GASnews Summer 2015

GASnews

summer 2015 Vo l u m e 2 6 Issue 2

Inside

3 Letter from the President 3 Letter from the Editor 4 Thanks to our 2015 Conference Sponsors 4 2015 Technical Display Vendors

GAS Conference Mobile App

6 Paul Stankard: A Contagious Sense of Wonder 8 Mildred Howard: Stories as Medicine 10 2015 Strattman Lecture: The Critical Vacuum 12 A New Endeavor: The Corning Museum of Glass/

Corning Inc. Specialty Glass Residency

14 Nikolas Weinstein: Flexible Systems 16 Student Profile: Meredith Lopez 18 School Profile: California College of the Arts 19 Op-Ed: The Golden State 20 In Memorium: Michael Nourot 20 GAS Resource Links Cover: Nikolas Weinstein: With a piece temporarily suspended just above the ground.

Mark double-checks connections before the piece is lifted.

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: Kim Harty, Rebecca Hopman, Michelle Knox, Grace Meils, The Nourot Family, Natali Rodrigues, David Schnuckel, 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 Kristin Galioto, Communications Manager Shelbey Lang, Executive Assistant Pamela Jaynes, Project Manager* 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 Dear GAS Members, Well, it's nearly June already and the Glass Art Society San Jose conference, Interface: Glass, Art, and Technology is just days away. The California planning committee and our partner venues, The Tech Museum, BAGI, San Jose State University, and The Corning Museum of Glass Hot Glass Roadshow, are busy preparing for what promises to be a great conference.

The world of glass is evolving with the use of innovative technologies, and this year’s conference will allow you to experience the medium in a new way. GAS is also embracing new technology with our interactive San Jose conference app. Set up your profile and engage with fellow attendees and presenters before you arrive or once you hit the ground. It's an exciting new way of experiencing, connecting, and navigating your way around the conference. You’ll have access to the conference schedule, presenter bios, venue maps and floor plans, Tech Display vendors, social media, and much more! You are also able to find out who is attending, so you can connect with friends over the weekend. A link to the Gallery Hop map will also be available.

The conference always marks a time of change for GAS. We want to say thank you to Jiyong Lee and Lance Friedman, who will be leaving the GAS Board after the conference in San Jose. Both have served two three-year terms. Jiyong was instrumental as the chair of the Education Committee, coordinating the Portfolio Review and managing our coldworking and lec-mo presentations, as well as other events and projects. Lance served on the Executive Committee as Treasurer and provided vital input on the development of the new GAS logo and website.

This June we welcome three new dynamic Board members to the hard-working GAS team: Kelly Conway, curator of American glass at The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York; Charlotte Potter, artist and glass studio manager and programming director at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia; and Stephen Powell, artist and professor at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.

Over nine years ago, Patty Cokus came to GAS as Pam’s Executive Assistant. In April we said farewell as she began a new adventure.

We are happy to welcome Shelbey Lang as the new Executive Assistant, who joined the GAS team after working in marketing and administrative roles for arts organizations in Utah and Texas.

Pamela Jaynes is also working part-time in the GAS office on special projects.

We look forward to seeing you all in San Jose!

Roger MacPherson GAS President GASnews

editor’s letter With the publication of the Summer issue, the San Jose GAS conference will be just a few days away. Members will have their transportation and lodging booked, and their last task will be to leaf through their Program Books, or the new GAS conference mobile app, and plot their itinerary to see their favorite presenters. The San Jose GAS conference has a diverse and exciting range of lectures, demos, and lec-mos that represent the wealth of talented artists that reside in California, alongside presentations that show how glass and technology can inform one another. This issue highlights a few of the many dynamic presentations you should be sure not to miss.

For those coming to California for the first time, Michelle Knox has written an op-ed about the history of the California glass community and how a handful college glass programs created fertile ground of a diverse and dynamic glass scene to thrive over the past 50 years. Natali Rodrigues covers Mildred Howard, an artist based in the Bay Area, whose immersive sculptures and installations look critically at the painful history of slavery and discrimination in America.

I have written a piece about Nik Weinstein, an artist based in San Francisco, who is constantly innovating to create swirling architectural glass sculptures that defy gravity.

Amanda Wilcox, our student rep, covers the Becky Winship scholarship winner, Meredith Lopez, in her student profile and looks at the California College of the Arts in her school profile.

Of the non-Californians, David Schnuckel warms us up for the provocative Strattman Lecture, The Critical Vacuum

by Hyperopia Projects. The lecture, by the trio Helen Lee, Matt Szösz and Alex Rosenberg, will discuss the perceived lack of critical discourse in the glass field. The Labino Lecture is also a panel, and will discuss the newly-launched specialty glass residency at Corning. Finally, Grace Meils covers the well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Paul Stankard.

By now, GAS Board members already have their boots on the ground getting ready for the outstanding event we have planned, from exhibitions, to receptions, presentations, demos, and of course – the GAS Auction. While this issue covers many of the named lectures, there are still a host of demos, lec-mos, and lectures to see. As for me, I need to get back to my GAS mobile app – see you in San Jose!

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Kim Harty

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2015 conference sponsors The Glass Art Society salutes the following, who have already pledged their support.

2015 Premier Sponsor

Major Sponsors

Day of Glass Sponsor

Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass Conference Sponsors

Applied Materials Foundation Fleishhacker Foundation MacPherson Construction & Design Ted and Melissa Lagreid Presentation Sponsors Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California - Jay Musler Demo Clay and Glass Arts Foundation - Jaime Guerrero & Watts Youth Group Demo College for Creative Studies | Glass - Nikolas Weinstein Lecture His Glassworks, Inc. - Johnathon Turner (formerly Schmuck) Demo Mark Murai - Nancy Callan Demo Martha Alderson - Demetra Theofanous and Beau Tsai Demo Robert M. Minkoff Foundation - At-Risk Youth Forum Southern Illinois University, Glass Program - Career Panel SJSU Glass Artist Guild Students - International Student Exhibition Venue Partners Bay Area Glass Institute The Corning Museum of Glass Hot Glass Roadshow San Jose State University The Tech Museum of Innovation The Glass Art Society Journal for the 2015 conference is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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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 - 5 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 1-2 3-4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13

Vendor Olympic Color Rods ARTCO Gaffer Glass USA LTD Wet Dog Glass, LLC Glasscraft, Inc. Glass Art Society Corning Incorporated (Premier Sponsor) Red Hot Metal/Cutting Edge Uroboros Glass Spectrum Glass/System 96® The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass

Circles indicate a premium booth

14 15 16 17 18 19 20-22 23 24 25 26-27 28-29 30

National Torch/Premier Industries The Glass Furnace Foundation Hang Your Glass Skutt Kilns Hot Glass Color and Supply Wale Apparatus Co., Inc. His Glassworks, Inc. Digitry Company, Inc. Pilchuck Glass School Paragon Industries, L.P. Bullseye Glass Co. Steinert Industries, Inc. East Bay Batch & Color

31-32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 42 43 44 45 50

Trev/Aim Kiln Canned Heat Glass, LLC The Penland School of Crafts Bucher Emhart Glass Charley’s Deadman Switch Chrysler Museum Glass Studio Euclid Kilns North Jersey Diamond Wheel Mobile Glassblowing Studios, LLC Tulsa Glassblowing School SDS Industries Jim Moore Tools for Glass ABR Imagery

2015 GAS Conference Mobile App To experience everything the event has to offer, right in the palm of your hand, visit the App Store or Google Play on your mobile device and download the BusyEvent app. Then search for gas44 to access the conference schedule, presenter bios, venue maps and much more! You can also use the HTML5 web app from your desktop, laptop or any mobile device, by going to http://busyevent.com/gas44 To create a personal profile and begin connecting with fellow attendees, sign up using the email address you registered with and create a unique password at https://app.busyevent.com/#/sign-up

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Paul Stankard: A Contagious Sense of Wonder

by Grace Meils Flame, was reviewed in the Fall 2014 issue of GASnews. Here, he shares some reflections on his fifty years with glass: Looking back at your career so far, what are you most proud of accomplishing?

I’m proud to say I gave the art making my best effort, meaning I enjoyed educating myself in ways that would complement my work as well as my outlook in life.

I learned from my labor. The commitment I made to express a personal interest in the plant kingdom through a glass lens required diligence and courage. That said, I derived great pleasure from using my hand skills to manipulate material into objects of beauty. These objects reveal my insights into the mysteries of nature, sex, death, and God. What has surprised you most in your journey as an artist?

Paul Stankard, photo: Lauren Garcia

This year’s Glass Art Society Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Paul Stankard, has been working with glass for more than fifty years. He started as a scientific glassblower in 1962, experimenting with paperweights and other creative projects on the side for more than ten years before making the transition to being a full-time artist.

Paul Stankard quickly developed a unique voice in the medium, adapting traditional paperweight techniques and designs to create imaginative, poetic works that celebrate the spirit of the natural world. Encapsulated in pristine glass forms, the meticulously detailed flameworked flowers, insects, and natural elements in Stankard’s pieces could easily come off as cold, reserved, or even clinical. Instead, they are infused with the artist’s warmth

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and humility, conveying a contagious sense of wonder about the beauty and richness of nature, and life itself.

Throughout his career, Stankard has received three honorary degrees, as well as numerous awards within the glass community. His work is included in more than sixty museum collections, including the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and he has been the subject of traveling solo museum exhibitions produced by the Museum of Glass in Washington and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

A writer as well as an artist, Stankard shares his vast experience with glass and thoughtful observations on art and life through poetry, essays, and books. His most recent publication, Spark the Creative GASnews

I am surprised by the interest in, and respect for the artist who is often perceived as a magic-maker. As an artist/ craftsman competing with significant work from the past, I’m often invited to stand on a platform with other professionals.

Society values the artist as an important member within a diverse community.

Artists contribute to the collective wisdom within a community by exhibiting, teaching, writing, or lecturing and reveal the oftenoverlooked creative side of humanity.

This is something I never could have anticipated at the beginning of my career.

Do you have any advice for an artist just starting out in their career?

Each person has to be true to themselves in the context of their art making. They have to go inward and be in touch with what they feel passionate about. As you move close to your feelings your commitment strengthens. You may start out curious about moving in a particular direction, but as you reach the next level of professionalism your commitment is strengthened. Being an

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Paul Stankard, Golden Orb, Floral Clusters and Figures Triptych, 2011, colored glass encased in clear glass, cut, polished and laminated, 6” h x 3” w x 8.125” l. Photo: Ron Farina.

artist is a journey, not a goal.

In a fun way, I tell my students, it’s important that you be nice to people.

To quote my friend Hank Murta Adams on this subject, his advice to the younger artist is “to be sure to do the dishes.”

Are there other artists whose work you have admired throughout the years?

I’m somewhat reluctant to call out specific artists I have admired, because I’m likely to leave out someone important – and I have a lot of friends in the glass community! I do particularly admire those who have truly advanced the medium through innovative work.

As a senior artist I am proud of the craft community and over the decades, I have felt close to many artists whose work reflects various stages of artistic maturity.

I’ve enjoyed being a student of art history and contemporary craft and seeking out the makers doing original art.

Having watched and participated in the evolution of flameworking and paperweight making throughout the years, are there any trends that you have noticed, or are there any new directions that are particularly interesting to you?

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I see hundreds of people taking advantage of the working characteristics of borosilicate glass in ways that have separated them from most of the historical traditions within glass art. The few innovators in this community are inventing a new language based on techniques that exploit glass that was developed for industry, but is now finding its way into the creative side. This is enlivening the glass community in a way that may be historically significant.

Have you been involved with GAS in the past? What do you think is the most valuable thing about their activities?

I’ve attended many of the conferences from GAS’s inception, and feel the dissemination of information has been a great service to me and the overall community.

It’s always great to meet other artists whose work you’ve followed, mostly through publications, and have a chance to spend time with them in person.

Grace Meils is a marketing and career development consultant for artists, as well as an independent writer specializing in glass.

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Mildred Howard: Stories as Medicine

by Natali Rodrigues

Blackbird in a Red Sky (AKA Fall of the Blood House)

Mildred Howard is a griot, a storyteller.

Her work tells stories that pull forth intimate and historical narratives through materials, objects, and form. She weaves together themes of home, culture, and erasure. Her charged sculptures expose histories that Americans work hard to unlearn: the gruesome reality of African American experiences under slavery, its legacy of violence in the home, and its legacy of needless systemic deaths and cruelties. Her practice interrogates the origin stories of modern America and her work becomes a preformative tool, presenting the viewer with sets of juxtapositions that pose questions about safety, nationhood, experience, and truth.

Howard’s work relies on sets of shibboleths native to the American experience, evoking echoes of history, buildings, and tools.

These artifacts function as visual anchors and ground the work in a shared experience.

She builds houses that echo slave quarters, creates layered collages to reveal hidden histories, and uses materials and found objects that evoke ancestral ghosts of home.

In Howard’s print Island People on Blue Mountain, VI, 2012, she layers

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fragments of Bass Reeves’ portrait, parts of a modern map of Texas, and descriptive texts. Bass Reeves was born into slavery in 1838 and went on to become the first African American Deputy U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi. Reeves’ image was transformed by popular culture into the Lone Ranger, a masked white man, fighting to make Texas safe for immigration and settlement. All of the semiotic information Howard gathered about the story is sandwiched together in a shallow plane, with the maps of Texas in the background, a portrait of Reeves in the mid-ground, and cursive script screening in the foreground. The shallow depth of field forces the viewer to consider the cacophony of information together: from front to back, from story to image to map. What is revealed is an idealized American story and the erasure of its African American roots. The act of viewing the collaged images, maps, and text is an archeological event, pulling the truth forward through time. Bass Reeves, the man who inspired the story of the Lone Ranger, comes forward. The creation myth of Texas is questioned, reorganized, and

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Island People on Blue Mountain, VI

reprioritized through the palimpsest of Island People on Blue Mountain, VI. In the installation Safe House 1, Howard builds an environment filled with objects culled from our everyday life, like a set of kitchen knives, and things that are relics hopes, like the silver tea set polished to a luster or silverware left to tarnish in a box. One hundred and thirty kitchen knives are piercing the wall in an action that paralyzes the mind with sheer volume and rhythm. Silverware is placed haphazardly on the floor of a house built of knives. Lying deep in the DNA of the house is a slave cabin.2 These objects conjure memories of use and touch, only to have their presence build a sense of menace, loss, and pain. The work evokes a sympathetic magic; magic that calls us to remember the violence hidden behind the façade of propriety; magic that asks us to remember the home as a symbol for country. In each of the silver objects lies the inheritance of colonialism and the slave trade masked by the ritual of high tea and civility. The accumulation of objects, actions, and construction GASnews

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questions the reliability of the objects as narrators by reminding the viewer that “stories [are] medicine, that the story told one way could cure, that same story told another way could injure.” 3 In Blackbird in a Red Sky (AKA Fall of the Blood House) 4, Howard uses the frame of a shack, clad with red glass rather than corrugated steel or wood planking. The glass transforms the space around it, casting a blood red shadow. Once inside, the viewer sees the landscape transformed into shades of red.

The glass becomes a scrim though which the landscape is bathed in the legacy of slavery.

Mildred Howard builds a rhythm in her work between public and private spheres. It acts like Morse code, blinking between form and negative space. Her work is encoded with national and cultural memory. She has built houses of glass, bottles, discarded windows, and decorative sheet glass. Howard creates spaces and places that question the American experience. Using assemblage, collage, and installations she builds liminal environments that allow the viewer to consider the past and present simultaneously. It is in the interstices where we are witnesses to the evolving legacy of enslavement and colonization in the US. Natali Rodrigues is a member of the GAS Board of Directors. She is a faculty member in glass at ACAD and has an active glass and art practice.

1. Safe House, 2005, Richmond Art Centre 2. p. 48, Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture.

Chichester, U.K.: Wiley, 2009. Print.

3. p. 92, King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: a Native Narrative. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2003. Print.

4. Blackbird in a Red Sky (a.k.a. Fall of the Blood House), 2002. Art glass, wood, blown glass and ambient light.

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2015 Strattman Lecture: The Critical Vacuum Helen Lee, Alexander Rosenberg & Matt Szösz initiate a conversation regarding the state of critical discourse within the glass community

by David Schnuckel Silicon Valley in San Jose is universally recognized as a region of prosperity and urbanization. It is an epicenter of modern ingenuity driven by decades of technology-based advancements.

Electronic devices and instrumentation, breakthroughs in computer programming, software development, and Internet entrepreneurialism are just a few products of San Jose’s technological legacy.

These discoveries have had tremendous impact upon contemporary culture and a significant effect upon how we approach the condition of being human, altogether.

For GAS conference attendees, San Jose is undeniably synonymous with innovation, a word we usually associate with high-tech modes of glass making, but can also describe ways to share information to advance discourses in glass. The 2015 Wayne Strattman Critical Dialogue Lecture at the 2015 GAS Conference in San Jose promises to specifically address the topic of information sharing, or the lack thereof, in the field of contemporary glass.

The provocative alliance, Hyperopia Projects, has been selected to present the 2015 Strattman Lecture titled, The Critical Vacuum. In their presentation, Hyperopia collaborators Matthew Szösz, Alexander Rosenberg, and Helen Lee will address the state of critical discourse in the glass community. Their presentation will examine the potential for deeper critical investigations into craft/materialbased art and will pose ideas of how the glass community might make a greater contribution to critical thought in fine art and craft/material studies.

Hyperopia Projects formed in 2010 with Szösz, Lee, and Rosenberg as the sole and founding members. Each is a highly accomplished and internationally engaged artist; Szösz lives and works in Seattle; Lee is an assistant professor and

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Helen Lee

head of glass at the University of WisconsinMadison; Rosenberg is assistant professor and glass coordinator at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. The group has become recognized as a trio of young visionaries who are taking collaborative action in response to what they see as limitations in the field of contemporary glass. “The idea behind the founding of Hyperopia Projects was to help create exposure, both physical and mediated, for art that did not fit existing markets, paradigms, or clichés,” says Szösz.

“Personally, I have always seen the dissolution of artificial barriers between art and audience as the goal for the group.”

Their collective efforts, since their founding, have attempted to chronicle expansive practices in the evolving glass field and articulate the ambiguous position glass holds as a discipline. In the last five years they have worked to address a shift in contemporary glass from formal to conceptual glass practices, and they impress the urgency of these alternative practices on a broader viewing audience. Hyperopia Projects’ first pursuit was curatorial, provoked by a need to create a more visible venue for experimental work involving glass-based exploration. In 2011 Hyperopia Projects GASnews

notified the glass community of an exhibition they were organizing in conjunction with the 2011 Seattle GAS conference.

They put forth a call for applicants to a juried show called {SUPERPOSITION}, an exhibition conceived to expose significant experimental practices related to glass.

They solicited work that didn’t sit comfortably within any singular definable media or genre, but inhabited multiple identities at once. {SUPERPOSITION} was highly anticipated before its opening, highly trafficked during its reception, well received during its short run, and it continues to be heralded today. It is still referenced as a critical waypoint in discussions navigating expanded practices in glass.

Hyperopia Projects’ second venture was a panel presentation and discussion at the 2012 GAS conference in Toledo, Ohio. Moderated by Andrew Page, PostStudio Glass Panel: A Look at the New Parameters For Work in Glass was assembled to address new approaches and discourses unfolding in the glass field and discuss what role certain groups have played in the evolution of glass. Szösz and Rosenberg sat on the panel and discussed the mission of Hyperopia Projects in relation to cultivating and supporting experimental glass practices, as was seen in {SUPERPOSITION}. During the discussion Szösz and Rosenberg identified professional concerns about this “new terrain” and how artists with experimental approaches fit into craft/material-based education, employment, and discourse within professional glass practice.

Hyperopia Projects’ next undertaking is the Strattman Lecture at the 2015 GAS conference in San Jose. In The Critical Vacuum, Szösz, Rosenberg, and Lee will shift their focus from a perceived void in addressing experimental practices, to a void in cultivating critical discourse within the field. According to Rosenberg,

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Alexander Rosenberg

Matthew Szösz

“The title [of the lecture] comes from conversations I've had with several clever people who have ideas for critical writing specific to glass, but are unsure where they might find a home. I visualize a gaping hole where that home should be - the vacuum that we are collectively working to identify and fill.”

The Critical Vacuum stems from the same spirit that initiated {SUPERPOSITION}.

The impetus of the lecture is fueled by a sense of urgency and has inspired a call to action to help the group identify and accumulate critical writing about glass, and make it available to a broader glass audience. The group posits that this body of work should be supported, integrated, and valued within the glass community as much as the making. According to Szösz, “This lecture is aimed at helping to establish the requisite space for a self-sustaining, generative conversation to serve the high-quality work that is currently being made. We do not seek to control this conversation, merely to help provide a space for it to live, breathe, and grow.”

In The Critical Vacuum Hyperopia Projects will define “criticality,” what its purpose has been within the realm of contemporary art, and how it functions in contemporary practice today. From there, the group will enumerate their observations on where criticality is lacking in the contemporary glass field and identify where the responsibility of hosting critical discourse could reside.

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After examining causes of criticality’s absence within the glass world, the group will examine the effects of that absence and conclude by presenting a variety of potential solutions to incite a community effort to form a supportive, long-lasting platform for critical writing. In regards to the group approach to this topic, Lee states, “We started making use of our collaborative identity in 2010, and the landscape of the glass world has evolved substantially since then. I think our goal with this lecture is to influence what changes we might see happening over the next five years.”

The GAS conference theme, Interface: Glass, Art, and Technology is one that beckons our community to seriously consider what role innovation will play in the future development of our field.

However, true innovation must consider all things relevant to the nature of that development. In the name of making glass discourse stronger, we must seek improvement by approaching it differently than before, especially with regard to issues of glass practice outside of “making”. The prestige of the Strattman Lecture, which was established in 2004, resides in the presentations designed to shed perspective upon the current condition of the contemporary field of glass and to inspire new direction within its continued development. The Critical Vacuum is a deserving proposal to carry on that legacy, promising a provocative V o l u m e 2 6 , I ss u e 2

focus on the significance of critical writing and its potential to influence the direction of our field when given a much stronger presence within it.

David Schnuckel is an artist and educator, currently serving as visiting assistant professor to the glass program of the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.

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A New Endeavor: The Corning Museum of Glass/ Corning Incorporated Specialty Glass Residency

by Rebecca Hopman The Corning Museum of Glass and Corning Incorporated have come together to create a unique residency program. The Specialty Glass Residency, announced last fall, offers artists a chance to use specialty glasses developed by Corning and work with teams of experts from both organizations. At the heart of the program is innovation and experimentation – two elements that are key to both Corning and the Museum.

Corning Incorporated, a leading supplier of specialty glass and glass ceramics, has developed and patented more than 150 formulations, including products such as Gorilla Glass. Artists not only have access to these materials, but they also have a chance to consult with staff who have technical expertise in glass formulation, melting, and forming.

The Corning Museum of Glass offers resident artists a chance to work with Museum glassmakers in their facilities, including the recently-completed Amphitheater Hot Shop. Resident artists have the opportunity to consult with

The Kovar is fused with Corning 7056.

Courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass.

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The Studio staff and Hot Glass team look on as Albert Paley creates a sketch.

Courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass.

curatorial and research staff that can provide historical and artistic context for the project. In addition, the artists have access to the world-class collections of the CMoG and The Rakow Research Library.

Dr. Glen Cook, chief research scientist at the CMoG and scientific advisor to the residency program, said his hope is to “create an environment that nourishes the sojourning artists and scientists on that journey [of discovery], so that the greatest potentials can be realized.”

The first artist invited to participate in this endeavor is American sculptor Albert Paley. Paley, who is best known for his large-scale works in metal, first worked with glass at Pilchuck in 1998.

“Their [residency] program there was to bring people outside the glass medium to experience glass.” Paley incorporated glass objects he made at Pilchuck into a series of sculptures, noting at the time the “relationship between the metal and the glass.” He continued to use these materials GASnews

in tandem over the next several decades, and was therefore interested in the opportunity to work with specialty glasses developed by Corning Incorporated.

Along with a team of experts, Paley spent the first part of his residency experimenting with different types of specialty glasses. One of the glasses he chose to work with, Corning Code 7056, is a borosilicate glass engineered to bond tightly to the metal alloy Kovar.

The properties of this glass allowed Paley and his team to achieve something truly special. Museum glassmaker Eric Meek said of the experience, “The idea of fusing glass with another material is something almost every glassmaker dreams of, but usually is totally off the table as an option. We did something I don’t believe has been done by an artist in the 3,500-year history of glassmaking – we fused iron with glass.” Paley, who has spent two decades exploring the “visual integration” of glass and metal

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A piece created by Albert Paley during the residency.

Courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass.

could finally achieve the “total unification” of these materials.

Due to the unique nature of this residency, which blends art and science, research will certainly come into play.

This was the case for Paley, who calls his studio a “research facility.” He considers research an integral part of the design process: “We’re always trying new things whether it’s driven by aesthetics... or the technical aspects,” and those experiments necessitate investigation. Paley’s approach to research is illustrated by his residency.

When melding metal into molten glass, Paley and his team noticed air bubbles were being trapped in the glass. Once the glass was manipulated, however, many of these bubbles were “drawn out and deleted.” This unexpected outcome GASnews

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led Paley to investigate how the team could manipulate the metal and glass to accentuate the trapped air.

Amy Schwartz, director of The Studio of The Corning Museum of Glass, also sees the need for research and collaboration between those who are involved in this program. Schwartz hopes a dialogue between the resident artists and Corning scientists will benefit both groups. Cook seconds that thought, adding, “I want [scientists and engineers] to see how observing and learning from artists can inform their own inventive processes, as artists take materials up to and beyond perceived limits in ways not typically possible in the more mechanized environment of a laboratory.”

The residency program will be discussed in detail at this year’s Labino Lecture, Exploring New Possibilities with Science and Art: Corning Museum of Glass/ Corning Incorporated Specialty Glass Residency. Join moderator Amy Schwartz and panelists Rob Cassetti, Dr. Glen Cook, Eric Meek, Tina Oldknow, and Albert Paley on Saturday, June 6 for an overview of the program, an introduction to the resources residents have access to, and a look at plans for working with artists and designers. Cook hopes artists who come to the lecture will “be moved to push the boundaries of materials and processes in their own work, seek collaboration with artisans in other media to combine with glass, and seek out advice and their own partnerships with scientists and engineers.” Schwartz, who will talk about the resident selection process, adds, “Artists have long been excited to get access to Corning’s specialty glasses and to Corning’s scientists. This [residency] opens new avenues for artists to do their own research using these materials.”

Learn more about the residency and see Paley and his team at work on our blog.

Rebecca Hopman is the Outreach Librarian at The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass.

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GLASHAUS The International Magazine of Studio Glass

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: http://studioglas.jimdo.com

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Nikolas Weinstein: Flexible Systems

by Kim Harty Nikolas Weinstein’s studio in San Francisco, California is known for its serpentine, undulating sculptures that twist and wind through architectural spaces. If one knows the material limitations of glass, the scale and formal complexities of his projects are even more impressive. Weinstein will be presenting a lecture at the 2015 GAS conference in San Jose to discuss how his design process has evolved over the course of his career.

Weinstein became interested in glass during his last semester studying comparative literature at Brown University, when he took a glass class with Michael Scheiner at the neighboring Rhode Island School of Design. Weinstein loved the material, and kept making glass after he graduated and moved to San Francisco to work for a graphic designer. Inspired by one of Scheiner’s projects to make something organic, Weinstein started making glass “pods” that were sold at swanky design stores and upscale retail shops. Since his first introduction to glass, forms in nature have inspired Weinstein and he is “interested in the architecture of natural forms, and how they are built on a cellular level.”

When asked how his comp lit degree translated to his practice, Weinstein was adamant, “One can never underestimate, or adequately emphasize how important it is to communicate well. If you are trying

Although the sculpture is made of colorless glass, it integrates into its location by reflecting the colors that surround it.

From this vantage, the predominant tones are the greens of the lush Malaysian jungle and the blues of the pool.

to do something different, or convince people that you are capable of handling resources, money, or complicated issues, it’s important that you give them confidence, and it’s important that you can communicate your ideas.”

Perhaps it was a combination of his glass skills and virtuosic communication that landed him a commission from DZ Bank in Berlin, in a building designed by Frank Gehry. Weinstein was commissioned to design a piece that would hang in the central atrium, covered by a glass dome ceiling. He imagined large curved

It's not obvious how these tightly curved panels carry their loads. To prove their integrity before fabrication, we sent digital models to Arup's London office for stress analysis.

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hanging glass pieces that would echo Gehry’s sensuous architecture and diffuse the natural light coming in through the ceiling. The challenge was to create large pieces of glass that would both complement and have an impact on the architecture. According to Weinstein, “most glass is small, to make it bigger you need industry. There are flat sheet and there are tubes in the world, because that’s where the momentum of industry is.” For this commission, Weinstein chose to work with long borosilicate tubes that he fused and slumped into large curved forms. To slump the glass, Weinstein designed a pin mold kiln with a modular floor. The bottom of the kiln is a matrix and each piece could be set to a different height, so that the kiln itself was the mold for the glass. The tubes allowed the pieces to be light, massive, and strong, and he has been working on an architectural scale ever since.

Weinstein sees designing for architectural space as a conversation between the piece and the building. His father was an architect and predisposed him to be “inclined to think that space is something worth talking to... you pay attention to

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View of main lobby at the Courtyard Sha Tin in Hong Kong. Photo: Michael Weber

what is around you and do a kind of call and response.” But he notes, “whatever you build has to be reasonably big in order to hold its voice in the conversation – and that is where technology comes in.”

Technology plays a large role in the fabrication process at Weinstein’s studio, but it is always a means to an end. Weinstein says his staff is integral in finding solutions to problems, which often depends on the competencies of the particular staff members. “We are a pretty geek-heavy outfit, but it changes from year to year.

A couple of years ago we had a bunch of coders on staff and between the three of them, a lot of solutions were programmatic, statistical, or analytical; other times we’ve found more traditional solutions.”

In one instance, the studio created a system of acrylic joints to act as a type of cartilage and keep the glass pieces from grinding against on another. His team ultimately abandoned this solution, but reintroduced the acrylic joints into another project that had curved glass tubes that wouldn’t stay in place. The acrylic “cartilage” worked well for the application – but then they needed 30,000 of them, each to an incredible tolerance – so the studio started getting into injection molding. This is one of the many examples of how technology evolves GASnews

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though the making process. “When you begin with problems you don’t know how to solve, you go all these places you never anticipated going.”

When he is beginning a project, he admits that he doesn’t look into his tool box to see what the studio is capable of and despises “calculating the efficiencies of what you already know how to do.” If he doesn’t know how to make an idea, that doesn’t stop him from presenting it, and this fosters innovation in the work. Over the course of his career the process of constant innovation has evolved flexible systems for glass construction, weaving tubes together to make undulating textilelike constructions.

The diaphanous beauty of Weinstein’s installations is undeniable. They are incredibly simple propositions, created on a massive scale, that make a physical impact on both the space and the viewer.

As the size multiplies, so does the engineering know-how required to manage the pieces. Weinstein’s lecture is sure to be inspiring and informative for any artist who is interested in how technology can inform the scale of the glassmaking process.

Kim Harty is an assistant professor of glass at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI.

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Student Profile: Meredith Lopez

by Amanda Wilcox Meredith Lopez, recipient of the 2015 Becky Winship Flameworking Student Scholarship to attend the GAS conference, will graduate this spring from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a BFA in glass. Her work focuses on the sensitivities revealed in experiencing one’s shadows during processes of introspection or recollection. Glass is her main intrigue amongst various media such as wood, ceramics, metal, paper-making, painting, and drawing. Primarily utilizing kiln processes, such as pâte de verre and low or high fire glass powder work, she allows the delicate nature of her narratives to express themselves through fragile material structure. Meredith explains, “The lightly sintered and fragile frit powder symbolizes the degradation of the mind and the breaking down and rebuilding of self that occurs in the process of selftransformation.” The challenges brought on by the frigid winter environment in Rochester also provide her inspiration.

She describes using snow and ice to represent “the nature of my growth, the acceptance of emotions that allowed me to be introspective, and the numbing, frozen moments between pivotal decisions and enlightenment.”

Into the Forest of Solace, 8' x 4.5' x 4', Cast Aluminum, Glass, photo: Adrienne Sherman

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Meredith Lopez

Using glass in her sculptures has inherently strengthened the dialogue of perseverance, as the personality of the material is consistently testing the maker’s fidelity. She explains, “There is something about glass that makes it predictable up to a point, and then beautiful chaos takes over. I thrive in these moments; the happy accidents that bring a piece from idea to epiphany, that enhance the work in a way you never planned.” Accepting the chaos as an opportunity to advance the knowledge of oneself is fluidly represented in a number of her works. The beautiful, wild nature of the hummingbird is captured in her piece Bind, where a glass bird rests, tangled and confined within a space representative of internal conflicts brought on by abusive relationships. Grey clouds, a color signifying an area between, swirl around the graceful creature to show the state of confusion, “an area between acceptance and denial”.

The Becky Winship Flameworking Student Scholarship will support Lopez in attending the 2015 GAS conference in San Jose. This promising emerging artist couldn't be more deserving. Lopez’s work has been shown in the 74th Regional Exhibition at the Arnot Museum in Elmira, New York in 2014, and she was named honorable mention in the 2013 Glass Art Society International Student Exhibition.

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Truth Cuts Like a Knife, 26" x 24" x 7" Bullseye Glass Powder and Frit, MDF, photo: Ulysses Flores

As president of the Glass Guild at RIT, she spearheaded a successful fundraising effort which funded the conference fees and hotel costs for twelve other students and professors and allowed her department to reduce their traveling expenses significantly. Lopez is grateful for the opportunity to attend this year’s GAS conference as a post-graduate, and is eager to gather more knowledge and network with artists and

collectors. She is curious to explore new technologies in glass, which fits perfectly into the theme in San Jose. Upon returning home, she looks forward to working in studios around Rochester and expanding her repertoire and experience with the intention of attending graduate school in a few years. A bright future in the glass community is paved ahead of her.

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.

Bind, 52" x 15" x 15", Sintered Bullseye Glass Powder, Wood, Mixed Media, photo: Ulysses Flores

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School Profile: California College of the Arts

by Amanda Wilcox

Clifford Rainey

MJ Verdugo, Epainting 2, 2014, glass, enamel, photograph

Yi Li Lou, Encase, 2014 glass, sandblasted, pigmented

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California College of the Arts (CCA) was founded in 1907 and has two campuses in San Francisco and Oakland. The school enrolls approximately 1,500 undergraduates amongst twenty-one majors and 500 graduates across thirteen majors. Their internationally renowned glass program, which was started in 1967 by Marvin Lipofsky, is located on the historic Oakland campus in the Rockridge district, just south of the University of California, Berkeley.

Clifford Rainey, a British artist with a BFA from Hornsey College of Art and an MA from Royal College of Art in London is a tenured professor and chair of the department. Rainey is primarily a sculptor whose knowledgeable multimedia practice incorporates vast materials and processes to create evocative figures and busts. His works are exhibited throughout the world and are part of numerous prestigious permanent collections. Elin Christopherson, senior adjunct professor, received a BFA from the California College of the Arts and an MFA from Alfred University. Her breathtaking sculptures seek out the “overlooked, and celebrate the intrinsic worth of these hidden elements in the health of both human and natural systems.” She has taught at Pratt Fine Arts Center, The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, Alfred University, Penland School of Crafts, Pilchuck Glass School, and San Jose State University. Pamina Traylor also serves as senior adjunct professor, holding a BFA from Bryn Mawr College and an MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. She actively lectures and demonstrates worldwide and has work in permanent collections from Istanbul to Taiwan, and throughout the US. The glass adjunct professors are Duncan House and Corey Jones, who also teach design and industrial design students. Both are graduates from CCA, and are profesGASnews

sionally active in the Bay Area community.

CCA is located in the nucleus of innovation, which allows for an impressive list of influential visiting artists and lecture series to be integrated within the rigorous curriculum that focuses on fine art, theory, and technique. Students are urged to engage with their contemporaries, build entrepreneurial skills, and develop critical dialogue about the role of art within our economy.

The ground floor of the Shaklee and Barclar Simpson Buildings is where the fully-equipped studio is housed. The hotshop has a 900-pound continuous melt furnace, two glory holes, four annealers, a pick-up kiln, powder booth, and casting equipment. The cold shop has a diamond saw, diamond slab saw, belt sanders, lap wheels, rociprolaps, diamond lathes, a drill press, flex-shaft engravers, and two sandblasters. The kiln room has five various sized casting kilns, large bed fusing and slumping kilns, a multi-use, top-lifting kiln with rolling bed, and plaster and wax rooms. In addition, there is a classroom studio with two testing and two casting kilns, a flex-shaft engraver, lampworking lathe and torch station, diamond ring saw, UV gluing station, work tables, and critique space.

The California College of the Arts glass program offers abundance in all directions. With a truly inspiring faculty, state-of-the-art facility, and vibrant Bay Area community, it’s no wonder young and emerging artists flock to this innovative center.

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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Op-ed: The Golden State

by Michelle Knox The California glass-making legacy is a dynamic and rich conglomeration of contemporary glass art with roots dating back to the beginnings of the American Studio Glass Movement. In the early 1960s, California artists started working in glass and subsequently created influential college programs, public access studios, and private studios throughout the state.

During this time, the University of California, Berkeley hired sculptor Edris Eckhardt to teach the first-ever college level glass casting class. In 1964, Marvin Lipofsky was hired by the university to create a hot glass program, which eventually migrated to California College of the Arts in 1967, where it is still active today.

The glass bug bit California hard and by the 1970s, institutions like Chico State University, San Jose State University, Cal State Fullerton, San Francisco State Fresno, Palomar College, and others followed suit, building glass programs and setting the stage for a prolific fifty-year history of California glassmaking.

As a result of the immense amount of opportunities in California, many pivotal glass artists spent portions of their careers there and the California glass community fostered artists who contributed to the wealth of talent in the US, and nurtured ideas that transformed the glass industry in art, commerce, and architecture.

Boyce Lundstrom, who graduated from San Jose State in 1967, went on to become a co-founder of Bullseye Glass.

Glass art pioneer and murrine master, Richard Marquis resided in the Bay Area for several years where he studied under the well-known ceramists Peter Voulkos and later Marvin Lipofsky. Other artists like Dan Fenton, John Lewis, Jay Musler, Mark Peiser, Ruth Tamura, Susan StinsmuehlenAmend, Clifford Rainey, David Ruth, Bella Feldman, Mark Abildgaard, John Leighton, and Mary White created new working methods, cultivated masterful techniques, and worked tirelessly at building strong GASnews

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glass communities, institutions, and educational systems throughout the state.

Just as the California landscape is vast enough to include spiraling mountains, to endless beaches, and ancient redwood forests, the artists of California are equally as diverse in representing a wide scope of working styles, artistic interests, and techniques. It is fitting that this GAS conference is being hosted right in the middle of the state during a transitional period, when technology is intersecting with glass art, as represented by this year’s theme, Interface: Glass, Art, and Technology. The conference highlights the tremendous impact the California community has made on the American Studio Glass Movement itself, which is celebrated alongside the influence of Silicon Valley. The interface of California’s rich glass history and innovative culture of Silicon Valley, points to the endless possibilities that might unfold in the next fifty years of glassmaking in the Golden State – and across the world.

I entered the California glass scene in the late nineties and remained there for more than fifteen years, anchored by the strength of the community and the exceedingly talented artists living and working in close proximity of each other.

The community was accessible and open, keeping with the true spirit of collaboration in glass. Within the Bay Area alone, there were all types of studios from private shops like Randy Strong’s in Berkeley, to large production houses like John Lewis’, and numerous public access studios such as Public Glass, Bay Area Glass Institute, and The Crucible. If an artist had a need or a question, there were numerous venues in which to explore, learn, experiment and make.

I am proud to have been a part of such a rich environment, supported by both formal institutions and by the many California-based glass artists that set out to make art of all types, inclusive of all V o l u m e 2 6 , I ss u e 2

glassmaking techniques. What makes me even more proud is that the foundation laid in the 1960s, by the first generation of American glass artists, is still strong.

California has informed and influenced many talented second and third generation artists like Pamina Traylor, Elin Christopherson, Cassandria Blackmore, Oben Abright, Jaime Guerrero, Helen Lee, Cassandra Straubing, Jonah Ward, Matt Szösz, Gina Zetts, Nate Watson, Joe Cariati, Nadine Saylor, Andrew Larson, and more, who are leading the next generation of American glass. It will be interesting to see what the future holds and how this particular conference will impact the working methods and techniques of the masterpieces yet to be made.

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, working, teaching and making art in Brooklyn, NY.

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In Memoriam: Micheal Nourot (1949-2015) by the Nourot Family

Micheal Nourot and Ann Corcoran

Glass pioneer Micheal Nourot, 66, founder of the Nourot Studio in Benicia, California passed away suddenly on Thursday May 14, 2015, at Kaiser Hospital Vallejo.

Micheal Nourot began his career in glass after graduation from Oakland's California College of the Arts (and Crafts) in 1971. After graduation he was nominated to work with Dale Chihuly and Jamie Carpenter, building the first-ever glass studio at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington. Micheal stayed on when the others left after the summer of 1971. His contribution to the beginning of Pilchuck has been covered in numerous publications.

The following year he worked on the island of Murano and was the only American to be hired onto a crew at Venini.

Artists who visited Murano then included Dale Chihuly, Richard Marquis, and Jamie Carpenter. Upon returning to Oakland, Micheal Nourot had an opportunity to build a glass studio inside Eric Sinizer's shop in Ghirardelli Square where he worked from 1973-1974. Mr. Nourot met his wife, Ann Corcoran, (BFA CCAC 1974) at a symposium where he demonstrated in the fall of 1973.

The Nourot Studio moved to Benicia in August 1974. David Lindsay worked for Nourot for 20 years from 1976. The studio

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is world renowned for its red glass formulas, Scarlet Nova and Red Satin, which are a closely guarded family secret. Today, the studio is operated by their son Nicholas Nourot, 31.

The works made at Nourot Studio include series work, lighting, awards, and custom commissioned glass for architects, designers and individual clients.

During the 1994 Oakland GAS conference, the Nourot Studio hosted a demonstration featuring Lino Tagliapietra and Dante Marioni, cheered on by a big crowd of conference attendees. Recently, the Nourots did a large lighting commission for the Firehouse Grill in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Micheal attended the American Craft Council fairs from 1979 through retirement in 2012.

During the 1980s the ACC fair and others provided a ready-made marketing machine for blown glass works of all kinds.

Part of an eight-sibling Air Force family in Fairfield, California, Micheal had a practical outlook on life. His son Nick says: “He always said that he was raised in the school of hard knocks.” His other passion besides his family was fly-fishing.

In addition to inheriting his skill as a glass master, his son Nick has inherited this love of fishing. Nick is a pro bass fisherman.

Micheal is also survived by his wife of over 40 years, Ann Corcoran, his son Gabriel, his daughter and son-in-law Lois and Bryan Baeta, three grandchildren, his three brothers and three sisters, a future daughterin-law Jessi Moran and numerous nieces and nephews. Many friends and family gathered at his bedside when he passed.

There are plans for an exhibition dedicated to his artistic career in the studio’s “vault” at the Nourot Glass Gallery, 675 East H St, Benicia, CA. GASnews

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