GASnews Fall 2016

GASnews

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INSIDE

3 Letter from the President 3 Letter from the Editor 4 Interview: BFF Talks About Community and Collaboration

in the Pipe World

6 Illuminating the Whitefriars Stained Glass

Cartoon Collection

8 On Community: A Conversation 11 Thank You to Our 2016 Conference Sponsors 12 Klaus Moje AO 1936-2016: A Visionary in Glass 14 Student Profile: Hikari Sasaki 16 School Profile: Linnaeus University 18 Op-Ed: Congregating in the Elsewhere:

Examining the Notion of Community within a Social Media Context and the Influence of Digital Exchange on Contemporary Glass Practice

21 GAS Resource Links Cover: BFF + Tyme Collaboration, Yeller Belly Mouthbreather, 2015.

Photo courtesy of Beccy Feather.

GAS news

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

Glass Art Society Board of Directors 2016-2017

Contributing Writers: Michael Hernandez Rebecca Hopman, Emily Kuchenbecker Suzanne Peck, David Schnuckel Editor: Michael Hernandez Graphic Design: Ted Cotrotsos*

President: Cassandra Straubing Vice President: Stephen Powell Vice President: Natali Rodrigues Treasurer: Roger MacPherson Secretary: Tracy Kirchmann

Staff Pamela Figenshow Koss, Executive Director Erika Enomoto, Communications Coordinator Shelbey Lang, Executive Assistant Kassaundra Porres, Office and Volunteer Coordinator *part time/contract

Alex Bernstein Kelly Conway Matt Durran Michael Hernandez Jessica Julius Ed Kirshner Jeff Lindsay

Marc Petrovic Charlotte Potter Lynn Read Masahiro Nick Sasaki Jan Smith David Willis

Student Rep: Emily Kuchenbecker

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

Š2016 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. 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.

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PRESIDENT’S LETTER

EDITOR’S LETTER

Hello Glass Friends!

I hope this letter finds you well. Our lives are too short to spend extended lengths of time in any form of a miserable state. So cheers to a glass half full!

GAS has three upcoming events to celebrate. In September, the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio will host the SPARK! event and Glass Games. In November, GAS will have our first art exhibition at SOFA Chicago. It will accompany our panel discussion surrounding newly identified trends in glass based on the Landscape of Glass Art in America study conducted last spring in partnership with Chihuly Garden and Glass. We will also be organizing our first GAS Member Juried Exhibition, to take place at Glass Wheel Studio during the conference in Norfolk, Virginia. If you are interested in having your work shown as part of the 2017 conference festivities, please visit www.glassart.org/MemberExhibition.html to find out more on how to apply.

Our Green Panel discussions for making “greener” glass have become more of a reality over the last eight months as the Environmental Protection Agency raises the standards and goals for the studio glass industry and artist. As some glass factories have closed their doors, others have stepped up and modified their melting practices to align with environmentally conscious standards. Our own studio practice of melting our material will also change as we all strive for a greener practice of art making.

Glass Trivia: Did you know that the organism known as a Diatom constructs its shell entirely out of glass?! Their housing is made of glass because it saves them 8% in energy costs versus if they used cellulose, minerals, or protein. Diatoms have been around since the era of dinosaurs and produce ¼ of the oxygen that we breathe. I love the versatility of our material!

Community is a shared experience, an organization of individuals shaped by the contributions of many.

Our collective ideas and actions make up the foundation of our identity.

We find community in small, insular groups, as well as broad, diverse circles. This issue of GASnews features investigations on the ways community exits, evolves, and is defined in the glass world.

David Schnuckel’s op-ed invites us to reflect on the influence social media platforms have changed the way we interact, share ideas and create a legacy of ourselves through images and online discussions. BFF (Beccy Feather) opens her insider perspective on the community of the pipe world, dispelling some myths and grasping at what the future holds for this booming industry. Suzanne Peck and I conversationally profess about what community means to us, and how these meanings transform as the glass world continues to flux and evolve.

This issue invites and seeks to inspire conversations on the state of the art. Through timely discourses, GASnews contributors provide a platform for definition and opinion on how the future of the glass community is shaped.

These themes will continue to develop and unfold through the voices of many in discussions with friends and colleagues in intimate dialogue, online threads, and through shared writing.

Sincerely, Cassandra Straubing President

Mike Hernandez

JOIN US IN NORFOLK, VA

Chrysler Museum of Art

For the GAS conference, June 1-3, 2017 Reflections from the Edge: Glass, Art, and Performance The Chrysler Museum of Art and its Perry Glass Studio will host the 46th annual Glass Art Society conference. Attendees will experience glass demonstrations, lectures, and special events such as a local Gallery Hop, International Student Exhibition, Live & Silent Auction, and groundbreaking theatrical glass performances.

Conference registration opens December 1, 2016.

OPEN CALL: GAS MEMBER JURIED EXHIBITION

On view at Glass Wheel Studio, Norfolk, VA, May 27 - July 16, 2017 Applications accepted from September 15 - November 15, 2016.

Eligible applicants must be current GAS members through June 2017.

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INTERVIEW: BECCY FEATHER TALKS ABOUT COMMUNITY AND COLLABORATION IN THE PIPE WORLD GASnews: Describe how you got into working in boro and your background in the pipe community.

Beccy Feather: I had no knowledge of the existence of flameworking until I came to America. The first time I saw anyone flameworking was at Pilchuck in 2005.

Chris McElroy was a teacher's assistant for Karen Buhler and he let me watch him and ask all kinds of annoying questions... which he kindly answered. After that session at Pilchuck, I went to see his show at Traver Gallery. It was really unique and started to turn me on to what was possible with borosilicate glass. I started an MFA at RIT [Rochester Institute of Technology] in 2008 and used the well-equipped flameworking facilities there a lot. There were also a lot of excellent visiting artists such as Matt Eskuche, Micah Evans, and Mike Shelbo, all of whom I owe a lot to and are the people who pushed me to develop my interest further.

Flameworked elements were key to the final work I made there and the ideas of things I wanted to make in the future lent themselves more and more to the attributes of using borosilicate glass.

At a GAS conference, I met Salt. He makes incredibly detailed and complex pipes.

He is also an incredibly astute businessman and was doing well enough to have assistants. I eventually called him up and asked for a job. So, in 2012, I moved to Austin, Texas and started as his assistant.

I wanted to learn from one of the best about how to manipulate borosilicate glass so it seemed like the right move... which it was.

I never really intended to be a pipemaker.

I sort of got wrapped up in it as I really enjoy making things that get used and appreciated daily. When I started to sell my own pipes, it was the first time that I felt like I could charge what my time was worth.

So that’s how it all happened.

Now when I teach flameworking, I pull from the techniques of pipemaking to help students learn to use the material. I owe

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Goblinized Mouthbreather, BFF + Mike Shelbo Collaboration, 2016.

Photo credit: Beccy Feather

all of the skills I have to the generosity and incredible skill of the pipemaking community and am pushed and inspired every day by the work that is happening in the industry.

GAS: Collaboration is an important part of the pipe community. How did this develop and what impact has this had on the development of the community?

BFF: Honestly, I really wasn't sure how it all started. So I had to ask Micah (Evans), who had been there closer to the start than me.

So he says...

Collaboration happened because there was nowhere else to learn how to make pipes, other than from someone you knew doing it. It has always been a part of pipemaking as there weren't any classes or schools where you could learn it. It was pretty much just by watching your friends figuring things out or sharing how you figured something out that got them where they are now. There wasn't really any monetary benefit back then because it was GASNEWS

hard to sell pipes, so the market for that kind of collaborative work developed later.

It was the nature of it being an underground art form that made them share information in the way that they did, and that made collaboration part of the culture, so it has always been there from the beginning.

Collaboration is really important to pipemaking and has helped to progress the scene in many ways. The foremost being the sharing of techniques and skill sets. Pipemakers are very open with their techniques and process. If you are working together on a piece then your common goal is to make it the best you can, so a lot of progress has happened due to collaboration.

GAS: How is the pipe artist community different from other process-specific communities in the glass world?

BFF: It doesn't differ at all. It’s all the same... same drama, same ups, same downs. Sorry to be glib but it’s all the same!

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BFF teaching at Urban Glass, 2014 Photo credit: Charlene Foster

GAS: What is misunderstood about the pipe community?

BFF: That it’s easy to make and sell pipes.

Pipemakers are some of the hardest working people I have ever met. The success of the top pipemakers in this country is solely due to their commitment and work ethic. They are also incredibly smart about how they market themselves and their work and deserve every cent they have made.

Coming up with a successful pipe design was one of the hardest design challenges I have ever done. The form and the function are so connected that it can be really difficult to produce a design that functions well without compromising the aesthetic you desire.

GAS: The pipe/rig/boro industry has had incredible growth over the past decade.

What do you think the future of this industry looks like?

BFF: Right now the pipe scene is similar to the American Studio Glass movement in the 80s. The pipemaker to consumer ratio is working on the side of the pipemaker.

However, there are a lot of people learning flameworking specifically to make pipes, so the bubble may burst. There is, however, one thing to be said that the age of the collector base is quite young and either those people will keep collecting or move onto other things. Either way one of the most advantageous things about the scene right now is that there is no consignment.

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Pipe shops or galleries buy the work outright and the risk at that point onward is on them. I think as soon as that goes things may become a lot trickier for the industry, but it may just weed out, pun intended, the people who are less committed to their career.

GAS: It wasn't so long ago that having pipemaking in educational facilities was taboo. Now we see a lot of respected institutions bringing in pipemakers to teach and bring new techniques and approaches into glass programs. As someone who has been involved in the “high art” educational model and is now teaching pipemaking techniques as part of your classes, what do you see is the value of this to an art education in glass outside of developing technical skill?

BFF: These educational facilities are bringing in pipemakers because they are incredibly skilled technicians. They work every day and become good at what they do. Essentially, they are production glassblowers and we all know that’s how you get good at something! So in some ways, taking a pipe class is not that different from taking a goblet making, Reticello, or cane making class. At the end of the day, you are probably going to be making a functional product to ultimately be used in some way, and you can hold any value in that you like.

Technique for me has always been a starting point or aid to an idea. I can teach a student how to drop a down-stem but VO VO LU LU MME E 2 27 5, , I ISSSSUUEE 34

that doesn't mean the technique has to be used for that application. It’s purely a means to an end, but knowing how to drop a down-stem is an important tool to have in your toolbox. It would be similar to flaring a lip or polishing a lens, so that’s why I teach it. A lot of pipemaking techniques have been adapted from ways of working in the scientific glassblowing industry. So maybe if I had learned flameworking from a scientific glassworker I would be calling “dropping a down-stem” “making a ringseal” instead. It’s pretty much the same thing just a different application.

GAS: Almost all pipemakers have a “handle” (much like in the hip hop scene), insane amounts of followers on social media, and massive events where the big names draw people from all over the world.

From an outsider’s perspective, this looks and sounds a lot like superstar celebrity.

What does celebrity and fandom look like in the pipe community? Should the rest of us be jealous?

BFF: Being Flame-ous (as we like to call it) is just a much smaller, low-key version of superstar celebrity, nothing to be jealous of at all. Money never does anyone any good and I haven't seen any evidence yet to the contrary.

Actually, you should be jealous. However, that’s due to the nature of flameworking borosilicate. I can put a piece I am working on away in the kiln, go get a cup of tea, and then later on pick up right where I left off.

The smaller things are more important.

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ILLUMINATING THE WHITEFRIARS STAINED GLASS CARTOON COLLECTION

by Rebecca Hopman

West Lake conservator Luisa Casella and conservation intern Laura Hashimoto work on a cartoon for the Parish Church of Saint George, Headstone, Harrow. Courtesy of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY.

Discovering the Whitefriars Collection, a project to conserve, digitize, and make accessible a large collection of stained glass cartoons, is in its second full year at the Juliette K. and Leonard S. Rakow Research Library of The Corning Museum of Glass. The project revolves around the Library’s collection of James Powell & Sons (Whitefriars) stained glass cartoons (or working drawings), which includes 1,800 rolls of an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 works on paper. Our goal is to conserve and digitize a study collection of these cartoons and make them available online for artists, researchers, and stained glass enthusiasts.

The Rakow Library has collaborated with several organizations on this project, including the Museum of London and West Lake Conservators. The Museum of London, who gifted us the Whitefriars cartoons in 2008, has presentation drawings for the company’s stained glass commissions. Alex Werner, Head of History Collections at the Museum of London, helped us select which rolls to conserve

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and provided us with digitized images of several presentation drawings. On a recent trip to England, Rakow Chief Librarian Jim Galbraith met Werner at the Museum of London to examine their collection and to discuss future steps of the project.

The Museum will play a key role in the Whitefriars project website, which will unite their presentation drawings, the Rakow Library’s cartoons, and crowdsourced photos of the stained glass windows, along with supplementary information about the installation sites.

As part of the project, the Library has established a summer internship program for paper and photo conservators. We partnered with West Lake Conservators, located in Skaneateles, NY, to design the internship, and conservators Moya Dumville and Luisa Casella advised the interns on treatment techniques. West Lake also conserved several rolls that needed treatment beyond the processes we are able to provide at the Library. Through the efforts of Dumville, Casella, and our

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A cartoon for one of the stained glass windows in St. Mary’s Church, Ajmer, India. Courtesy of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY.

first four interns, we established a set of procedures for treating the cartoons, which are on a variety of media and can be up to 20 feet long.

Outreach is a key component of the Whitefriars project. We visited a number of institutions that have Whitefriars installations, including St. Thomas in New York City; Calvary Episcopal Church in Summit, New Jersey; Headstone Manor in Harrow, London; and our local Park Church in Elmira, New York. These visits not only provide us with insight into the process of making a Whitefriars window, they also

Alex Werner, Head of History Collections at the Museum of London, shows Rakow Chief Librarian Jim Galbraith glass color samples for the St. Thomas, New York City, installation. Courtesy of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY.

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allow us to meet with representatives of the organizations. In a recent visit to New York City’s Temple Emanu-El, Warren Klein, Curator at the Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum of Judaica, gave project team members a tour of the building and the Whitefriars stained glass windows there. We also had a chance to visit their archives, where we examined the original contracts for the Whitefriars installations.

The team hopes to partner with institutions like Temple Emanu-El to digitize primary documents like the contracts and unite them with other digitized collections on our future project website.

Collaboration with our partners was essential to our success throughout the first two years of Discovering the Whitefriars Collection. As the project continues, we look forward to building on these partnerships in order to tell the complete story of Whitefriars stained glass.

To learn more about our project and to see photos and videos of our progress, please visit https://storify.com/ corningmuseum/whitefriars2016. You can also find our #WhitefriarsWednesday posts on social media.

Rebecca Hopman is the Outreach Librarian at The Juliette K. and Leonard S. Rakow Research Library of The Corning Museum of Glass VOLUME 27, ISSUE 3

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ON COMMUNITY: A CONVERSATION

by Michael Hernandez and Suzanne Peck Michael Hernandez: My interest in this discussion comes out of wanting to reflect on and discuss what community means to us, how we have gotten here, and where we are headed. By “we,” I mean both you and me, and “we” as a glass community.

Suzanne Peck: It seems like you and I have a version of this conversation every time we speak, which leads me to conclude that the idea of unpacking and distilling what makes our community unique is both relevant and challenging.

MH: You and I met a little more than ten years ago. Both of us recently out of undergrad, with stars in our eyes over glassmaking. I would guess that we both have gone through periods thinking that it is the only thing we want to do and can’t live without it, and there were times that we considered dipping out, because it’s super hard to carve out a life working in a difficult, expensive medium. I’m guessing that I speak for both of us in saying that a big part of what kept us involved in glass was community.

SP: If I remember correctly, when we met I was still very much a baby glassblower and I thought you were pretty hot stuff in the hotshop. I was initially drawn to glass because I thought the glassblowers and the material itself were cool and sexy and I wanted to be part of that. It's embarrassing to admit, but it is true! In some ways this hasn’t changed. I still feel that magnetism when I walk into the shop, when I see someone gracefully working with the material, even if the teenage-like awe has faded a bit.

MH: I would agree that the “coolness” of glass culture is what draws a lot of us in.

Initially it was, amongst other things like the colors and materiality, this energy and team dynamic that was a performance.

Even among the kilnworkers, coldworkers and flameworkers, the more evolved groups of our species, many of us saw glass being made in hotshops in a school or workshop and were drawn to it. The immediate

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Laura Donefer and Jeff Mack collaborating at GAS Corning 2016. Photo by Heather Baigelman.

attractions are of a primal nature, fire and physical prowess. It’s totally sexy!

SP: There seem to be some shared traits that weave through many, if not most, glass community members. Extroverts, pleasure seekers, excellent communicators. These are traits that seem to emerge in folks that work with glass, no matter the studio.

MH: So, maybe it is partially the personality type that you are trying to pin down. And also there is the reality of our relatively small size and the cooperative or collaborative nature of the medium, especially in hot glass. While these are some of the more tangible reasons, there is a lot more to how and why we are the community that we are. We have this very traceable, recent history of the origins of the glass community. Since I began working in glass, this history was always something that people would reference as a point of pride in being involved in the glass community.

I think that our connection to this idyllic past still exists as a utopian idealism of what it is to be a glassmaker.

SP: Since American studio glass is still relatively young, we can really trace our skill acquisition as a community and can GASNEWS

easily draw a web of shared teachers and traditions. I recently began working with a new person in the hotshop. It's always a bit of a learning curve to work with someone new, a good test for both skill and communication. Without discussion, he and I instantly fell into a method familiar to me, moves that were taught to me by a beloved instructor.

There is something here that undoubtedly contributes to the uniqueness of the community. We learn from the same people, we know not only the same techniques but can often trace them back to individuals or regions. This could not happen in a larger community and I imagine as the American glass scene continues to grow and bifurcate, some of this intimacy will be lost.

MH: I’ve always felt quite privileged to know and work with some of the pioneers of the Studio Glass Movement. For other craftbased media, histories have a much longer lineage with processes and practices developing over centuries or millennia. The argument can be made that many craft processes have had tremendous growth as artists/craftsmen and craftswomen roles changed and the market for art

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developed. However, we have this relatively small window of time and places where huge amounts of change happened. The origin of the glass community has a striking similarity to the maker movement that developed in electronic, computer-based media. Studio glass pioneers cobbled things together in experimental ways and developed a language for making that was original. Their methods were based on the shared, hybridized, and bastardized techniques from U.S. factory and European glass methods. While there are a great deal of purists when it comes to process or technique, I think that we still engage in this and that it has a lot to do with our development of community.

SP: So, American Studio Glass is akin to a Malcolm Gladwellian “outlier,” kind of a perfect timing, perfect storm kind of scenario. I see this spirit continue when I visit new shops and meet new students.

MH: Definitely an “outlier” situation. It was a perfect storm of extremely motivated people in an economic and political climate, not to mention that there was a great deal of acceptance, or maybe it was less of a need for administrative approval, in institutions, that provided a landscape for widespread growth of glass throughout the country. Our community is what it is because of its global influences. While what was happening here made an impact, and spawned the development of glass hubs throughout the world, the information that has played an essential role in our growth is the shared knowledge from makers and innovators.

SP: I have had the good fortune to be part of glass communities on both coasts of the United States as well with our glassy friends in Australia. Each country, each region, each university, each generation has her own style of making, critiquing, challenging, and representing. The styles translate more as dialects, accented practices, rather than foreign languages. There is comfort in this, the ability to travel anywhere in the world and slip into a glass community with little friction, as long as you are fluent enough in the basic vocabulary and grammar, to stretch a metaphor.

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MH: Without pointing fingers, there are certainly regions and countries known for being pipe cultures or coldworking cultures based on the predominance of makers, buyers, enthusiasts, and local tradition.

Naturally, these trends segregate us as a singular community. This is nothing new, but I have seen a noticeable shift in, what I would consider, exclusivity in these camps.

For better or worse, there are clear differences and stereotypes in these groups and their attitudes toward each other.

SP: Maybe this is just me being a Pollyanna, but I think that glass makers are evolving into a more multi-disciplinary group, even if those disciplines are all within glass techniques. I meet more and more makers who tend to bounce between the studios they need to realize their ideas. But I don’t deny there are firm camps whose boundaries are hard to breach. Often times, as with the pipemakers or the goblet makers, this is because of the unique skills they have developed. What do you think the benefits are to softening the exclusivity, as you say?

MH: There continues to be incredible strides in technical prowess and innovation of techniques. The shared information in these groups really drives the development of craft. While there are usually clear divisions, some of the most innovative or technically progressive approaches come from people who do crossover, or at least look over. So, even though we do have our “camps,” I think that when we all come together there can be a lot of development and collaborative innovation.

SP: While I know that you and I both value our community and rely on it as a source of inspiration and information, I think that it is important to report that is isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. This community is small and can often be insular. Maybe I’m contradicting myself a bit. I did just exalt the global nature of our crew and all the inspiration and sharing that comes with access to many makers across continents, but I also know there is another side to that glittering coin. Our community, no matter the proximity, can create a safe VOLUME 27, ISSUE 3

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place to hide from innovation. At worst, we are a self-congratulatory group creating an endless feedback loop of ideas and conversation. That is harsh, and I don’t feel this way often, but it’s worth floating out here. I worry sometimes that our little glass community, with its fetishization of technique and material properties, fixes us firmly in the margin of true contemporary topics and discussions. We are a material as well as a linguistic subset, our very equipment and lexicon isolates us from other media. We are defined by the places we can work, we are isolated from nonglass facilities and residencies that don’t offer our equipment. There are literally walls that keep us in and keep others out. It is my hope that our ongoing discussion about our glass community might open channels of communication around these less than sunny aspects.

MH: There is a vicious cycle that some people find themselves in when they try to hop the fence to broader art communities.

We see it happening, however, with a range of glass, whether primary or secondary to their ideas, artists using both traditional and hybridized material practices. I think it has a lot more to do with where the individual artist aligns her or himself. With that, it is the adaptation or assimilation of these glass artists and makers whose practice is geared to a more contemporary model of making. We have undoubtedly brought people into our circle, even if just as tourists, through this but ultimately what effect will this transition have on us as a glass community?

SP: The contemporary model of making that you’re referring to is a focus on idea development, research, and experimentation. And it seems to have allowed for an interesting ‘mainstreaming’ of some topical contemporary art practices, such as time-based artwork, multi-media installation, and performance.

MH: The more contemporary model I see is the shift away from strict technique/ process and even material and glassbased practices. A considerable number of younger artists, who would identify as glass

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artists, or at least I would identify them as such, are highly mobile in their approach to glass and other media and I think this has a lot to do with the nature of glass studios.

People are, by and large, less anchored to the studio. This has had a considerable impact on how studios function and is contributing to the ways that we are reaching out to new audiences.

The glass studio has had a long history of spectatorship, likely for the aforementioned primal activities of fire and physical performance. While some artists, groups, and institutions are using this glass studio/stage as a venue to explore new performative interactions with material and choreography that is inherent to the glass studio, others go with the dog and pony show to entice, promote products, and revel in the ‘oohs’ and ‘awws.’ We’ve all done it. Spectatorship is definitely going to continue to provide inroads for new approaches and audiences to glass.

this much wider demographic through the broadening of commercial practices, as well as social, community outreach.

I think this can only do good things for our community and glass culture.

SP: I hope you’re right, that our community is broadening. Though a larger, more diverse community risks the dilution of the intimacy of the existing glass world. I am interested to see how this change might send ripples through all the topics that we’ve touched on here. This is an openended conversation that we will probably be adding to for the rest of our careers.

Our community is vast, varied, and complex even if it is still young and small.

Suzanne Peck is an artist, educator, curator, and writer living and making in Brooklyn, NY. Michael Hernandez is an artist and Assistant Professor/Head of Glass at Palomar residing in San Marcos, CA

SP: I agree that performance and spectatorship in glassmaking are engines that are helping move the community forward conceptually and providing much needed viewership. This may be why these modes of tourism/entertainment persist.

Circling back to what you said earlier, I have most definitely vacillated in depth of engagement in the glass community.

Right now I find myself quite deep, with a lot of energy and excitement around the material for my own practice, the work that other glassmakers are producing, and the conversations that are generating.

MH: I find it quite interesting that we continue to evolve and that change is happening in all of these different facets of our community. We, you and I, definitely are chameleons within our practices. Which I think reflects the culture, both that we are a part of, and in our own ways trying to shape. It’s an exciting time where there are many questions about what the future of glass and her community looks like. There are outsiders coming to glass in substantial numbers and glass artists moving strongly into a wider field of practice. The shift in our audiences and makers are growing to GASNEWS

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THANK YOU TO OUR 2016 GAS CONFERENCE SPONSORS The Glass Art Society and the 2016 Corning conference co-chairs extend their greatest appreciation to all who made the 45th GAS conference possible. Countless people contributed time, energy, thought, and funds to make this conference a success.

We also wish to thank the fabulous presenters, lecturers, and artists who created works for the cause, as well as everyone who attended.

The Glass Art Society Journal for the 2016 conference is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Corning Incorporated Foundation.

Image: The new Contemporary Art + Design Wing at CMoG Iwan Baan photo.

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2016 Major Sponsors

The Corning Museum of Glass Corning Incorporated Corning Incorporated Foundation Crystal City Stroll Transportation Sponsor

Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass International Student Exhibition Sponsor

The Glass Furnace Foundation Presentation Sponsors

His Glassworks, Inc. Pavel Novak and Martin Rosol Demo 2016 Presenters Who Donated Their Honoraria Tina Aufiero Adriano Berengo Peter Bocko James Carpenter Robert M. Minkoff Andrew Page Wendell Weeks Toots Zynsky

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KLAUS MOJE AO 1936-2016: A VISIONARY IN GLASS

by Richard Whiteley Originally published in School of Art News, Australian National University School of Art. Republished with permission from the author. Lightly edited to adhere to GAS writing style guidelines.

It’s rare for any individual to impact and influence a field in as many ways as Klaus Moje has achieved within contemporary glass. The innovation manifest within Klaus’ work and his approach to teaching dynamically changed the way we think about glass as a medium for creative expression. His approach and his work also created a whole new industry of kilnformed glass as a medium, which is now internationally known and practiced by hundreds of artists across the planet.

Klaus was born into glass, working in his family’s glass factory in Germany, before establishing his own studio in the city of Hamburg. Klaus was an apprentice in a trade, however, was drawn to glass as a medium for creative expression and in the mid-1970s began researching Egyptian and Roman mosaic glass processes for his work. Through a period of intensive studio testing, that saw several years of failures, Klaus established techniques of working the medium that had not been seen within the vibrant and new Studio Glass movement. Studio Glass had begun in the US during the 1960s when a critical mass of artists began exploring glass for creative expression outside the context of industry and mainly focused on hot glass or hand blown glass techniques.

In 1979 Dale Chihuly, then artistic director of the Pilchuck Glass School and a highly regarded artist in his own right, learned of Klaus and his new work. Dale invited Klaus to Pilchuck, which is located north of Seattle, to share his working methods and ideas and the pair became life-long friends. It was on this trip that Klaus met the owners of the Bullseye Glass Company in Portland, Oregon, who shared his interest in mosaic glass processes.

Inspired by Klaus’ new work, Bullseye

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Klaus Moje photographed by fotoheidesmith

spent the next 18 months researching and developing a palette of colored glasses that would be worked together in the kiln, and in the process resolved some significant technical problems that Klaus had been experiencing within his studio. In 1981, Bullseye sent Klaus a gift to his studio in Germany in the form of a crate of their new glass. At that time Klaus had only a few months to undertake experiments with this new material because he had already been invited to start a new program for glass education in Australia. Klaus’ collaboration with Bullseye continued throughout the rest of his life with founding owner Dan Schwoerer and Lani McGregor, both of whom became friends and collaborators.

Klaus arrived with his wife, Brigitte Ender-Moje, to Australia in 1982 to become the inaugural head of glass at the School of Art in Canberra (later to become part of the Australian National University). He began teaching his first intake of students in early 1983 and from the start his program changed education methods.

I was fortunate to be one of Klaus’ first generation of students along with local GASNEWS

artists such as Kirstie Rea, Helen AitkenKuhnen, Mikki Brown-Trail, and Judi Elliott.

I don’t think any of us realized what we had undertaken. Klaus’ goal was to build a glass education program from scratch, and in doing so, establish an approach that was fundamentally different to what had existed before.

As students we were encouraged to experiment with ideas and this new material endlessly. What was significant and I remember vividly, was that Klaus built a community that was self-determined and accountable. There was little in the way of assignments and tasks; we needed to set these ourselves and explore our own ideas as undergraduates. Klaus instilled within us the importance to be aware of the wider world and to see ourselves within that landscape, and that was far more valuable than any formal teaching structure. He taught us that we needed to be masters of our methods rather than merely just masters of a material. Klaus’ approach to teaching was to get us into the studio every day and encourage us to work through our ideas. He worked under the

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belief that the skills and knowledge needed would form naturally, as they are needed, as we found our way. And he was right.

He gave us marathon slide lectures about what was happening around the world and I see now how informed we became, all through his lens and passion. He inspired us to dedicate ourselves, and this remains one of the most important dimensions and ambitions to have within teaching.

Within his work, Klaus pioneered a new canvas, that of the medium of kiln-formed glass. He then developed this process and produced the most innovative and emphatic statements within the medium. His powerful use of multiple contrasting colors and strong abstract composition forms defined his work. The sublime technical language that carried this work was barely visible and his works presented an original way of working glass for a new generation. The processes he developed, or redeveloped, were first employed by Egyptian craftspeople thousands of years ago, and how an artist saw the possibility for works using these techniques in a contemporary context still amazes me. We just take it for granted today; kiln-formed glass is a clearly understood and well-articulated medium.

However, when Klaus was working with these processes in his studio in the mid1970s there was little, but his powers of observation from ancient glass, to go on.

In building this language, Bullseye Glass were also pivotal in developing this medium and its uses for the sector, and today the use of this material and kilnforming techniques is now global.

Klaus’ work still defines this area of creative expression. Many students who worked with him or who were influenced by him have also made significant contributions to this medium. Graduates from the program such as Jessica Loughlin, Kirstie Rea, Mel Douglas, and Cobi Cockburn are just a few. However, Klaus’ work is still unique and still as original as was his thinking. Klaus continued to develop his voice over his career and there were several significant chapters for his work, including the masterful and largescale wall works as well as the rollup series GASNEWS

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that were a hybrid process of kiln-formed glass and hot-glass processes.

Klaus was also clear that he wanted his work to be viewed for what it was and within its own dialogue. I can remember when he was working on one of his museum exhibitions and the curator was developing the catalog essay, within which he had articulated a link from Klaus’ work to certain qualities of abstract expressionism. Klaus was less than enthusiastic about this. “My work did not need to be contextualized or supported through associations with other work or mediums,” he said. “The way to appreciate glass was through looking at it.”

It was soon after Klaus left teaching to focus on his work that he began to receive a significant list of awards for his work and achievements, some of these include: the 1995 Australian Creative Fellowship (known as the Keating Award after Prime Minister Paul Keating); the 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Glass Art Society (and to date Klaus remains the only Australian artist to have received this prestigious award), United States; the 2001 Australia Council Emeritus Award; the 2004 Urban Glass Lifetime Achievement Award, New York, United States; in 2008 Klaus became an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia; and in 2013 he received the Libenský | Brychtová Award from the Pilchuck Glass School, an award that is presented to artists associated with this highly influential school.

Later in his career, Klaus made a significant contribution to the conceptualizing and realization of Canberra Glassworks, a 12 million dollar public access facility for contemporary glass in Canberra, Australia.

Many artists and groups supported the project, which included bipartisan support from the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Government agency. Klaus was involved in the early planning of the facility and played a key role in lobbying government on the merits of this project. The facility opened in 2007 and has become a landmark project that is internationally recognized alongside the program he started at the Australian National University. Klaus served on the board of Canberra Glassworks until VOLUME 27, ISSUE 3

2013 and he was still making work until recently when his health began to waiver.

Throughout his career Klaus had significant support from his family especially his wife Brigitte Enders-Moje, a highly regarded ceramic artist in her own right.

Through his work, leadership within education, and advocacy for projects, Klaus has made Australia an international destination for contemporary glass of the highest quality. Klaus’ vision for excellence was matched with his distinctively personable approach. We have all benefited from his persistence and have grown within the culture he envisioned and realized.

It's hard to imagine a world without him; Klaus changed what glass could be, how it was taught and along the way he touched everyone he met. He was an outlier, an innovator, and leader in equal measure.

Associate Professor Richard Whiteley is the current Head of Glass and Convener of Craft & Design at the School of Art, Australian National University.

GLASHAUS The International Magazine of Studio Glass

German/ English, 4 issues p.a. 49 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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STUDENT PROFILE: HIKARI SASAKI

by Emily Kuchenbecher

Hikari Sasaki, One Day, 2014

Hikari Sasaki is a second year student at the Toyama City Institute of Glass Art (TIGA) in Toyama, Japan. She studied for four years at the Kyoto University of Art and Design, where she focused on mixed-media applications. She transitioned to glass when she began attending the Toyama City Institute of Glass Art. Sasaki is enrolled in the institute’s Kenkyūka program and is expected to graduate in March 2018.

The Toyama City Institute of Glass Art is divided into two groups of programming.

The first program, Zoukeika, is the Glass Certification Studies Program for beginning students. The second, Kenkyūka, is the Advanced Research Studies Program. In her studies, Sasaki is taught by full-time Japanese instructors who specialize in hot glass and kilncast glass. She also has the opportunity to work with part-time instructors teaching jewelry, stained glass, metal, sculpture, and flameworking.

Two international instructors visit Toyama for the duration of one week to work in both hot glass and cold-worked glass. They assist students in study abroad programs and scholarship opportunities.

During the spring and fall intensive

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workshops, a visiting artist comes to work with students and to share their personal approaches to glass as a material.

Students are also exposed to lectures and artist presentations from local artists who visit the campus throughout the academic year.

Sasaki’s artistic practice began with oil painting. In her paintings, she was inspired by fluidity and apprehending the feeling of light and transparency. Over time she felt unsatisfied with working in twodimensional art. Her desire to work in three dimensions sparked her interest in glass.

She found that glass could express her ideas in a way that other materials could not. She uses a combination of hot, cold, and kilnworking techniques to create the components of her installations.

Sasaki uses light to transform space through the use of glass. Tayutau is a Japanese word that describes a wavering or swaying motion. She translates this as the phenomena of movements or fluctuations that occurs when light is reflected or transmitted through glass.

Sasaki challenges the viewer’s perception of everyday space through the optics of

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Hikari Sasaki, Small Planet, 2016

her glass installations and strives for the viewer to feel a sense of nostalgia when experiencing her work.

In her piece titled Small Planet, Sasaki addresses the way light and reflection can change the perspective of a space. She alters the light of familiar places in order to change the mood of that space. Inspired by stars and their ability to transmit light throughout the universe, Sasaki chooses to replicate this transmission of light through her glass installations. Her goal within this installation is to create a dreamlike state within the viewer, resonating weightlessness, distance and ephemerality.

Her 2014 installation titled One Day focuses on change. This work is inspired by her reflection on daily changes of feelings, emotions, and physical conditions. Sasaki relates these unpredictable cycles of the human experience to the nature of working in glass, where unforeseen conditions GASNEWS

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create bubbles or cords. One Day uses light transmitted through glass to create an intricate pattern on the wall behind the glass, extending the space beyond the physical object.

Along with her exploration of combining glass and light, Sasaki is approaching new methods in her glasswork by assembling parts to develop form through multiplicity.

Cross Pollinating II was made in 2015 using a collaging approach. There is an added sense of depth within the object by combining different textures and transparencies of clear glass.

Sasaki has an individual and ephemeral approach to glass that allows for her to control and manipulate space. Her work creates feelings of transcendence and contemplation while granting the viewer’s perception of the outside world the ability to change.

This year she was an exhibitor at the Spiral Independent Creators Festival in Tokyo. Sasaki most recently showed her light and shadow based work at Gallery Choukou in Tokyo’s Setagaya district.

Emily Kuchenbecker is a senior in the 3D-BFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

Hikari Sasaki, Cross Pollinating II, 2015

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SCHOOL PROFILE: LINNAEUS UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN

by Emily Kuchenbecher

Exhibition Hall, Linnaeus University

Linnaeus University, located in Kalmar and Växjö, Sweden, is home to a very diverse, international Glass Design program. Stellan Persson originally founded the 60-credit glass design course and in 2003, course coordinator Ole Victor founded the Glass Design program at the bachelor level for degree seeking students. Linnaeus University was created when the University of Kalmar and Växjö merged in 2010.

Numerous professors including Ole Victor, Erika Lagerbielke, Stellan Persson, Bertil Vallien, Kjell Engman, and Fredrik Nielsen teach the Glass Design program at Linnaeus University. The program includes an undergraduate course that is a semester long (from August to January), which is taken for 30 credits and a yearlong course taken for 60 credits. It is taught in English and students focus on Swedish glass from an industrial point of view. This program approaches the medium with both practical and philosophical aspects of design. Around fifteen students are enrolled in the glass design course at a time, obtaining knowledge in glass design, glass technology, marketing strategies, and the history of Swedish glass.

Glass design at Linnaeus University is a full-time intensive course. Students are required to submit a number of personal design projects, as well as a

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series of writing samples. They take trips to Stockholm, Sweden’s Crystal City, which is located between Växjö and Kalmar and attend visiting artist workshops and lectures. The first two weeks of the course are spent in the hotshop, playing with the material and getting to know the master blowers. Two major workshops are held and students produce glass objects through collaboration. Students are paired with master glassblowers and their assistants to create their designs. A few of the masters that students work with are Jan-Erik Ritzman, Wilke Adolfsson, and Micke Johansson. At the end of the workshops, the students arrange two exhibitions to showcase their work to the public.

The collaboration between student designers and craftsmen is rooted in the Scandinavian glass design tradition.

The interplay between student designer and master craftsman helps students to not only understand glass as a material in art and design but also the craft of glassmaking. Collaboration between student and master bridges the gap where art meets craft and individual skills are combined to create one final product.

Students are not required to have hands-on experience working with glass.

In order to receive their degree, students need about two years of glass design and GASNEWS

artistic courses. Instructors encourage students to design their work based on a range of solutions: student produced pieces, works produced by a master glass-blower, and products for the glass industry. They meet one-on-one with masters to discuss their designs and the masters provide them with wisdom on how to collaborate, translate, and realize their designs in the professional world.

Being active in blowing is also an option available to students. If students are interested in learning to work with glass as a material, they primarily learn glass craft from the National School of Glass in Orrefors. Working with master glassblowers helps to eliminate problems that students may face with size and complexity of their work. As we all know, glassblowing requires a lot of practice and skill to master, so dividing skills is what helped make Swedish glass what it is today. Students also have the opportunity to work with industries, float glass facilities, and glass studios.

Some students work with lighting, furniture design, and architecture, while others choose to take a fine art approach.

An exchange program was developed between Linnaeus University and New York’s Pratt Institute that invites two to four American students to study in Sweden.

In 2014, Ole Victor started a five-week summer course in glass design that accepts 15-25 students from all over the world.

Ole Victor is currently working on developing a masters program for which he received funding from the Nordic Council of Ministers to create a course called “Nordic Master in Glass Design.”

In addition to glass design courses, glass chemistry and technology is offered to students interested in engineering and is taught by Bo Jonson. Jonson has worked with PhD students that research on the chemistry and technology of glass and his colleagues recently discovered a new glass material at Linnaeus University. An article was recently published explaining this new glass material and titled “Novel Transparent

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Hotshop Exterior, Linaeuss University

Mg-Si-O-N Thin Films with High Hardness and Refractive Index.� The glass chemistry course works closely with the Swedish Glass Research Institute (Glafo) and students are allowed to visit its laboratories to learn the chemistry processes of glass.

At the center of the Kingdom of Crystal are the facilities in which students create their work. In Pukeberg, the facilities are shared with The National School for Glass. There is a hotshop, coldshop, and multiple workrooms available for use. In total there are three furnaces (one electric and two gas), twelve glory holes, and six annealers. Each workspace has two benches with access to one of the twelve glory holes, a marver table, hand tools, and torches. The coldshop is equipped with polishing, engraving, sandblasting, and cutting instruments, as well as kilns for kilnworking, and flameworking stations.

A mold-making lab is also available to students, allowing them to create molds for blowing or kilnworking.   In addition to glassmaking facilities, Linnaeus University has a machine workshop for woodworking, metals, and plastics.

They also have access to a lab with 3D modeling, CNC scanning, and a 3D printer.

Students involved in product design or furniture design primarily use these facilities. Outside industries cooperate GASNEWS

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with the university to provide access to machinery such as waterjet cutters, laminators, hardeners, laser cutter, and ceramic kilns.

While Linnaeus University has a unique educational system, they are always striving to create programs that will continue to grow. Recently, the institution received approximately 1.2 million USD to create a new center for glass design in Pukeberg, which will be called the Linnaeus Innovation Design Lab (Lidlab). This center has a foundation in glass but also includes design from other aspects, which will provide excellent opportunities for glass research and education. They are planning to include masters programs in furniture and interior design including Transparent Intelligence, which can be defined as ways of applying the use of float glass in architecture and interior design.

Linnaeus University provides students with a background in industrial design, fine art, architecture, or craft with the opportunity to learn and develop their skill sets. The teaching style at the university is flexible and the community there allows for cultivating a diverse perspective to glass art and design.

Emily Kuchenbecker is a senior in the 3D-BFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

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CONGREGATING IN THE ELSEWHERE:

EXAMINING THE NOTION OF COMMUNITY WITHIN A SOCIAL MEDIA CONTEXT AND THE INFLUENCE OF DIGITAL EXCHANGE ON CONTEMPORARY GLASS PRACTICE

by David Schnuckel In the late 80s/early 90s, I grew up in a household – maybe even an era - where it was impolite to talk about yourself.

Especially if no one asked.

I remember a time when this idea of ‘talking about yourself’ was a cultural faux pas that transgressed the most social of transgressions: a public display of egocentrism. It was one thing if brought up in conversation; but for someone to just put their business out there on their own accord was uncouth.

Roughly two decades later, it’s safe to say that the tide has turned.

Our sense of place and how we relate to others has certainly changed. Transformed, even. Due to social media, our personal circle is incredibly broader than it ever would have been without it… and it’s composed of all sorts of people: people we personally know and love, people we’ve never met (nor possibly ever heard of), people we idolize, and even people we might not particularly like. Depending on what social media platform we’re talking about, these are the people you and I have accepted to friend/follow/connect/ whatever with us. These are the people within our digital lives… and our digital lives are an extension of not only in how we define our sense of place, but even our sense of identity.

Whether these are people in close proximity to us or based somewhere far, far away, the ease at which we can access each other through social media amplifies our sense of connection. No matter how deep within our circle they are or are not, anybody we’re digitally associated with now has the capability of noticing what’s going on with us… and, of course, it works the other way around, too.

The multitude of online platforms for which we can reveal whatever it is we want to reveal to the world makes it easy to be seen and/or heard in a variety of ways;

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to be seen and/or heard has become very important to us culturally in this new millennium. Perhaps this alone is what had troubled me the most in seeing social media as a potential tool for good; that the impetus to make our private moments/ thoughts/opinions known in a very public way stems from some sort of desire to draw attention. The negative connotation of this purpose to ‘post’ seems vain and petty… and we’ve all scrolled past many, many examples that demonstrate when this is true. However, the notion of ‘posting’ also carries positive undertones of giving and selflessness…and we’ve all scrolled past just as many examples of this, too. These are moments when content is posted not to draw attention to ourselves, but to call our network’s attention to somebody or something else.

I can’t help but consider our roles in this digital space and what those roles imply. As authors of posted content (no matter what that content is), we want to represent some extension of ourselves in a public way. As an audience of posted content, we are curious as to what we might discover with what’s revealed and, perhaps subconsciously, assess as to how those things relate to us. It’s here that some sort of exchange is happening, albeit indirectly. Yet, when we decide to become respondents to posted content – or even take action in response to a post in real life – something truly social is indeed happening by way of social media.

I’m fascinated in how advances in technology introduce accidental, yet sizeable, shifts within how we relate to the world around us. We can undoubtedly hold social media responsible for changing the game in what interpersonal relationships are, what that now means, and what it could potentially develop into.

Social networks, business networks, discussion forums, photo sharing, video GASNEWS

sharing, chat and video streaming applications are just few social media formats that point to a new culture of fellowship. Community as we know it in the flesh also exists in its own way online: a gathering of people in a digital space unified by some sort of commonality.

If that commonality is ‘glass’, how do these new twists on the notion of community by way of social media impact our field?

My examination begins with finding a shared objective in the mission statement of the 3 most currently popular social media platforms. In doing so, I’ve observed an interesting parallel in how the mission statements of these platforms relate to our seemingly disconnected world of glass.

Facebook claims that their aim “…is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected…to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.”

Twitter states their mission as being “To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”

Although YouTube’s mission is “To provide fast and easy video access and the ability to share videos frequently, their vision is to “…provide everyone the opportunity to contribute to the global exchange of ideas and offer ways for content creators and advertisers to build, grow, and interact with audiences.”

These shared virtues to connect, inform, learn, create, and share wholeheartedly with others aren’t that uncommon with what was at the heart of the mission of those early generations at the forefront of the Studio Glass Movement.

It reminds me of the spirit behind the Toledo Glass Workshop of 1962 and the origin story of the Pilchuck Glass School in the summer of 1971, pivotal moments where the excitement of engaging glass

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for creative, individual purposes was met with the hampered reality of not really comprehending its technical mysteries.

Aside from educational necessity, there was a sense of moral obligation to build community as a means to learn from one another, to inspire ideas from one another, and to discover each other’s unknown potential.

I see a parallel in this new digitalbased territory – especially in the context of social media’s impact on an evolving contemporary glass field. Whether it be seen through something as passive as ‘liking’ what a colleague had posted or as heated as actively responding to a three-week long theoretical thread of conversation, one thing is certain: the internet not only fosters communication, but is influencing new modes of support and engagement within our field.

Our posted images, videos, text, and website links all provide plenty of opportunities for exchange by way of social media that can feed into our individual glass-based development and support our goals. It sounds far-fetched, but it’s there. Some of it is obvious. Some of it is not. You do have to sift through the fluff and stupidity, but meaningful advocacy is more prevalent on these platforms than we might realize. Examples of community that support - if not rapidly enhance – the impact of what we’re capable of accomplishing in our various glass practices.

How Do We Engage as Individuals and as a Community?

From what I can tell so far, there are three forms of practice-related outreach.

The first is when we share content that informs our community about our own glass practice-based ventures to initiate exchange; a second is when we share content that announces practice-based opportunity/happenings unto our community for their consideration and/or involvement; and a third is when exchange takes front seat and we post content that actively invites our community to respond.

Whether out of selfish ambition or not, I think the first form of glass practicerelated social media outreach really caters GASNEWS

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itself well to us as visual artists. Seldom is it that we post our thoughts without some sort of photographic or videobased accompaniment (… or perhaps it’s really the other way around). We’re not only capable of letting everybody know what’s happening in our studios, but we can show them. For instance, Instagram and Facebook let us provide customized glimpses into what we’re currently engaged with or what we’ve accomplished – and quite stylishly so with those provided filters and image editing options. YouTube and Vimeo can document and share our process, inviting comment from our community if they so desire. Periscope can do it, too, but with the added benefit of allowing our community to do it in real time. These platforms not only allow us to show what we’re currently up to, but can announce shows that we’re part of, reveal breakthroughs in our glass making procedure, direct traffic to our websites, mark our brand, promote our educational programs or non-profit organizations, peddle our wares, exhibit our writings, share our influences, and so much more; happenings that we’re not only excited to report about, but, with that information, perhaps indirectly influencing what our community is doing, could do, or could be a part of.

Aside from that, social media supports the notion of community when we share content that announces practice-based opportunity or occurrences unto our community. We can create platforms that inform and invite our international friends, acquaintances, and idols to exhibitions and special events. We can facilitate and support special financial opportunities through crowdfunding. We can direct our community’s attention to calls for application that announce special glass practice-based exhibition/employment/ residency/grant/educational opportunities.

Especially through Facebook, we can organize and join specialized ‘groups’ that allow us to keep abreast of up-to-date news and conversation related to special topics related to our interests – no matter how specific or generalized those interests VOLUME 27, ISSUE 3

might be. Whether we’re drawn to communities involving certain glass processes, glass ‘movements’ (or rather, ‘sub-communities’), glass in certain international regions, developments in glass tools or equipment, glass genres of art, specific glass products, interdisciplinary glass cross-over, glass education, issues in glass manufacturing – even glass in the context of contemporary craft or ‘fine art’ (for lack of better term) – we’re not short of being exposed to (or participating in) specialized glass-based collectives we may want to be part of.

The third form of glass practice-related outreach on social media is where I believe social media is indeed approached as a community-driven tool; the one when communal exchange takes front seat and we post content that actively invites our community to take part in. Whether we post from our own profile or address an established group, I’ve seen social media used as a venue for off-the-cuff critique opportunities of our work, to facilitate responses to established blogs or published articles, and to post minuteby-minute reporting by those attending specific gallery openings or art fairs. There are moments that we’ve used social media to invite (or accidentally perpetuate) theoretical debate. There’s also the productive alternative when we use social media to tap into the ‘hive mind’; to ask our online community to help us troubleshoot technical problems within our glassmaking, to help educators provide artist references that fit within a thematic/conceptual context, to make requests for field-related texts/readings, or even to suggest efficient or economic ways of carrying out the most inglorious aspects of our glass making practice (i.e. questions regarding shipping, adhesives, small business taxes, etc).

For better or worse, these conversational moments invite social exchange that can broaden what we can do, what we can understand, and who we can become from a significantly broader peer group than just those within our nearest surroundings or social circles. Immediately.

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What Are the Effects of Our Engagement?

The Good: The positive effects are evident: social media are trusted to document our glassbased practiced memories, to learn things, explore things, to advertise our moments, celebrate our accomplishments, to form friendships, and to network amongst our field. It simply provides us a free and simple opportunity to reach a wider audience with whatever it is we want or need to pass along. If used correctly, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are not only places to push our hustle and flaunt our talent, but they become spaces where our shared insight can influence others and perpetuate new and unforeseen discovery.

We love the web. We absolutely love it.

We love it because of its lightning quick search engines, socially-based ricochet effects, research enabling rabbit holes, and swift information generating indulgences.

The perks of social media add to that.

The many, many forums that fall under this umbrella help us as glass-based practitioners establish our own identity, hold conversation, make a presence, establish a reputation, build new relationships amidst our field, maintain ones we currently have, and influence field-related dialogues that can change the game. All of this and even more. Engaging these platforms is easy, it’s free(-ish), and the giving is as immediate as the receiving is.

It’s perfect, right?

Kind of.

The Questionable: In all of my optimistic assessment, it goes without saying that social media does have its flaws. It can certainly introduce conflict, touch nerves, and perhaps enable the occasional backwards slide within our community, even when in the name of facilitating any sort of glass-based exchange. In fact, all the positive things mentioned a paragraph ago come hitched with a negative counterpoint worth considering.

Social media is fast – instantaneous, as a matter of fact. This brings up issues

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regarding the quality of conversations we have – or could be had – through these platforms. What we post, what we respond to, and how we respond on these platforms can be conversationally equivalent to the nutritional value of a fast-food drivethru order. Social media and meaningful contemplation aren’t necessarily incompatible, but far from a common occurrence.

Social media has always been about brevity and the immediacy of it that we appreciate doesn’t really translate well when we crave truly productive discourse.

Thoughtful, purposeful engagement in the digital world is difficult; a world built to cater to the quick and snappy. For instance, it doesn’t take long for the present moment to instantly become the past when our feed is refreshed; any conversation we were just engaged with becoming buried somewhere underneath a mountain of new directions in thought – or even a cavalcade of new posts in general.

The simplicity of using these platforms means anybody is capable of using them… and that leads to a small handful of issues related to the ‘ease’ of social media.

When it comes to asking for guidance and recommendation, the opinions of our community can vary. Even the legitimacy of their opinion comes into question from time to time. The quality of experiences or sense of expertise that our community has (or doesn’t have) on a problem we need help solving can put us further in a bind as easily as it could get us out of one. Sometimes our reliance on a collective intelligence isn’t perpetuated by our curious nature, but by a real-life need to make a splitsecond business decision. When our time and money are in the balance of our need for fast advice from the hive-mind, how credible can social media really be as a solid option to turn to when desperate for assistance? What questions does this raise in regards to trustworthiness, competency, and reliability in these cases?

We must also consider issues regarding integrity. What is lost when the prestige of having your work or your thoughts purposefully sought out to be published within a book or publication is GASNEWS

side-stepped with the ease of digital selfpublishing? ...that anything by anybody can be issued at any time for immediate public consumption?

In these cases, it can be challenging not to view these social media platforms as detrimental to the notion of community without a bit of pessimism. When content can come from a source we’re not all that familiar with, or a source that has a reputation for its lack of credibility we have little control over how our work or ideas are spun. We might also come across content that is truly off-base and still somehow met with tremendous public appeal within some corners of our field. Do we jump into the dogfight or periodically check in to see how much blood was spilled? We all have opinions, but does our public sharing of these things ultimately deserve to be received with respect? ...or even our community’s attention?

The Ugly (and the Pretty): Social media is rooted in “the now” and in its ease of access. Its hurried sense of dialogue can be seen in the commonplace emojis and slang-based acronyms/ phonetically shortened misspellings of words used as communicative tools.

Aside from influencing how we approach ‘conversation,’ the sense of urgency of social media has also affected our use of written language. Many react on an instinctual and often emotional level when addressing posts.

Within these very public forums, high-schoolers are not the only ones experiencing the phenomenon of cyberbullying. Even established professionals in our field receive slanderous, degrading remarks from wanton critics. How critical do we truly want our community to be in a public forum? We may not ask for it but the social network platforms allow for an unrestricted, open forum to evaluate, critique, or degrade what we promote.

Where is the line drawn on these platforms between honesty and undeserved persecution? Is there any standard that dictates good form versus bad form in how we react to these public displays of evaluation?

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To the contrary, yet, at times equally detrimental is the unabashed exaltation and unconsidered encouragement for what we’re posting. Are we only seeking to accumulate as many thumbs-up or heart emojis as we can? If that is all we wanted in first place, it is problematic to consider this as anything more than a reaction to the fact that our online social circles want us to feel good about what we are doing and likely to return the obligatory favor when it’s their turn.

What is Our Digital Legacy?

Even in the wake of social media’s lightning quick pace, our activity on there is there forever. When it comes to professional matters related to glassbased opportunity we can be researched through how we’ve participated on these platforms. On one hand, it’s great to know that our social media instances of genius can have a fixed place to live in the digital world; that our influence can not only live on and on, but be visited and revisited by our admirers (!). However, that same sense of permanency can also come to haunt us.

Especially when our sense of discernment got the best of us and we posted something – or someone posted something related to us – that compromises our image or reputation. Not only can our sour moments impact our glass community’s perception of us instantaneously, but even down the road if (and when) someone important decides to look into us for whatever reason.

All in all, a community of any kind has standards. Facebook is a community; Periscope is a community; Instagram is a community; WordPress is a community.

They might not necessarily be written down, but these communities indicate that rules have been developed and expectations of involvement are in place; rules and expectations that have been established by us users simply shown in how we’ve been using these platforms. In turn, these social media platforms have their own publication standards not unlike a respected print publication would, like the New York Times.

The only difference being that our codes seem more rooted in etiquette (with a pinch GASNEWS

FALL 2016

of style) than journalistic integrity.

Even so, this shouldn’t restrict us from further questioning ourselves about what we want social media to serve with regard to our own glass-based practice goals and aspirations. We need to consider the purpose of these places of community for us as individuals and what is acceptable in our usage of these virtual places as platforms for dialogue, discovery, and promotion.

Our purposes for being involved with social media can range dramatically.

Some of us use it as a public scrapbook, a place to document personal happenings.

Some of us see it as billboard, a place to advertise professional ventures. Some of us see it as an opportunity to figuratively scream into a seemingly empty void; finding fulfillment in simply vocalizing ourselves to (or at) something. Yet, some of us see it as a place for professional commune and a place for true social interaction with a vast accessibility to our glass contemporaries.

With all that said, how many more conversations can be had regarding the ways in which we can reevaluate how we perceive ‘community’ – and specifically our ‘glass community’ – by way of social media? I think there’s a lot. In fact, I think there’s more than I’m capable of identifying on my own at this point. I would love your help in defining how we articulate ourselves as individuals, artists, and as a community in this territory. Hit me up @davidschnuckel or, better yet, post a response with #gasnews and #glassociation … …let’s write this thing together from here on out.

David Schnuckel is an artist and educator, currently serving as Lecturer within the Glass Program of the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.

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VOLUME 27, ISSUE 3

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