3 Thanks to our 2015 Conference Sponsors 4 GAS Line: 2015 Emerging Artists; George & Dorothy Saxe;

2015 TAG Grant; New GAS Conference App; 2015 Tech Display Vendors

6 Mary White: A Line Crosser 8 Daniel Cutrone: Bridging the Gap from Digital to Hand 9 Putting the Tech in Technique 10 Jeff Heath: Exposing Entropy 12 Petr Novotny: A Life in Glass 14 A Glass Explorer: Donald Stookey 16 Op-Ed: The Venetian Virus 18 School Profile: San Jose State University 19 GAS Resource Links Cover: Mark Ganter, Duplo Camping, Full-size duplos to scale. Photo by the artist

gas news

GASnews is published four times per year as a benefit to members.

Glass Art Society Board of Directors 2014-2015 President: Roger MacPherson Vice President: Kim Harty Vice President: Cassandra Straubing Secretary: Alex Bernstein Treasurer: Ed Kirshner

Contributing Writers: Regan Brumagen, Lance Friedman, Kim Harty, Michael Hernandez, Tracy Kirchmann, Michelle Knox, Suzanne Peck, Amanda Wilcox Editor: Kim Harty Managing Editor: Kristin Galioto Graphic Design: Ted Cotrotsos*

Chris Clarke Matt Durran Lance Friedman B J Katz Tracy Kirchmann Jiyong Lee Jeff Lindsay

Staff Pamela Figenshow Koss, Executive Director Patty Cokus, Executive Assistant Kristin Galioto, Communications Manager Shelbey Lang, Membership Associate Chrissy Burd, Bookkeeper*

Marc Petrovic Natali Rodrigues Masahiro Nick Sasaki Jan Smith David Willis Amanda Wilcox, Student Representative

Š2015 The Glass Art Society, a non-profit organization. All rights reserved. Publication of articles in this newsletter prohibited without permission from the Glass Art Society Inc.

*part time/contract

The Glass Art Society reserves the right to deny applications for Tech Display, advertising participation, GAS membership or conference participation to anyone for any reason.

TM

6512 23rd Avenue NW, Suite 329, Seattle, WA 98117 USA Phone: 206.382.1305 Fax: 206.382.2630 E-mail: info@glassart.org Web: www.glassart.org

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President’s Letter

2015 conference sponsors

Less than three months until the 2015 GAS San Jose Conference! I can barely wait to hit California and feel the sun again.

Members – it is time to get your registration submitted and book your hotel rooms.

GAS has negotiated some fantastic room rates Thursday through Sunday (starting at $139) at San Jose’s top hotel, The Fairmont, so book now so you don’t miss out on the fabulous accommodations.

GAS has a jam-packed schedule of special events planned for the conference. Here is what you need to know: The schedule is a little different this year and the Collectors Tour starts Tuesday, June 2 in San Francisco and moves down the bay to San Jose; the conference schedule starts Friday, June 5; we wrap it up with a closing party and Glass Olympics at BAGI on Sunday night, June 7.

Just across the street from The Fairmont, GAS will host the Tech Display and Auction in Parkside Hall. The auction is going be held Saturday, June 6, so drop off your generous donations when you first arrive so we can get them looking their best. After the auction we will be having a ticketed gala celebrating Dorothy and the late George Saxe of Menlo Park and San Francisco. Their leadership and collecting have been critical to the glass movement in California and beyond over the last two decades and the Saxes have formed one of the premier collections of contemporary craft in the United States.

Although George Saxe has passed, Dorothy continues to be a force in the glass community. The Collection resides in the de Young /Legion of Honor Fine art Museum of San Francisco and is a must see if you spend some extra time in San Fran.

GAS is also pleased to share our newly minted theme for the 2016 Conference in Corning, June 9 - 11. The theme, Creating Context: Glass in a New Light will usher GAS into the Crystal City for its 45th annual conference.

For those inspired by the ideas around light, glass, and context we are accepting presentation proposals for lectures, demos, and lec-mos through March 28, 2015.

The Glass Art Society salutes the following, who have already pledged their support.

Premier Sponsor

Major Sponsor

Major Sponsor

Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass

His Glassworks

Day of Glass Sponsor

Johnathon Turner Demo Sponsor

Sincerely,

Roger MacPherson GAS President GASnews

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Robert M. Minkoff Foundation At-Risk Youth Forum Sponsor

Venue Partners

Bay Area Glass Institute

Corning Museum of Glass

San Jose State University

The Tech Museum of Innovation

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gas line 2015 Emerging Artists Announced Each year the Glass Art Society selects three emerging artists to present lectures at the annual conference. Through these lectures, artists with promising talent are afforded the opportunity to introduce their work to a large audience of established artists, educators, peers, collectors, art historians, and critics. Qualified individuals are nominated by professional academics and curators around the world, then the presenters are selected by a small jury. This year’s jury included artist, writer and teacher John Drury, artist Ginny Ruffner, and Artistic Director for North Lands Creative Glass and artist Emma Woffenden. From 20 applications,

they selected three exceptional artists to lecture at the GAS conference in San Jose: Alli Hoag, Justin Ginsberg and Jacci Delaney. “Our choice of artists here, each utilize a severely restricted pallet to successfully avoid the trappings of the eye to instead engage the mind; to also avoid the benign. It is a great time for the material glass and its most potent practitioners have returned to the self as well-spring for the unique,” says Drury.

The Emerging Artists Presentations will take place on Sunday, June 7, 2015 from 1:30 pm - 3 pm at Parkside Hall B. In addition to having the opportunity to speak about their work at the conference,

A Gala Evening in Honor of Dorothy and George Saxe with a cocktail hour, followed by a seated dinner and auction featuring 2- 4 selected works. Emma Acker, Assistant Curator of American Art at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, will also speak about the Saxe collection at the museum.

A special moment will be taken to establish the Saxe Emerging Artists Lecture Fund. Cocktail attire suggested.

The Glass Art Society invites you to join us for a memorable evening in honor of long-time supporters of GAS and the glass community, Dorothy and the late George Saxe. The gala evening will begin

Coming soon: 2015 GAS Conference App

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Date: Saturday, June 6, 2015 Time: Cocktail hour 7:00 pm,

Dinner 7:45 Location: The Sainte Claire Hotel Ballroom

302 South Market Street

San Jose, CA 95113 Price: $200 members

$225 non-members Click here for more information and to register for the event.

In keeping with the technology theme for this year’s conference, we are excited to be launching a new GAS conference app through BusyEvent Mobile. This will be available to all attendees, presenters and Tech Display vendors.

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these three artists are featured in the digital Emerging Artists Catalog (above), which will be published online soon. For additional information, including juror bios and comments, visit www.glassart.org/2015_Emerging_ Artists_Presentations.html.

2015 Technology Advancing Glass (TAG) Grant It’s almost that time of year again! We will soon be accepting proposals for the 2015 TAG program, which assists the advancement of glass arts by providing an annual grant to an artist or group of artists to fund research to advance the field of glass art. Project proposals are open to ideas such as: new materials, production techniques, safe shipping techniques, new tools, adhesives, ways to create glass sculpture animated with electronics... and beyond! Stayed tuned for application submission details and deadlines. Click here to learn more about the 2014 recipients, Anna Mlasowsky, Erin Dickson and the artist team of Michael Stern, Shreya Dave, Markus Kayser and John Klein.

Features include: • Personalized Agenda • Attendee Profile • Speaker and Vendor Directory • Social Media Integration • Maps

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Technical Display The Marketplace for Glass Artists FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC! Parkside Hall A Friday, June 5, 10 am - 5 pm Saturday, June 6, 10 am - 6 pm Sunday, June 7, 10 am - 3 pm Visit GAS’s annual Technical Display to see and purchase the newest and best equipment, supplies, services, and publications and schools. Stop by and mingle with fellow glass lovers while stocking your supplies from the Tech Display booths!

Parkside Hall A is also host to these other free and open to the public areas: Education & Professional Resource Center, Goblet Grab and International Student Exhibition. Here is a list of the 2015 Vendors.

Booth # 50 3-4

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26-27 33 36

37

9

23 30

38

5 8

15

7

16 20-21-22 18

45

42 14

Vendor ABR Imagery ARTCO Bucher Emhart Glass Bullseye Glass Co. Canned Heat Glass, LLC Charley’s Deadman Switch Chrysler Museum Glass Studio Corning Incorporated (PREMIER SPONSOR) Digitry Company, Inc. East Bay Batch & Color Euclid Kilns Gaffer Glass USA LTD Glass Art Society The Glass Furnace Foundation Glasscraft, Inc. Hang Your Glass His Glassworks, Inc. Hot Glass Color and Supply Jim Moore Tools for Glass Mobile Glassblowing Studios, LLC National Torch / Premier Industries

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w s pi n r itn eg r 2 0 1 45

1-2 25

34 24 10

44

17 12 28-29 13

31-32 43

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Olympic Color Rods Paragon Industries, L.P. The Penland School of Crafts Pilchuck Glass School Red Hot Metal / Cutting Edge SDS Industries Skutt Kilns Spectrum Glass / System 96 Steinert Industries, Inc. The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass Trev/Aim Kiln Tulsa Glassblowing School Uroboros Glass Wale Apparatus Co., INC. Wet Dog Glass, LLC

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Mary White: A Line-Crosser

by Kim Harty “I think that glass has given us an opportunity to be line-crossers because one can use the medium to walk a line between art and craft, engaging craft as an action word.”

Mary White began making glass in 1968 while she was studying ceramics at the California College of the Arts.

White studied with Marvin Lipofsky, the head of the program and grandfather of glass in California, and Ruth Tamura, a young artist who helped start Pilchuck.

Though Tamura was the lesser known of the two, she organized the glass MFA program at CAA and knitted many events and the curriculum together. Once White discovered glass, she was committed to it, and became the first woman in the East Bay to set up her own studio, in 1974.

Though glass became White’s primary medium, she wove her practice together with issues of environmental and social justice. As a progressive thinker, principled maker, and dedicated community member she takes her role as an artist seriously and says she wants to make sure “my walk and my talk are going the same direction.”

White was raised as a Quaker, a denomination rooted in social activism and the belief that the way to the spirit is through helping others. White has embraced this ideology in her life and work, and has a particular interest in environmental issues. Her father studied water resources, and White spent her childhood looking at the human response to natural environments. She admits that “getting into glass was a bit of a weird thing because of its intensive use of energy and resources”. This observation inspired her to only use found materials, rather than “virgin materials,” and even prompted her to leave her 19-year position as a professor at San Jose State University after concluding they could not build a truly recuperating studio.

White has stayed true to her principals by utilizing found materials and making

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Mary White, Boulder Creek Flood Level Marker Project, 2011 Boulder, Colorado 18’ high x 5’ wide, window glass, steel, stone. Shows the 50, 100, 500 year flood levels

work about issues like affordable housing.

In her Dwelling series, a collection of ghostly house sculptures, White looks at housing as a human right. The series consists of glass houses made from recycled window glass atop tenuous, and sometimes mobile, metal apparatuses.

The entire series was constructed of salvaged window panes. While the material approach to these pieces address environmentally sustainable techniques, the objects themselves look like phantoms of a home – asking questions about people who are displaced, homeless, or must find a “home” in a transient existence.

In addition to her studio practice, White recently served as the Chairman of the Board of WEAD: Women’s Environmental Art Directory (2012-2014) and she is working toward the goal to make GASnews

the directory more international and more inclusive of other cultures other than her own. She was the co-head of The Crucible glass department in Oakland (20022013), and was a Fulbright Scholar at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland from 2009-2010. In 2012 she organized the California Artist Exchange, a three-day symposium, with Michelle Knox, that discussed and recorded the history of the California glass scene. These are a few among many events (probably too many to fit in a single article) that White has organized to the betterment of the community.

White attended the GAS conference for the first time in the early 1970s.

Her modesty is evidenced in her statement “I haven’t done that much for the organization, I try to help where I can.”

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Mary White, Changing California Landscapes: from Plow to Home, 2009 Reused East Bay window glass and metal, 48” high Photo: Lee Fatheree

White has been integrally involved in organizing several conferences, and was a co-chair of the 1995 Oakland conference. This year, she has taken a small leadership role in organizing the San Jose conference, serving on the Exhibitions Committee. As a longtime member of GAS, she has seen the organization through many different interactions and still feels great affection for it. “I really cherish and appreciate GAS’s ability to gather the glass community.

GAS has been a very important part of my life.”

The Honorary Lifetime Membership Award is for an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to GAS, but Mary White’s contributions extend much further.

She remarks, “My life is a five-fingered delta flowing in more than one direction.

I try not to place myself... I think of myself as a line-crosser. I think that glass has given us an opportunity to be line crossers

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because it’s walking a line between art and craft, engaging craft as an action word.” As contemporary artists’ practices have become more inclusive of “relational aesthetics” and “social practice”, an artist like Mary has been tuned into these “contemporary” issues for over 40 years.

While many successful glass artists of her generation were content to create epic series of what has become known as “studio glass” White bucked the trend and stayed true to an idealized concept of how glass could be used to change the world. Her recognition comes without being sought, but the Lifetime Membership Award is an apt opportunity for the glass community to recognize and celebrate a role model who, after 40 years, can still show us alternative ways of thinking and making.

Kim Harty is an Assistant Professor and Section Chair of Glass at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan.

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Daniel Cutrone: Bridging the Gap from Digital to Hand

by Michelle Knox

Daniel Cutrone, Object of Desire: Slice of Mount Everest, 2014, 12.5” diameter Blown and soild worked glass, mixed media. Photo by Matthew Hollerbush

Daniel Cutrone’s process is driven by endless conversation between objects and the experience of making. This conversation has extended from the traditional glassblowing to digital fabrication in his most recent work.

Cutrone began pursuing glassmaking after seeing it offered at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia while he was an undergraduate studying painting. He had never experienced glass working before, but something about the idea of glass moved him. Upon taking his first class, Cutrone fell in love with the process and set his intentions on gaining a foothold on the technical aspect of manipulating the material.

In the beginning, Cutrone denied himself the creative satisfaction of art making and focused solely on the technical process of blowing. Through discpline and practice, he was able to gain the necessary skills to feel prepared to utilize the material as a conceptual tool.

He returned to school to pursue his MFA

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in glass at Tyler School of Art, where he is currently an assistant professor.

Cutrone’s most recent body of work, and the focus of his lec-mo at this year’s GAS conference, Interface: Glass, Art, and Technology, opens up the discussion about technology as an artistic tool for glassmaking. Not unlike the pencil or the hammer, new technologies have endless potential to help creative people develop and process information in fresh and experimental ways.

When talking to Cutrone for this article he noted, “pursuing digital technologies offers a new vocabulary for makers,” but adds that new technologies are not a substitution for traditional forms of glassmaking. As a skilled glassmaker, Cutrone’s personal interests lie in the convergence of an ancient craft and modern technology to look at the tension between the hand and the machine.

In his Mount Everest series, for instance, Cutrone combines multiple digital applications and hand-skilled GASnews

techniques. First, he develops pencil sketches that are transformed into computer rendered drawings in CAD or Rhino, to be processed by a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine. The CNC machine translates the digital data into graphite molds, which he refines with hand tools. These molds are then used to create cast glass components that he combines with traditional hand blown forms to create unique sculptures.

Cutrone’s process and practice are a balancing act of hand guiding machine, and machine guiding the hand.

The conceptual side of Cutrone’s work circumvents the old craft versus art binary, and instead embraces the blurring lines of art, craft, and design. His works contain a balance between the natural world and the manufactured. There is an intentional ambiguity in his forms, and only through thorough investigation can one discover whether certain aspects are machined or created through extremely precise craftsmanship. In Cutrone’s work, the whole is greater than the sum of its (manufactured and handmade) parts.

Though his work speaks to the experience of making, ultimately the objects are successful in their stillness.

On Saturday, June 6, Daniel Cutrone will present several of his objects, components, molds and process videos detailing and exploring the fine details of Bridging the Gap from Digital to Hand.

Michelle Knox has worked in glass for more than 15 years and is originally a New Jersey native. She has studied and worked all over the country, but recently relocated back to the East Coast where she is working, teaching and making art in Brooklyn, NY.

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Putting the Tech in Technique

by Michael Hernandez Interface: Glass, Art, and Technology is the theme of the 44th GAS conference in San Jose, and artists are the perfect vehicle to explore the critical relationship between human and machine. A number of presenters at the 2015 GAS Conference in Silicon Valley will be exploring the interface between glass artists/ craftsmen/designers and technology, through presentations of creative development and process research. While the digital technology is nothing new, these presenters will be revealing the progress and potential of glass art with digital production and design for a wide range of artists, both established and emerging.

Water Jet - Tips, Tricks, and Applications: This lec-mo by John Groth and Shaun Griffiths, will show processes and products of water jet cutting, educating the audience on the methods and outcomes of this versatile process. Groth, an Oregon-based glass and ceramic artist/water jet technician, will take the audience through the process of designing for water jet cutting, and will utilize the water jet cutting machine in his demo. Griffiths, an adjunct faculty member at Alfred University, will

open the audience to a wide, historical range of water jet cut artwork. The lec-mo will take place at a digital fab lab next to the San Jose State University campus. In many cities public access, member-based fab labs are popping up, making water jet cutting accessible to artists across the country. The information and inspiration gained in this presentation will put conference-goers in touch with a relatively simple design process that has enormous potential for everything from production items to large-scale architectural applications.

3D Printing and Glass: Mechanical engineering professor, Mark Ganter of the University of Washington (UW) has been teaching and developing processes in 3D printing, including 3D printing with glass in the 3DP Lab at the university. Ganter’s lec-mo, 3D Printing and Glass, will present some of the products and processes that he has worked with in his lab, where he challenges himself and his students in process and material innovation. This presentation will unveil strategies and products that have applications in the art and design fields. By addressing both the 3D printing of molds used for glass casting and 3D printing glass itself (for a product much

Mark Ganter, Duplo Camping, Full-size duplos to scale. Photo by the artist

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like pâte de verre), Ganter’s presentation will inspire the audience by revealing process, developments, and material-based innovations. Conference attendees (and all those interested in this technology) should visit Open3DP, an open forum resource that Ganter’s 3DP lab at UW uses to document their experimentation and results of 3D printing ceramics, glass, mold materials, and even chocolate!

Interface: Glass, Art, and Technology will provide a wide range of experiences to educate, inform, and inspire conferencegoers and explore the creative potential between maker, material, and technology.

From lectures to demonstrations, attendees can expect to see what is at the forefront of the glass field’s artistic development, processes, and experimen-tation with digital design. Mark Ganter’s 3D Printing and Glass and the collabora-tion of John Groth and Shaun Griffiths’ Water Jet - Tips, Tricks, and Applications will reveal processes that are accessible to many artists, designers, and students.

Michael Hernandez is Assistant Professor/Head of Glass at Palomar College residing in San Diego.

Mark Ganter, Ruffle Bowls, Approx. 2.75 - 3.00 inches each. Photo by the artist

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Jeff Heath: Exposing Entropy

by Tracy Kirchmann From left: Jeff Heath, Carrying Capacity, flameworked glass, fabricated metal and electrical wire, 2013, h 72" x w 48" x d 60" Jeff Heath, Pump Away, flameworked glass, found and fabricated metal, collaged digital print and acrylic, 2012, h 52" x w 16" x d 16"

Jeff Heath creates monumental lampworked sculpture that defines the idea of urbanization. His modular glass works look almost sinister as small colonies of glass take over colossal forms by force. His work masterfully uses the manipulation of scale to bring awareness to the viewer’s own anxieties about scarcity to the surface.

Jeff Heath’s ability to exemplify the defilement of the sacred as nature, in the utility of the mundane is stark and breathtaking all at once.

Jeff Heath is a young artist, who grew up at the intersection of Chicago’s urban and suburban sprawl and the natural beauty of the Midwest. Since childhood he was acutely aware of the clash between the development of man and the natural world. He remembers watching as green spaces disappeared and were replaced with parking lots, high-tension power lines and mini malls. Being raised in a loving home by a single mother, brought

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to light other dichotomies that paralleled the clash between man and nature.

Heath was always simultaneously aware of the way industry, and environmental discord was related to social standing.

He was extremely conscious of our cultures collective environmental impact disproportionately effecting the poorest in social standing the most.

“Being raised in a state of growing urbanization, I have found it nearly impossible to escape issues like social class, population, energy crisis, and the growing scarcity of natural resources. While this world bares a weight on my shoulders, I use art as a way to escape these feelings of societal guilt while bringing the issues I find in my life to light. My intent is to physically and mentally express myself though the process of art making, while making a commentary on society GASnews

and the lifestyle that comes with urban life. While always keeping a focus on aesthetic beauty and craft, I create art that is a reaction to my life, the medium in which I am working, and the world around me.”

Jeff’s work is absolutely inundated with his sentiments on these themes. Many artists attempt to broach such concepts, but few are as successful as Heath. The combination of his masterful use of scale, voluminous multiples and color, create a mood that emanates from his sculptures and casts a spell on the entire room.

Jeff Heath has found a way to make us all experience urban growth and the inevitable decay that comes with nature.

In works like Carrying Capacity Heath uses hierarchy and scale in a way that forces viewers to fall in to his perception of the world. In viewing his work, we cannot help but feel miniaturized and

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Jeff Heath, Disconnect II, 2013, flameworked glass and digital print on transparency, h 26" x w 22" x d 6"

terrified at the world around us. Heath also strikes a gorgeous balance in these objects between the aesthetic beauties of his technical skill, while also making each piece intriguingly ominous. When confronted with a piece such as Urbanization in a gallery space, we simultaneously appreciate the raw elegance of the construction while also being made uneasy.

Heath uses lampworking to create intricate works of glass that become monumental in both scale and presence.

This combination of glass and mixed media illustrates another duality, which increases the power of his ideological dyad. Pump Away is a 52’ tall sculpture that humbles us with its presence and the sheer mass of glass lampworked objects.

Here, Heath also demonstrates his ability to seamlessly integrate found objects into his work. His sculpture demonstrates GASnews

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a seamless ability to combine diverse materials. When experiencing the work of Jeff Heath we are not sure what we are looking at, or how he manages to make us feel so small, yet so significant as people.

His creations reveal the dark underbelly of our everyday conveniences in a way that naturally inspires investigation and conversation. Jeff Heath’s large-scale lampworked sculptures beg us consider both our methods and our rationalizations for modern convenience…or suffer the natural consequences. I encourage all of you to support this bright young artist in his work by visiting his web site at: www.jeffheathglass.com and by attending his lampworking demonstration at the 2015 San Jose GAS Conference.

Tracy Kirchmann, a member of the GAS Board of Directors, is an artist and educator living in Chicago, IL.

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Petr Novotny: A Life in Glass

by Lance Friedman The word “master” evokes the idea of technical mastery or great skill applied to an instrument, material, or discipline.

It is a designation that, when used in the studio glass context, is open to subjective opinion based on notoriety, accomplishment, and most often, the standing of an artist among his peers of equal virtuosity. Traditionally, the term master is a title given to an artisan who has proven their skill in the factory. Under the watchful eye of their maestro, an artisan methodically works for years to achieve the coveted title. There are a few European masters who have achieved this technical feat, and have gone on to prove their mastery of form, color, and composition in the studio glass context: Lino Tagliapietra of Italy, Jan Erik Ritzman of Sweden, and Kari Alakoski of Finland are just a few examples. When one looks at the deep glassblowing tradition of the Czech Republic, the name that will come up most often as the master of hot glass is Petr Novotny.

Petr Novotny was born in 1952 and spent a great part of his youth in the Jizerské Mountains in Northern Bohemia.

This area has a rich tradition of functional glassware made in numerous glass “huts” where glass is blown, molded, or pressed. The very cottage Petr grew up in was a former coldworking shop for glass chandeliers. So rustic was this area that the grinding disks were turned by water-driven paddlewheels. Polubny was the town’s glass factory and Petr’s close friend, Werner was employed there as a glassblower. Petr marveled at his friend’s skills and remarkable ability to drink beer all day without having a negative effect on his work. (Beer is still served to glass workers during the day in Czech glass factories). He watched as “heavenly” pieces were blown with steel pipes (called “whistles”) to create functional products for the factory. Every now and then when an odd wooden form was applied to

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Petr Novotny creating a glass hand.

Photo courtesy of Ajeto Glassworks.

the glass, Novotny recalls, “they were demonstrating something I would never forget: the art of living glass.”

Glassblowing appeared effortless to Petr, but once he entered the Apprentice Glass Centre and Secondary Industrial School at Novy Bor, he soon realized that his impression of glass to be a forgiving and controllable medium was an illusion. It was really the skilled hands of a master blower at work that created such a “heavenly” experience. In an article Novotny describes his experience as follows: “ . . . glass is not forgiving – wrong move, too much or too little force and that’s it – another opportunity is wasted. There is something indescribable in creating the art from the matter continuously moving, something like hot fudge, always ready to freeze when there is not enough heat. It is probably due to this feature

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Petr Novotny, Caged Vase, 2013, 20" x 9", blown and sculpted glass

that objects made of blown glass look like they are still moving. Like if we do not see only one frame of the movie, but one frame at the time instead, thus creating the illusion of movement.

Somehow we believe that the object is actually moving, so dynamic it seems, so full of energy. It is because what we see is a real composite of so many past moves, forms and operations applied during the process.”

As any hot glass artist knows, glassblowing is, in a very real sense, the act of wielding chaos at the end of a metal rod.

It is a rodeo ride of damage control, as the medium demands that it obey the pull of gravity and fluctuation of temperature.

A true master is literally fighting the forces of nature to ultimately control, and indeed alter, the inevitable natural outcome.

A master’s dominant skill can create beauty from fire, which appears effortless, despite the battle being waged. Watching Novotny work is the consummate danse GASnews

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de la beauté (dancing beauty). When demonstrating how to sculpt a hand, while working off a standing yolk (the traditional style of glassblowing in Czech factories) you immediately realize his process is not one of anatomical mimicry, but the distillation of essential form whose expressive qualities far exceeds the discarded model he pays homage to.

Petr Novotny’s skills have been sought by many studio glass artists to help manifest their own vision. He has worked with artists and designers including Renè Roubivek, Dale Chihuly, Edward Leiboviz, Marvin Lipofsky, and Willem Heesen, to name a few. He frequents symposia around the world and has taught everywhere from the Glass Furnace in Turkey to Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State. Novotny continues to work at his studio and private art school, Ajeto Glassworks, which he co-owns in Lindava, Czech Republic.

Novotny’s work harks back to his factory roots in its essentially functional nature. What separates his work from other “masters” is his innate design sense that is lean and immediate. His objects appear so comfortable and familiar they transcend their maker’s struggle and achieve visual completeness. Though his objects are cold and motionless in their final state, in their seemingly effortless form Novotny has achieved “the art of living glass”.

GLASHAUS The International Magazine of Studio Glass

Art Forum. The Art of Living Glass. (accessed February 2015).

Lance Friedman is an artist, educator and writer who is a GAS Board member and creative director of Shatter Glass Group Inc. located in Chicago, IL German/ English, 4 issues p.a. 42 Euros Dr. Wolfgang Schmölders Glashaus-Verlag, Stadtgarten 4 D-47798 Krefeld (Germany) Email: glashaus-verlag@t-online.de Web: www.glasshouse.de

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A Glass Explorer: Donald Stookey (1915-2014) and Photosensitive Glass

by Regan Brumagen Sometimes a discovery sparks a series of inventions and its importance embeds itself into a whole new field of technology.

That happened in the 1940s when Donald Stookey, a newly minted chemistry PhD working for Corning Glass Works, began experimenting with gold-ruby and opal glasses.

Corning Glass Works had a rather unique research and development program during the 1940s. They hired promising, well-educated scientists, provided them with equipment and time, and asked them to make discoveries. For Dr. Stookey this was a dream job. Glass was a new field for Stookey and the fact that glassmaking was an ancient art, and yet a substance with plenty of mysteries still to be discovered, appealed greatly to him. Building on the work of Bob Dalton, who had developed a photosensitive copper ruby glass, Stookey started on the experiments which would lead to the first known glass-ceramic, Pyroceram.

Frontispiece. Ars vitraria experimentalis. Amsterdam: auff kosten des Autoris, bey Heinrich Betkio und Conforten, 1679. Courtesy of the Rakow Research Library.

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Dr. S. Donald Stookey (right), checks a guided missile radome made of Pyroceram. Looking on is Dr. William H. Armistead, CGW vice president, ca. 1957 or 1958. Used with the permission of CIDARM, courtesy of the Rakow Research Library.

Like most good scientists, Stookey began by looking backward. What had the Renaissance alchemists like Antonio Neri (author of the first complete book on glassmaking, L’arte vetraria) and Johannes Kunckel (Ars Vitraria experimentalis) written about ruby and opal glasses?

Kunckel’s formulation for gold ruby glasses relied on gold chloride combined with tin chloride (the famous purple of Cassius).

Stookey recreated Kunckel’s experiment but added a sensitizer, cerium oxide, which would absorb ultraviolet light and reduce the dissolved gold-tin compound to an insoluble metal. Stookey had invented a photosensitive gold glass, which would turn blue, purple, or ruby, depending on the light and heat exposure.

He continued to “play” as he called it in his autobiography, Explorations in Glass, discovering other photosensitive glasses, some of which, like FOTOFORM, could be etched with hydrofluoric acid GASnews

in very intricate patterns. It was this glass product which Stookey famously left heating in a kiln one day. The kiln malfunctioned, causing the glass to heat about 300 degrees hotter than Stookey intended. The glass, instead of melting, as he thought, had hardened so completely that it was nearly unbreakable. The first glass-ceramic substance had been discovered. Stookey later commented that glass-ceramics might easily have been discovered long ago, considering that scientists already knew glass, a “supercooled liquid frozen in an unstable state,” is looking for any opportunity to “alter to the lower energy state of being crystalline” (Stookey 18-19).

Stookey’s discovery has been used in everything from missile nose cones to cookware, and the properties he tapped into have been the basis for new tough glasses like those on our smart phones and tablets. But his work also carries great

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Photosensitive glass made by Donald Stookey, 1950-1955. Image is of Corning Inc.’s Fallbrook factory in Corning, New York. CMG 2013.4.2, gift of Thomas Dimitroff and family.

interest for artists who want to work with photosensitive glasses. The first volume of the Glass Art Society Journal in 1979, in fact, contained a review of scientific discoveries, including Stookey’s, relating to photosensitive glasses.

At the upcoming GAS conference in San Jose, artist Kristin Deady will be presenting a history of photography and its relationship to glass, talking about cliché verres, cyanotypes and photograms, wet collodion, dry emulsion, and the

possibilities of constructing cameras and lenses. She will also demonstrate the process of creating cyanotypes on glass sheet and blown objects. Deady’s interest in photosensitive glass is a part of her overall fascination with the relationship between glass and photography.

What Deady and others discover today will, in part, be based on discoveries of past researchers, like Donald Stookey, Antonio Neri, Johannes Kunckel and many, many others. No doubt Stookey would be pleased that glass explorers continue to alter the glass they work with, through experimentation, study, and – occasionally – through sheer fortuitous error.

And someone’s next mistake could be the start of a new and interesting direction for glass.

Garbowski, B.J. “Photosensitive Glass Research Extends Over Four Decades.” Glass Art Society Journal 1979.

Kunckel, Johannes. Ars Vitraria experimentalis.

Frankfurt; Leipzig: In Verlegung Christoph Riegels, 1689.

Neri, Antonio. L’arte vetraria distinta in libri sette. English Translation, 1662 by Christopher Merret, Art of Glass. London: Printed by A.W. for O. Pulleyn, 1662.

Stookey, S. Donald. Explorations in Glass.

Westerville, OH: American Ceramic Society, 2000.

Plate from: Kunckel, Johannes. Ars Vitraria experimentalis.

Frankfurt; Leipzig: In Verlegung Christoph Riegels, 1689.

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Regan Brumagen is Public Services Librarian at the Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass.

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Op-ed: The Venetian Virus

by Suzanne Peck A few years ago, while teaching at an arts university, I gave a group of second-year glass students an assignment: create an artwork using glass that addresses the notion of perfection. One young man, Beau, decided to tackle this topic by designing a project that required him to consider Venetian goblet making through a number of lenses. “That is what being a perfect glassblower is to me,” he argued.

He did not necessarily want to become proficient at goblet making, but rather he wanted to look at proficiency itself. What does perfection look like? He chose a classic Venetian goblet form: thin-walled cup, avolio, elegant blown stem, murrice, and a blown foot. He devised a three-part project to contemplate perfection. He would use his own blow slots to tackle the form himself. He contracted a local glass maestro to recreate the chosen form with all his accumulated skill. He also created a digital render of the object and then replicated it using a 3D printer: perfection through new skill acquisition, perfection through exercising of existing skill and perfection through translation from analogue to digital (human to computer).

This intrigues me both as an artwork and as a jumping-off point for discussing the place and role Venetian goblet making has amongst the glass community.

Beau’s project highlights the bifurcating and intersecting interests and problems goblet making produces in young and experienced glassblowers alike. I propose a number of questions to this end: What is the maker taught from her devotion to skill?

How does virtuosic technique lead to deep understanding of the material?

Beau learned quickly that his onesemester’s devotion to goblet making was totally insufficient to achieve “mastery”, but he did note that his overall glassblowing skills became more refined through his struggles.

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It is undeniable that the equation of “time + challenging process + physical and mental devotion-bordering-onmadness = mastery”. Glassblowing is a challenging process and Venetian goblet making is arguably at the apex of this challenge. Goblet making is humbling.

It demands discipline. Focusing on high precision performance and meditation on material most definitely results in gaining a deep understanding of glass’ material properties. What we learn from goblet practice is not the same material information or muscle memory that comes from “sloppy” experimental exercises.

Making goblets forces the glassblower to work fast, to understand heat and gravity in a way that no other niche glass practice demands. The glassblower’s body must have a keen awareness of her surroundings. The choreography of her movements and reactions must become innate and responsive to minute variables in the equipment, her assistants and the glass itself. All elements in goblet making require, in short, a deep understanding of material and process. Yet, there is no guarantee that glass will give up her mysteries to the devoted.

Yet, the pursuit of the perfect goblet may be merely a way of delaying actually having to contend with ideas in the broader context of art-world conversations.

I have seen this avoidance, this skill over concept excuse. Glassblowers reciting this oft heard adage: “Dante (Lino, CT, Pino, Jeff, Adam, Jimmy) told me that if I make goblets for 7 years then I can make anything using glass.”

Maybe it’s true. Maybe Malcolm Gladwell is talking to you, young maestro, and you NEED to spend 10,000 hours practicing blown foot after avoilio after pulled cup after Guggenheim stem to become the very best… what? For pursuers of this path, there is frustration, delight, and skill acquisition and at the end of seven years you have cupboards GASnews

full of stemware and…? Which brings me to my next set of questions: Does the challenge of technical glassblowing prevent glass artists from tackling equally difficult conceptual issues?

Is the pursuit of the technical hindering the advance of the material’s placement in the contemporary art context?

Beau’s project seemed to speak directly to this anxiety, trying to create an artwork that both incorporated his undergraduate desire, “I just want to make blow glass” with a broader investigation into contemporary topics about the maker, skill and material translation.

I have seen many glassblowers claim that they cannot make the work that they want to make until they have acquired a certain skill, a certain amount of technical prowess. When they reach the peak of that technical mountain, then they will engage their hands and minds together toward projects they deem “art”. My sense is that within this is avoidance, alongside a fear of investigating their own conceptual interests, there is an inherent mistake in conflating technical ability with the ability to make art.

I'd like to transform the technique versus concept quandary into a conversation between facing the mountain of concept verses the facing the mountain of technique. It is possible that the addictive quality of goblet making is due to its ability to provide a clear goal, while trying to sculpt a beloved material towards a conceptual application is much more murky, unpaved and scary?

Is it necessary to force concept, to make artwork, out of what is essentially a purely process-driven pursuit? There may not be a need to intellectualize Venetian goblet making. Instead one might celebrate an object well-crafted by hand, the result of hard work and many hours and historical knowledge. My concern exists when the goblet, or familiar forms

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inspired by the goblet, is presented as an artwork, with little veiling the “I made this in art school so therefore it is art” explanation. So then: What can incorporating Venetian goblet making techniques into a contemporary art school curriculum give students?

Technical teaching vs. conceptual teaching – is there a way to truly combine the two? Is there a perfect blend (maybe specific for each student)?

I will admit that my “perfection assignment’ was designed to trap Beau, and other students like him into considering the goblet, or at least some derivation therein. I knew that at this stage in their glassblowing education, having glimpsed talented teachers and older students practicing those dark goblet arts, this group of students would soon want into that same pool. I wanted to create an opportunity for these students to explore their technical desires through a conceptual assignment.

Students in art school, or in art departments, studying glass ideally graduate with material and conceptual understanding, excellent work ethic and discipline and (most importantly) confidence.

There are, maybe, infinite uses of teaching technical Venetian glassblowing towards these end goals. As opposed to ‘just making a goblet’, we might teach: tracking skill acquisition, creating systems and rubrics, contemplating the nature of failure, endurance challenges, designing a project that explores the brain/eye/ hand/tool relationship, conflating history with modernity through combining methods of making, the use of tools, the hand vs. machine, and so on and so forth. Each of these possible assignments might help students understand the nature of glass through a conceptual lens and challenge them both intellectually and technically.

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I can also argue for the strict separation of technical education from conceptual projects. The ‘separate but equal’ method may allow students to combine (knowingly or subconsciously) their two accumulating skill sets. Like infants raised in a duel language household, these students might become fluent in both the technical and conceptual practices and then be able to use and mix them interchangeably.

I am not proposing a ‘right way’ to incorporate goblet making into curriculum, or even arguing these methods should be taught at all. Rather, I am interested in how these techniques, seemingly irresistible to those bitten by the glass bug, might be used to bolster student’s art education.

Venetian goblet making is a virus.

Transmission seems to occur by merely being in the presence of another infected glassblower. It’s rampant. Rather than attempt to craft a vaccine, or develop immune suppressive therapies (shock treatment) I think there might be ways to harness the skills that the virus demands and use them towards further reaching goals. Or just succumb and have a kitchen full of glorious goblets. Cheers.

Suzanne Peck is an artist writer and educator who splits her time between the United States and Australia.

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School Profile: San Jose State University

by Amanda Wilcox

L-R: Biagio Scarpello, Lauryl Gaumer, Lindsay Winkelman, Ursula Anderson, Kyle Simpson, David Chang, Cassandra and Wyatt Straubing

Silicon Valley is one of the rare metropolitan areas where the rate of people migrating in is greater than the rate of those leaving, because it is regarded as the premier destination for tech companies in the world. San Jose, the site of the GAS conference, is considered to be the capital of the Valley, and ranks as the tenth most populated city in the nation.

The company headquarters of tech giants like Adobe, Apple, Google, and Facebook coexist amongst perhaps California’s most important ecological habitats, and the mix of progressive companies and beautiful scenery have attracted an affluent and liberal community, thriving in diversity.

San Jose State University is located in the city’s downtown area and offers a wide spectrum of undergraduate and graduate degrees. Within the Department of Art and Art History is the interdisciplinary BA, BFA, and MFA Spatial Art Program, where students can focus on glass arts. Founded in 1964 by Robert Fritz, SJSU’s Glass Arts program is said to be one of the oldest in the country and was led by Mary White for over seventeen years. After White

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retired in 2005, Jeffrey Sarmiento and Amy Rueffert each led for one year and in 2007 Cassandra Straubing, current Vice President of the GAS, was hired full-time as the Glass Arts Area Coordinator and Instructor. The program primarily focuses on blowing and casting processes, but students are also encouraged to explore various disciplines in digital media, metal fabrication and casting, installation, performance, ceramics, wood, screenprinting, and sculpture. The surrounding progressive tech community is a source of inspiration and Cassandra Straubing notes, “being in the heart of Silicon Valley, we can’t help but embrace technology, and glass is the perfect medium for this.

Many students cohesively incorporate use of the laser cutter, 3D printer, LEDs, Arduino, and digital projections amidst traditional glass working processes.”

SJSU’s fabrication facilities are plentiful and provide sustenance for the endeavors of the interdisciplinary artist. The glass shop has heat recuperative furnaces, alongside slumping and casting kilns, while the outdoor sculpture yard has

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GAS Resource Links To access the Glass Art Society’s up-to-date resources, just click on the links below. exhibitions SJSU hotshop

a large foundry with massive casting crucibles, a burnout kiln, welding equipment, and fork lift. The wood shop is equipped for furniture making and sculpture, along with a machine shop, plastic vacuum former, sandblaster, and sheet-metal working machines. For those working in installation there are seven galleries available to use, along with two large shipping containers known as, “Freight and Cargo Galleries”.

All participating students become a member of the Glass Artist Guild, which helps build professional practices through glass art sales. The funds raised from the sales help to support students study at craft schools like Pilchuck Glass School or Pittsburgh Glass Center, attend industry conferences, bring in visiting artists, purchase new equipment, and (of course) the annual “Glory Hole Weenie Roasts”. The program also works closely with local glass professionals and the Bay Area Glass Institute (BAGI), where many

SJSU graduates now work as instructors, and a number of internships are offered each year to current students. A newly developed Artist in Residence program is now available and accepting applications until June 15. If you are interested in developing work in the beautiful California Bay Area contact Cassandra Staubling at cassandra.straubing@sjsu.edu for more information.

Come the first weekend of June, the glass community will be able to experience the vibrant character of SJSU as they will host a variety of demos and lectures throughout our 44th annual conference in San Jose, with the theme Interface: Glass, Art, and Technology.

Amanda Wilcox is a candidate for the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Glass, Expanded Media and Visual Culture Studies at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Her work focuses on understanding the human experience through analyzation of memory, technology and history.

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