GASNews October/ November 2011 Volume 22 ... - Glass Art Society

GAS News
October/
November 2011
Volume 22
Issue 5
2
President’s Letter
3
GAS Line
4
Member Profile: Matt Durran
6
GAS 2012 Venue: Toledo
Museum of Art's Glass Pavilion
8
Pilchuck at 40
12
New Glass Studio Opens
at Chrysler Museum of Art
14
Tech Issues: Mobile Glass Studios
18
International Window:
Highlights in Europe
20
International Window:
Luxembourg Glass Festival
22
Social Programs: The Glass Furnace
23
Thesis Done: Justin Ginsberg
24
Student Profile: Jessie Blackmer
25
GAS 2012 Key Dates & Information
25
Resource Links

GAS News
october/november 2011
Volume 22, Issue 5
GASnews is published six times
per year as a benefit to members.
Media Committee:
Scott Benefield, Eddie Bernard,
Karen Donnellan, Lance Friedman,
Geoff Isles (chair), Taliaferro Jones,
Jeremy Lepisto, Jessi Moore,
Debra Ruzinsky
Editor: Geoff Isles
Managing Editor: Rosie Gaynor
Graphic Design: Ted Cotrotsos
Glass Art Society
Board of Directors 2011-2012
President: Jeremy Lepisto
Vice President: Jutta-Annette Page
Treasurer: Lance Friedman
Secretary: Caroline Madden
Rik Allen
Pat Bako
Chris Clarke
Lance Friedman
Geoff Isles
Peter Layton
Jiyong Lee
Jay Macdonell
Wayne Strattman
Cappy Thompson
Jessi Moore
(Student Representative)
Staff
Pamela Figenshow Koss,
Executive Director
Patty Cokus,
Executive Assistant
Rosie Gaynor,
Communications Manager
Katrina Ernst,
Administrative Assistant/Registrar
Sarah Bak,
Consultant/Bookkeeper
The Glass Art Society
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
©2011 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.
2
President’s Letter
Hello, all!
I hope this letter finds you well and busy!
At GAS we have been moving in many
directions. We have been wrapping up the
remaining details of the Seattle conference,
confirming the final Toledo conference program
in order to print 2012’s pre-conference
brochure, developing the direction for the
2013 conference, scheduling a long-range
planning meeting for the staff and Board of
Directors and looking for new Board members to help make this all happen.
As you know, GAS is a 40+-year-old organization. This organization has not only grown in its
scope over its decades, but it has also expanded its connections around the world. For example,
I am writing to you from my home in Australia. From here, I work every day with the Seattle staff
and my other Board members spread across four other countries. We come together as a team
to secure the direction and operational needs of our group.
To determine in which direction to push GAS, the Board is constantly referring to what is
possible given our combined abilities, our resources and our known member feedback/needs.
It is clear to me that the individual needs of our membership are quite diverse when it comes
to each person’s particular interest in glass, expertise and involvement with the medium. These
factors are made further complex by the fact that our membership is spread all over the world.
So without constant communication and consideration, it can be very challenging for the Board
to comprehend and address the exact and immediate needs of our members.
I believe our Board is doing a fantastic job, given the fact that we are all mostly working
artists who are able and willing to lend some of our “free time” to work for an organization
that keeps us all coming together. The job of this Board has been made harder as GAS has
expanded (ha ha), as the economy has begun to struggle and as we all are investigating the
various internet opportunities out there to determine which will actually help us gain information
and create connections. While the GAS Board is looking to expand our website even futher
(our newest item is the Thesis Shelf; click here to check it out), I think there is great value in
physically coming together as an open group to share ideas and develop direct and personal
connections. I believe that sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t always turn
itself on. Our GAS conferences and communications help us grope forward in the dark unknown
as we look for the switch.
If you agree with some of these sentiments, please support GAS by renewing your membership
to this organization and encouraging fellow glass artists and glass enthusiasts to join as
well. If you or another member wants to take a bigger role and wants to help move us forward,
either please submit your choice to the GAS office for nomination to the Board of Directors or
volunteer to help on a committee. Hopefully
we will always be accepting nominations
and offers to help.
My thanks and best,
Jeremy Lepisto
On the Cover
Detail of
Matt Durran’s
Jerwood Prize
entry, 2002
Rozarii Lynch photo

GAS Line
GAS 2012:
Three Honorees!
The Glass Art Society is delighted to
announce the recipients of our 2012
awards, which honor and acknowledge
individuals who have made outstanding
contributions to the development of the
glass arts worldwide.
Joel Philip Myers and Bertil Vallien
will each receive the Lifetime Achievement
Award for exceptional achievement in the
field of glass. John Steinert of Steinert
Industries will receive the Honorary Lifetime
Membership Award for outstanding service
to the Glass Art Society.
Join us at the GAS 2012 Toledo
conference to celebrate their contributions
to our field.
Lifetime Achievement Award
recipient Bertil Vallien
Bertil Vallien, Janus
Lifetime Achievement Award
recipient Joel Philip Myers
Joel Philip Myers,
Enticement
Lifetime Membership
Award recipient
John Steinert
The US Studio Glass Movement Turns 50:
Celebrate in Toledo, Where It Started
In 2012, the glass
community gathers
in Toledo, Ohio,
the site of the
Harvey Littleton-
Dominick Labino workshops that launched
the Studio Glass Movement in the US.
Much of the GAS conference will take
place at the Toledo Museum of Art. This
museum has changed quite a bit since
those original workshops – not the least
with the addition of its award-winning
Glass Pavilion – but the spirit of innovation
remains, waiting to inspire us as we gather
and consider how best to move into the
next half-century of studio glassmaking.
The GAS 2012 Toledo conference
brochure mails in November. For a sneak
peek at the programming put together
by the site committee (led by co-chairs
Margy Trumbull, Jack Schmidt and Herb
Babcock) and the GAS Board, check
out the pdf that will be available at
www.glassart.org after November 1.
We have 60+ presentations planned
for the conference. Among the presenters
are Hank Murta Adams, Lucio Bubacco,
Fritz Dreisbach, Richard Marquis, Robert
Mickelsen, Nick Mount, Davide Salvadore
and Paul Stankard.
We’re particularly excited about the
opening ceremonies, which include:
Keynote Address
Brian P. Kennedy, Director of the Toledo
Museum of Art: The Toledo Museum of Art
Glass Workshops: The Art Context of the
Early Sixties
Lifetime Achievement Lectures
Joel Philip Myers: En Lykkens Pamphilius
(One Lucky Guy)
Bertil Vallien: There Must Be a Reason
Honorary Lifetime Membership Award
Acceptance
John Steinert
Look for profiles on these individuals and
on the speakers selected for the following
named lectures in future issues of GASnews.
Brian P. Kennedy
Strattman Lecture
Glenn Adamson
The Wayne Strattman Critical Dialogue Lecture
Fund sponsors a lecture with new and stimulating
information on art glass at each annual GAS
conference.
Labino Lecture
John Parker
The Dominick Labino Fund sponsors an outstanding
technical lecture at each conference.
Willson Lecture
Fred Wilson
The Robert Willson Fund sponsors a lecture on
sculpture at each annual conference.
For key dates and info, see page 25.
3

Member Profile
Matt Durran:
Off the Beaten Track
By Scott Benefield
Most of us artists do more than one
thing. We are studio artists, technicians
for ourselves, salesmen for our own
works and bookkeepers; we may teach
occasionally or demonstrate for the public.
Out of economic necessity, if for no other
reason (since very few of us can make a
living solely from the sale of our work),
we branch out a bit.
Matt Durran takes this to an extreme.
If you were to try to use Durran’s
career path as a template when deciding
how to move forward with a life in glass,
I’m not sure that you wouldn’t quickly run
aground. What seems to work for him –
the projects that he takes on, the studio
work that he does, the events in which he
participates – seems, at best, improbable
and, to go by conventional wisdom, utterly
unworkable. To say that his progress thus
far has been highly idiosyncratic is to state
the obvious.
Durran’s introduction to glass came
after an apprenticeship in ice carving; he
traded the accessibility of one material
for the permanence of the other, but
retained the attractive qualities that glass
shares with ice: paradoxical solidity,
malleability and lucidity. After completing
an undergraduate degree in glass in
1991 at University of Sunderland, where
his instructors included the late Charlie
Meaker, he began to establish his practice
in London.
In 2003, Durran was short-listed for
the UK’s prestigious Jerwood Applied
Arts Prize after submitting images of his
cluttered London studio, complete with
all of the objects, materials and detritus
of an artist who engages in an unusually
wide breadth of investigation. It was an
unconventional, risky, all-in submission –
completely in character – but its success
must have confirmed his instincts that the
way forward needn’t follow any previously
4
established path. As an installation, the
contents of Durran’s studio – comprising
more than 2,000 pieces of glass – toured
the UK in a traveling exhibit of Jerwood
Prize finalists. It was a manifestation of
the creative consciousness but also an
accurate reflection of the chaotic, random
and associative nature of his imagination.
But trying to find a linear narrative
to explain Durran’s career trajectory as
a practicing artist is starting off on the
wrong foot. It’s his concept of the material
itself that provides the key to his thinking,
making and various activities in service
of glass: that glass is a substance of
untapped potential in the hands of an
artist. Or at least that’s the closest I’ve
come to understanding what links together
such a diverse set of activities.
Although he employs a wide array
Matt Durran’s Upcycling
(from upcycled borosilicate rods)
of techniques in the work that he
makes with glass – lampworking, kiln
processes, blowing and various methods
of coldworking – Durran is always trying
to find a hitherto unimagined application.
His work has been recognized as a
finalist in the Bombay Sapphire prize.
He has kiln-formed obsidian, a naturally
occurring vitreous substance, to reveal
a surprising porosity that allows it to
become buoyant in water. He has made
photograms of glass pieces, inspired by
the images generated by his own glass
work travelling through airport security
screening devices. He has questioned the
energy requirements and environmental
sustainability of conventional fuels for
melting glass, and been involved with
pioneering a forced-air burner system that
uses biomass. He has executed numerous
Matt Durran
Photogram of
blown glass piece

Matt Durran
Floating Glass
(kiln-formed
obsidian floating
in a bespoke
aquarium)
private and public commissions, ranging
from suspended atrium sculptures to
recycled television screens that he cast to
create privacy windows on a houseboat.
Earlier this year, he was one of a handful
of artists selected by the British Crafts
Council to make an installation of his work
at COLLECT, the UK’s equivalent of SOFA,
held at the Saatchi Gallery in London.
Durran also has an expanded idea of
what it means to participate in a glass
community, encompassing his roots in
the UK (coordinating an event at the
Stourbridge Festival of Glass, jurying
shows, serving on panels, curating
exhibitions and writing catalogue copy) but
extending to gatherings of all sorts across
Europe. He is a well-known figure among
Eastern European glass artists, with a
network of friends and colleagues that
extends from the Baltic states to Eastern
Europe and Russia. He has made a film
about one of these gatherings that took
place in Russia (The Blessed Factory),
which is currently undergoing final editing.
His latest project, the subject of an
exhibition currently on view in London’s
Victoria and Albert Museum called The
Power of Making, involves working with
reconstructive surgeons. He uses a variety
of techniques – casting, slumping, carving
– to model anatomical parts out of glass
that are used to grow replacement tissue
out of cell-infused polymer coatings.
He makes a glass mold of a human nose,
for instance, which is used to form a new
nose of human tissue that can be grafted
onto a patient’s face, greatly reducing
the chance of rejection since it has been
grown from the patient’s own cells.
The work has grown in technical
complexity, requiring ever more precise
tolerances in order for the new components
to successfully match original tissue
at connecting points. Each new project
that advances this technology – he is
currently working on making the mold for a
patient’s larynx – requires a new round of
problem solving; each model is as unique
as the patient for whom it is modeled.
This is cutting-edge medical science,
and Durran has managed to create a role
for the artist within it, in keeping with his
unrestricted conception of the artist as a
supplier of bespoke solutions to unique
problems.
For more discussion about Matt’s work with
reconstructive procedures, follow this link on the
BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/
proginfo/radio/2011/wk34/fri.shtml. Or, follow
this link to a movie about the V&A exhibition
Durran is currently in: http://www.vam.ac.uk/
channel/happenings/exhibitions_and_galleries/
power_of_making/.
Image Gallery
To see more work
from Matt Durran,
click here.
5

GAS 2012 Venue:
Toledo Museum of
Art’s Glass Pavilion
When GAS members arrive in Toledo in
2012 for the annual conference, they will
attend demonstrations and lectures in
two vastly different venues at the Toledo
Museum of Art. The main structure, which
houses one of the most renowned art
collections in the world, is a Greek revival
building, complete with Ionic columns,
that was designed in 1912 by architects
Edward Green and Harry Wachter. It will
host several lectures and the opening
night reception. But most attendees will
be drawn towards a low-profile structure a
hundred yards away: the Glass Pavilion.
Publicly inaugurated on August 27,
2006, the Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass
Pavilion not only houses one of the world’s
finest international glass collections, but it
has also become an international marvel
of its own. The implementation of a new
process in glass design and fabrication,
the expertise of an internationally
recognized architectural firm and a
postmodern design based on a philosophy
of social transparency make the building
an architectural and social masterwork.
Handpicked in 2000 by a search
committee led by architectural and art
historians, community leaders and
curatorial staff, the Tokyo-based SANAA,
Ltd. was chosen to design the Glass
Pavilion. It was their first US commission;
however, since that time, they have
designed the New Museum of Contemporary
Art in New York and the soon-to-open
Louvre satellite museum in Lens, France.
Principals Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue
Nishizawa were the lead architects on
the project.
At 15 feet tall and 76,000 square
feet, TMA’s Glass Pavilion combines
the most advanced structural, material,
environmental and aesthetic knowledge to
create an elegant building that could not
6
TMA’s Glass Pavilion Gallery 3 (floto + warner photo)
have been realized a generation ago. The
one-story structure with basement contains
a glassmaking facility consisting of two
hotshops as well as studios for lampworking,
casting, molding, flatworking
and coldworking. The Glass Pavilion also
includes spaces for loading, storage,
administration, conservation and photography,
along with a multipurpose room for
lectures and seated dinners. It also houses
more than 5,000 glass works of art from
ancient to contemporary times. Emphasizing
the building’s ultimate function,
glass is used in innovative ways architecturally.
Curved glass walls divide the
various spaces in the building while
creating connections between spaces
in a new and unique way. Exterior and
interior glass walls are made of two panes
laminated together for extreme durability.
Although some are larger, most of the
glass-wall panels are eight feet wide and
13 feet, six inches high.
The glass was manufactured by the
Pilkington Glass Company and shipped
to China for fabrication. During this
procedure, the raw glass was shaped into
the exact sizes needed for the construction
of the Glass Pavilion. Since there are no
right-angled corners on the exterior of the
building, much of the glass was rounded to
fit the corner areas, and other pieces were
shaped to fit specific spaces. The finished
glass was shipped to Toledo for installation
in the Glass Pavilion.
The glass walls were installed by
setting one wall segment into a grooved
channel in the floor. Within the channel,
a compressible material allows the wall
segment to settle and move within the
groove. The top of the glass panel is held
in place by a similar channel in the ceiling.
The installation technique allows the glass
to shift and twist in place without causing
gaps to occur in the wall.
An interior, 3/4-inch, steel wall surrounds
one unique space, and demonstrates
an innovative use of steel structure,
functioning both as room divider and part
of the structural system. In addition, there
are 35 reinforced steel supports, ranging
from three to six inches in diameter. Some
of these supports are visible and others
are located within the opaque walls.
The Glass Pavilion’s wiring and HVAC
ducts are located in the floors and ceiling
of the building, as well as in the few
opaque dry-walled sections of the first
floor. The basement level uses all standard
construction methods. Portions of the

physical plant are housed in a building
nearby. In general, the integration of the
different systems (structural, mechanical,
etc.) is at a level of precision rarely
achieved in the US, creating an absolutely
unique architectural experience.
The architects and Museum staff
worked together to develop a design and
systems that utilize natural light, safeguard
works of art and provide a comfortable
environment for artists and visitors. The
Museum thoroughly studied daylight
patterns to evaluate how light will enter
the Glass Pavilion every day of the year. To
prevent interior spaces from overheating
and to control light levels, a shading
system curtails the amount of daylight
entering the building.
The Pavilion continues an established
tradition of visionary architecture commissioned
by the Toledo Museum of Art for
its campus, including the University of
Toledo Center for the Visual Arts designed
by Frank Gehry in 1992. The Glass
Pavilion’s design is an extension of a
20th-century vision where cities made of
glass symbolized a new cultural and social
transparency and openness. Frank Lloyd
Wright and other visionary 20th-century
artists shared this ideal.
The Glass Pavilion’s primary purpose
is to provide an in-depth examination
of the creative process by presenting
the Museum’s glass collection within
One of the Glass Pavilion’s
hotshops in action (photo courtesy
of Toledo Museum of Art)
the context of all the visual arts. In the
Pavilion, artists and patrons can explore
the creative process of glassmaking
through the interpretation of the Museum’s
collection and by emphasizing the
relationship between the art created there
and the masterpieces in the collection.
Some museums focus on the history of
glass, and a few others contextualize
works in this media by integrating them
within the history of art. The Glass Pavilion
is unique in featuring the close physical
relationship between the TMA glass
collection, related works in other media
and its glassmaking facilities.
The studios in the Pavilion are stateof-the-art
and active, offering classes,
workshops and residencies taught by
world-renowned artists. Fitting with the
TMA’s Glass
Pavilion (photo
courtesy of Toledo
Museum of Art)
concept of the overall architecture scheme,
the studios are completely visible through
its large glass walls. It will be here where
a majority of the GAS demonstrations will
take place.
The Glass Pavilion reinforces Ohio’s
position as a major progressive architectural
patron. Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus
and Cincinnati possess a nucleus of
buildings of international significance,
including Cleveland’s Peter B. Lewis
Building at Case Western Reserve
University by Frank Gehry; Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame and Museum by I.M. Pei;
Columbus’s Knights of Columbus Building
by Roche Dinkeloo; Cincinnati’s Union
Terminal by New York architects Alfred
Fellheimer and Stewart Wagner and the
Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art by
Zaha Hadid in Cincinnati. Each building
was its architect’s first US commission.
Sejima and Nishizawa have received
international recognition for their work,
including The Japanese Architect’s Yosioka
Prize (1989), the Japanese Institute of
Architects’ “Young Architect of the Year”
(1992), the Architectural Institute of
Japan Award (1998) and, most recently,
the 2010 Pritzker Prize for architectural
excellence. Both Sejima and Nishizawa
were on the visiting faculty at Harvard
University in 2000.
Image Gallery
For more from the
Toledo Museum of
Art, click here.
7

Pilchuck at 40:
Still Introducing
Artists to Glass
By Diane C. Wright
Judy Chicago, Albert Paley and Isabel
and Reuben Toledo are not exactly names
you associate with the glass world. If
you were interested in these and other
contemporary artists, you would likely
be searching through publications on
metals or fashion design. But Chicago,
Paley, the Toledos and a long list of other
well-established, high-profile artists have
made what people working primarily in
glass view as one of the most important
pilgrimages there is – a voyage to Pilchuck
as an artist in residence.
Much has been written about the
40th anniversary of Pilchuck Glass
School in the past months, but there has
been little mentioned about one of the
more important programs they offer: the
Professional Artist in Residence (AiRs).
Although officially started in 1980, there
have been professional artists in residence
at Pilchuck since 1972, the second year
of its existence. Founder Dale Chihuly
believed strongly that glass students
should be exposed to professional artists
in a working environment. The AiRs studios
were built in 1982-83 so that the artists
would have a defined studio space in the
core of the campus that allowed student
interaction with the visiting artists. Chihuly
had contacts with many mainstream artists
from his travels and exhibitions, and in
the early years he was heavily involved in
the decision making of who was invited to
participate in the AiRs program.
While the Studio Glass Movement was
well underway in the early 1980s, at that
time there were few programs like this
that gave artists unfettered use of studio
spaces, a wide range of materials and
equipment and a place where emerging
Jim Butler’s City of Your Dreams, as realized at Middlebury College
artists could interact with seasoned professionals.
The residency program at Wheaton-
Arts also began in the early 1980s, but the
program at the Corning Museum of Glass
did not get started until the 1990s.
So why does an artist working in
wood, fiber or photography want to spend
time at Pilchuck? Interviews with some of
these artists provided insights into what
inspired them to accept an invitation to
work at Pilchuck and how it influenced
their art. Through the eyes of someone
without hundreds of hours behind the
blow-pipe or the torch, the glass world
looks very different.
In 1998, Wendell Castle, a very
successful sculptor, designer and furniture
maker ventured out to Pilchuck and ended
up on the longest hiatus from his studio
that he can remember. Known as the
“father of art furniture,” he was fascinated
with the prospect of working in glass even
though he had never even done so much
as to experiment with the material. Castle’s
experience at Pilchuck was not dissimilar
to other non-glass artists confronting the
medium for the first time. It was mysterious
and yet full of potential and possibilities.
The AiRs program gives artists an
opportunity to work in a variety of glassmaking
techniques, including blowing,
casting, flameworking and printmaking.
Most artists find themselves gravitating
quickly towards a particular process. For
Castle, he realized his designs translated
well in glass sculpture and his experience
there resulted in hot-sculpted pieces that
were incorporated into his furniture. He
left wanting to do more with glass but
was unable to find the time or place to
make this happen. Today he is interested
in working with the material in a digital
capacity, using laser technology that
will solidify with heat or laser sintering a
material such as glass powder. He worked
with Jill Davis as his assistant while he
was in residence at Pilchuck.
John McQueen went out to Pilchuck
to participate in the residency program
in 2003. A fiber artist who also had
never approached any sort of glass prior
to Pilchuck, McQueen was interested in
8

Tavares Strachen at Pilchuck (Russell Johnson photo)
Magdalene Odundo, with David Walters (left) and Ethan Stern (right) at Pilchuck (Russell Johnson photo)
broadening his horizons by working with
a material that was so foreign to him.
He found Pilchuck, as many others have,
a magical place hidden in the woods, a
place where you can think something up
and it somehow materializes (and, as he
so enthusiastically stated, where the food
is good, too). It is of course Pilchuck’s
glassworkers who function as assistants
that translate the ideas, designs and
concepts into something physical.
McQueen ultimately found the furnace too
hot and casting only somewhat interesting;
it was actually a glass plate and piece
of string that captured his attention and
resulted in success.
McQueen was introduced to the idea of
going to Pilchuck by Kate Elliott (formerly
of Elliott Brown Gallery, Seattle) and
completed the residency alongside his
partner, Margo Mensing (also a fiber artist
and a Pulitzer-prize winning poet-laureate)
with whom he shared a studio while there.
Of the artists discussed, Jim Butler
is probably the one whose work underwent
the most dramatic change after his
residency at Pilchuck. Butler completed
his residency in 2005 but his introduction
to glass came much earlier. A selfdescribed
painter, he studied at Rhode
Island School of Design, where he was
familiar with their well-known glass
program. In the late 1990s, he began to
notice that his work emulated properties
of transparency. Wanting to capitalize
on this aesthetic, he looked around for
someone to fabricate work in glass for
him; eventually he realized he wanted to
develop the skills himself.
Butler was not unfamiliar with the
people in the glass world. He went
to school with Peter Drobny (former
designer at Steuben) and Hank Adams
(WheatonArts) and was friends with John
Childs (Vermont) and Deborah Czeresko
(New York). Still, learning glass, he says,
was like falling down the rabbit hole into
a wonderland of glass.
Pilchuck happened at exactly the right
time and place for him and was the single
most influential event in his professional
career. There, he collaborated with
Czeresko and Jill Reynolds on his City of
Your Dreams project and learned how to
transfer images to glass from Mark Zirpel
(University of Washington) and Brian
Bolden (Minneapolis). He recently took
these skills to The Glass Factory at Kosta
Boda in Sweden to make work using highfire
decals. Butler responded immediately
to his residency at Pilchuck by applying
the following year for a Hauberg Fellowship
(another Pilchuck program) with Rebecca
Cummings and Zirpel. Today, Butler
continues to work in both paint and
glass, making paintings of his sculptures
as well as sculpting his paintings out of
glass. Butler says that he has never had a
language problem with anyone who works
in glass because both are based on optics
and suspended colors. His City of Your
Dreams project, a micro-environment that
was 1,000 square feet and two stories tall
(at 1/4 inch to 1 foot scale), was realized
again at Middlebury College where he has
taught since the 1980s. He worked on the
Middlebury project with Reynolds, Adams,
Czeresco and Childs.
AiRs residents for the summer of 2011
include photographer and film maker
Catherine Chalmers. Chalmers is an artist
9

Reuben and Isabel Toledo at Pilchuck (Russell Johnson photo)
Dante Marioni and Kiki Smith at Pilchuck (Russell Johnson photo)
who is familiar with the glass world and
glassworkers, but Pilchuck would be her
first endeavor working directly with the
material. She went to Pilchuck with the
idea that she would incorporate glass into
a long-term and well-developed project
based on the lives of leaf-cutter ants.
“Leaves are glasslike,” she explains.
“They have a transparency to them and
you can see right through them if the
lighting is right.” She is currently creating
an installation in which a rhinoceros-size
ant is destroying a section of a gallery.
As part of this project, she set out to
create large-scale leaves in different
stages of being eaten by the ant. Prior
to her residency, Chalmers worked with
Clifford Rainey (California College of
the Arts) to make a prototype for the
leaves. It was quickly determined that
kilnforming the glass would yield both the
close-up details and the size and shape
needed. She worked on design drawings,
molds and pre-ordered glass in different
consistencies. Ordering the glass was
difficult at first, Chalmers said, as she had
never seen the colors in person. Eventually
a friend loaned her a Bullseye Glass
sample kit and she settled on a frit that
was light colored and chunky for some
parts of the leaves and some that was
dark and fine – hoping to combine the
two to achieve the random cellular look of
leaves seen close up. Arriving at Pilchuck
with a plan and materials, Chalmers was
ready to cast her leaves.
For Chalmers, this experience was
much better than art school, not because
of the opportunity to concentrate solely
on this project, but because of the
generosity of the people at Pilchuck. She
was impressed with the collaborative
nature of the work accomplished there
and found it to be similar to watching
a well-choreographed ballet. Despite
her extensive preparation, there were
elements of the process that surprised
and confounded her. After days of work,
an interruption in the power supply would
result in breakage, something that glass
artists become used to in time but is
always shocking to those outside the
field. The idea of working with something
that breaks a lot was something she
was completely unprepared for. Prior to
arriving at Pilchuck, she understood that
numerous processes would be available
to her but the fact that so many hardto-control
variables were at play when
working with glass was unexpected.
In addition to her leaves, Chalmers
wanted to create an ant colony in glass
but found it technically difficult to do it
in the hotshop. After discussions with
several of the artists, she determined
that by making the piece in modular
sections in lampworked glass she would
be able to create the chambers as if
dug by the ants themselves. It was like
being in an art reality television show:
she would experience a new technique or
process, and an idea would crop up and
she would quickly draw up plans for the
next part. And it was fun. On Chalmers’
last day at Pilchuck, she made it into the
Print Shop to try glass-plate printing; she
made two resists and two embossings.
Sadly, the breakage of her cast leaves
10

Far Left:
Rashaad Newsome,
May/June 2011 AiRs
(Russell Johnson photo)
Catherine Chalmers,
July 2011 AiRs
(photo courtesy of
the artist)
left her with the realization that (1) even
when you do everything right there can
be a tremendously high attrition rate in
glass, and (2) while creating works in
glass is a great idea, it comes at a very
high cost. Chalmers worked with several
dedicated assistants at Pilchuck during
her residency, including Jay Macdonell,
Michael Fox and Jessie Blackmer (see the
student profile on page 24).
Over the years, Pilchuck has issued
invitations to such renowned artists as
Lynda Benglis (1984, 1985, 1995),
Kiki Smith (1991, 1993, 1997), Maya
Lin (1994), Deborah Butterfield (1997),
Jim Dine (1999), Anne Wilson (2005)
and, most recently, dancer Rasheed
Newsom (2011) among the others
already mentioned (Paley, 1998; Chicago,
2003; the Toledos, 2009). After her
residency, Benglis took her knot series
from casting metal to cast glass. In 2006,
post-Pilchuck residency, Chicago’s show
Chicago in Glass opened in Santa Fe.
The Pilchuck AiRs program makes
glass accessible to artists outside our
somewhat sequestered medium by
providing studios, assistants and materials
that are too costly and complicated for
most to obtain on their own. It probably
would not have happened without the
openness of the Studio Glass Movement.
Collaborations with these artists can and
should infuse the glass world with more
creativity and diversity of thought and
expand the medium in its post-Studio
decades. The program is remarkable for
its contribution in merging the Studio
Glass Movement with the rest of the fine
arts world. It is freedom of expression in
glass for all.
The author thanks Ruth King, Allison Kramer and
John Reed (all from Pilchuck), Jim Butler, Wendell
Castle, Tricia Tinling (Wendell Castle Studio),
Catherine Chalmers and John McQueen for their
contributions to this article.
Image Gallery
For more images
from Pilchuck Glass
School, click here.
11

New Glass Studio
Opens at the Chrysler
Museum of Art
By Debra Ruzinsky
The Chrysler Museum of Art, in Norfolk,
Virginia, will open a new glass studio on
November 2, 2011. “This Glass Studio
will allow our visitors to experience
glassmaking and be involved in every step
of the process,” says Bill Hennessey, the
Museum’s director. “We anticipate this will
draw people to the region to learn about
glass, meet visiting glass artists and tour
our collection. We expect this to be a
significant educational component for the
region – one that will allow us to further
strengthen our partnerships with groups
such as Tidewater Community College,
Virginia Wesleyan and the Governor’s
School for the Arts. With more than a third
of our 30,000-object collection devoted to
glass, this is clearly a strong suit for the
Chrysler. This glass studio will bring these
works of art to life.”
The Museum’s glass collection includes
more than 10,000 pieces that span 3,000
years and is considered one of the largest
and most comprehensive collections in the
world. The foundations of the collection
Dragonfly Library Lamp by Tiffany Studios
(Leaded glass and bronze. Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Chrysler Museum of Art)
12
Chrysler Museum of Art’s new glass studio (photo courtesy of the Chrysler Museum)
were established by the early 1950s with
a significant bequest of New England
Glass Company glasses from the estate of
Norfolk resident Florence Smith. In 1971,
Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. donated more than
8,000 works of glass to the Museum,
establishing the collection as a destination
for glass scholars and enthusiasts. Major
gifts of English cameo, 20th-century
Italian, and contemporary glass continue
to diversify the collection.
Significant early pieces in the collection
include the 1st-century A.D. Ennion
bowl, fine Baroque engraved glasses,
and a selection of 16th-century Venetian
glasses. Two-thirds of the Chrysler’s glass
collection is American, with early- and mid-
19th-century pressed glass and American
art glass made by companies such as
the Mt. Washington Glass Company. The
Tiffany collection is world-famous and
nearly comprehensive in the area of blown
glass; it also contains mosaics, windows
and lamps. French glass is another major
area of strength, with works from nearly all
major makers, including Baccarat, Gallé,
Daum, Walter, Marinot, Argy-Rousseau
and Lalique. The English cameo glass
collection includes John Northwood’s
Milton Vase and several masterpieces
carved by Thomas and George Woodall.
Most of the Chrysler’s collection of
contemporary studio glass has been
acquired since 1990. The range includes
works by artists such as Howard Ben Tré,
Harvey K. Littleton, William Morris, Karen
LaMonte, Toots Zynsky, Lino Tagliapietra,
and Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava
Brychtová.
“The Glass Studio will help our
visitors gain a better understanding and
appreciation for the wonderful objects
in our collection,” says Kelly Conway,
curator of glass. “We devote a lot of time
to explaining the technical processes
used to make these artworks. The Studio
will provide far more capable and lively
answers for these technique-based
questions from our visitors, and tours
will connect the live studio experience
with the contextual history explained in
the glass galleries.”
The new facility is the only one of its
kind in the Mid-Atlantic region, and it will
be able to accommodate many artists
who employ a variety of techniques.
The equipment includes the following:
• A furnace capable of melting 560
pounds of glass;
• Three glory holes
• Nine annealing ovens
• A flameworking table with space for
eight artists to work on projects such
as beadmaking or sculpture using glass
rods and tubes, with three dedicated
annealing kilns for this process.

Lemon/Ruby/Blue Vertical Group by Harvey K. Littleton
(Blown and cased glass, cut, polished, and assembled.
Gift of the Mowbray Arch Society. Chrysler Museum of Art)
• A coldshop complete with glass-grinding
lathe, belt sander, drill press, flat wheel,
diamond saw and sandblaster.
• Workshop spaces for glass fusing and
metal fabrication.
Programs will include:
• Free public demonstrations designed
to complement visitors’ experience of
the Chrysler’s renowned glass collection.
• Fee-based workshops for individuals
and small groups of teenagers and
adults, as well as master classes with
accomplished professional artists.
• Special demonstrations for school
and adult tours that cover a variety of
specific topics, including the science of
glassmaking and historical processes
and techniques.
• Partnerships with regional institutions
to offer introductory and advanced
courses, as well as pre-professional
internships.
• A Visiting Artist Series featuring
established artists giving live demonstrations
and a public lecture.
• An artist-in-residence program that
invites artists to undertake projects
supported by their study of the
Museum’s collections and its research
library.
• Glass studio rental available to professional
artists.
Charlotte Potter, studio manager,
describes the new studio in this way:
“This is a unique facility that values the
discovery and education of historical
glassmaking balanced with unbridled
experimentation, performance art and
explorations in new media. I hope to
make the Chrysler Museum Glass Studio
a destination for exploratory work that
emphasizes the theatric qualities of hot
glass. The Studio will couple traditional
glassmaking techniques with new
explorations and performances to
provide a hybrid of historical and contemporary
glass practices. Through our
Visiting Artist Series, artist-in-residence
program, public classes, and collaborations
with community partners, our new
Glass Studio will provide advanced
scholastic investigations into glass and
new media.”
Opening festivities will span two weeks.
The first is a sneak-peek week for Chrysler
Museum members. Between October 26
and October 30, they’ll focus on the
historical glassmaking processes used
throughout works in the collection. The
public opening week, November 2 - 5, will
feature special demonstrations designed
by Potter and Robin Rogers, the new
studio technician. The museum highlights
its regional partnerships by welcoming
educators and students from Virginia
Commonwealth University and Tidewater
Community College. The week’s festivities
will culminate with a performance by
the Burnt Asphalt Family on Saturday,
November 5.
The Chrysler Museum of Art is located at
245 West Olney Road in Norfolk. Admission to
the Museum’s collection in 62 galleries and
the new Glass Studio is free. For exhibitions,
programming, classes and special events, visit
chrysler.org or call 757.664.6200.
Thanks to Cindy Mackey, Kelly Conway, and
Charlotte Potter at the Chrysler Museum of Art
for providing information for this article.
Image Gallery
To see more from
the Chrysler Museum
of Art, click here.
SOFA
CHICAGO
November 4- 6, 2011
Navy Pier
13

Tech Issues
Mobile Glass Studios
By Eddie Bernard
The history of mobile glass studios dates
back to the beginning of the Studio Glass
Movement. Listening to Fritz Dreisbach
or Marvin Lipofsky talk about the early
days, it seems there has always been
a high level of excitement among glass
craftspeople to share the experience.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that a demonstration
is traditionally followed by a
healthy round of applause.
Location, location, location — the old
real-estate joke’s punch line holds true
for glass too. Renaissance fairs, music
festivals, parties, parks and schools
are venues where artists can use their
exhibitionist traits to earn a fee, to sell
work, and to educate. Let’s not forget that
the terms “vagabond” and “glass artist”
share etymological roots.
Some of the earliest mobile studios
were built on existing trailers. Often the
units had only one axle, but, as seen
in the 1582 Turkish painting Parade of
the Guild of the Glassblowers, at least
one early unit was built on six axles (one
per wheel). Bill Boysen, who started the
graduate glass program at Southern
Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) in
1966, is often credited with building
the first mobile glassblowing studio in
the US. Completed in 1970, Boysen’s
Aunt Gladys (named to acknowledge the
need for a rich aunt in order to work with
glass) was funded by a research grant to
help him expose more people to artistic
glassblowing. Aunt Gladys is in its second
incarnation now, having been completely
built anew by Boysen soon after Ché
Rhodes became head of the SIUC glass
program. The small, enclosed, double-axle
trailer houses a 60-lb furnace, a glory hole
and two annealing ovens. It is powered
by electricity and propane. Those of you
who have attended a handful of GAS
conferences will agree Aunt Gladys has
been a staple venue, traditionally hosting
14
student demonstrations. Rumor (a rumor
I hereby set in motion) has it that Aunt
Gladys has been nominated for GAS’ two
most prestigious awards, the Lifetime
Achievement Award and the Honorary
Lifetime Membership Award.
Marvin Lipofsky provided me with
several examples of mobile studios from
the 1970s, including Brian Lonsway’s
1972 Toledo, OH, trailer with rims that
matched his 1932 Chevy. Steve Beasely
built his furnace inside a covered trailer
and dragged it around the Seattle area
in the early ’70s. Bill Brunner’s Duo Glide
mobile shop was used in 1976 at The
Great California Glass Symposium, which
was held in conjunction with the American
Craft Council show at the Fort Mason
Center in San Francisco. Demonstrators at
that symposium included Ann Morhauser,
Bill Brunner and Marvin Lipofsky.
Studio Inferno’s Mitchell Gaudet and
Scott and Bruce Benefield built Hell on
Wheels in 1996 with the help of Althea
Holden and Don Nisonger. Starting with
a Nuway NW13182 single-axle trailer for
a 6’ x 4’ foundation, they added a 3/4”
plywood deck, a 50-lb invested pot beehive
furnace and a 12-inch fiber-lined glory
hole. The trailer was rated to transport
up to 2,000 lbs, and the total cost in
1996 was approximately $2,000. Hell on
Wheels was built and paid for by Studio
Inferno, but it did receive some funding
Turkish mobile unit,
circa 1568, from
Parade of the Guild
of the Glassblowers,
(detail), 1582.
(Photo courtesy of
Marvin Lipofsky)
from the New Orleans Art Council for
several years to travel to schools and
do demonstrations. Demos were always
free of charge. Gaudet explains, “We
reached out to all as a teaching and
demonstrating unit. Most schools had
limited arts programming, so for us to
bring fire and glass to them was a real
treat.” Hell on Wheels was typically pulled
into the stationary studio and fired up
on natural gas to operating temperature,
then hauled to the demonstration site,
where propane was used to fire the venturi
mixer. A small kiln (about the size of a
color oven) ran off a 120V extension cord
and was used for annealing. “Our biggest
impact was demoing at the New Orleans
Jazz and Heritage Festival. It never ceased
to amaze me how many people would
watch our demos in the heat and in lieu
of all the great music there…” Gaudet
recalls. Scott Benefield adds, “That’s
where we discovered its real function – an
advertising tool to promote retail sales
at a craft event. That became its sole
function ever afterward, as we found it
roughly doubled our sales.” The unit was
eventually destroyed by a construction
company where it was stored.
Scott Benefield had a second go at
mobile-studio design when he built a
100-lb freestanding pot furnace in the
back of a horse trailer. For electricity and
fuel, it used two big propane tanks on

the tongue of the trailer and a deep-cycle
marine battery run through an inverter
to create 120VAC. Electricity was used
to power a combustion system with a
variable-speed blower, enabling him to fire
a small nozzle-mix burner into the furnace
and keep fuel consumption to a minimum.
The minimal-capacity annealer was held
at temperature by a crude heat exchanger
from the furnace flue. In concept, this
studio could be set up anywhere off-grid
and glass of decent quality could be blown
for at least a short period of time.
It should be obvious by now that some
mobile shops are likely descendents of
Transformer toys, with sides that drop
down to create work platforms or fold up
to create awnings and expose annealing
ovens. Glory holes often slide out of
doors or hatches, roofs pop up or change
angles for better ventilation, and benches
are sometimes collapsible for compact
storage. Even Aunt Gladys now sports an
“outie” glory hole.
From 2004 to 2005, Robin Rogers
created the Nomadic Glass Studio, which
encompasses many of these features. He
started with a flat trailer and built skyward
and inward towards a design that allows
all glass work to be done while standing
on the unit – a feature that comes in
handy while blowing glass in a parade.
The Nomad has an all-in-one-freestanding
40-lb pot furnace/glory hole/pipe warmer/
garage that is fired with a single, highpressure,
propane venturi system. There
are glory-hole doors on one side and a
sliding furnace door on the other so that
the assistant can gather out of the back
while the gaffer is heating in the front.
If the glass piece becomes too long for
the reheating chamber, the rear sliding
door is opened to allow for protrusion.
The flue, in the top of the crown, is split
two ways: one side is the pipe warmer
and the other is a small garage. It takes
about eight hours from the time of igniting
the furnace to having a full pot of molten
glass ready to blow. This “transformer”
also has a slide-top annealer that runs
on 220V 30A and was designed to plug
into any common household-dryer outlet.
Brian Lonsway’s 1972 Toledo, OH, mobile unit — with wheels to match its 1932 Chevy (Photo courtesy of Marvin Lipofsky)
Future plans have the annealer alternately
heated by a burner to eliminate the need
for electricity altogether. In addition to the
glass equipment, it has a blower’s bench,
assistant rails, tool storage, pipe/punty
locker and a built-in PA and lighting system.
Rogers’ mission in building this unit
was to be able to blow glass anywhere
he, his wife and their son travel as
ambassadors of molten glass. They have
demonstrated glassworking techniques
at art galleries, craft festivals, schools,
private parties and the Columbus Museum
of Art in Columbus, Ohio. “Ultimately,”
says Rogers, we hope to give people a
memorable experience and to foster appreciation
of glass as an artist’s medium.
In some instances, we offer on-site handson
workshops on the studio to further our
educational mission.” A recent addition to
the Nomad is the Cool Bus, a short school
bus whose back end Rogers converted
into a fold-out flameworking studio in
2010. The bus pulls the trailer, the crew
and the snacks. For a detailed event
quote, please contact Rogers with the
dates and location of your event: email@
nomadicglass.com.
Another good example of a transformer
is Juicy Lucy, the Blowin’ Hot Rod, of
Glassworks in Louisville, KY. Those of us
at the 2011 GAS conference got to see
her in action in her hometown. She is a
full-size cargo van with heavy-duty shocks
and a killer paint job. Her only electrical
requirement is 120 VAC, 15 Amps to run
Bill Brunner’s Duo
Glide (Photo courtesy
of Marvin Lipofsky)
15

Museum of Glass mobile hotshop
(Ken Emly photo)
the combustion air-blower. Rear doors
open for access to a furnace housing
both a 20-lb color pot and 45-lb clear
pot. The furnace has doors at left and
right sides and acts as a double-ended
glory hole as well. On heavy-duty tracks,
the furnace and the glory hole (which is
only fired up for very busy events) both
roll out of the van carrying piggyback
annealing ovens that are heated by the
exhaust of the gas-fired units beneath
them. The temperatures of the annealers
are monitored via analog pyrometer and
regulated with inlet and outlet dampers.
The mass of the furnace generates a good
12-hour annealing curve. “We run the
furnace on low after we are done blowing
glass and cleaning up the ‘studio’ for the
annealing ‘soak’ and completely close up
shop and allow the heat to rise though two
small vents in the floor of the annealer,
which is also the insulated crown of
the furnace. The cooling ramp can be
quickened by gradually opening a vent in
the roof of the annealer,” says Juicy Lucy’s
“dad” and chauffer, Chad Balster. Juicy
Lucy pulls a trailer with propane tanks,
benches, and everything else required
to demonstrate glassblowing. A 100-lb
propane tank will give an audience six to
eight hours of demonstrations or a renter
the same duration in glassblowing.
Your car broke down and there’s no
public transportation and you can’t walk?
16
No worries, the hotshop is on its way!
I just interjected that, but why not? Balster
says Juicy Lucy is a cheap date, at $20/hr
for minimum of six hours. Compare that
to your local hotshop rental figures!
Renters must be willing to help him set
her up in the morning and pack her up in
the evening for this low rate. Juicy Lucy’s
typical audience is an art fair, music
festival or school. At these establishments,
a crew puts on “blow your own ornament/
cup/pumpkin” events that allow people
to experience the fun of glassblowing
firsthand. If the van must travel, rates
vary from $1,000 to $1,500. The client
must provide a flat working surface of at
least 20’ x 30’, a reliable 240V, 20 Amp
AC electrical circuit, and light security
throughout firing and cooling of the unit.
The van is not mobile from the time of
set-up through firing. It must cool overnight
in order to drive comfortably. Balster
states, “Our audience is Louisville and the
surrounding region. We have found that the
Glassworks customers have enjoyed the
mobile-unit experience, seeing it around
the area at art fairs and schools. We have
found that crossing the entertainment
element with the education element
is productive and consistent with the
Glassworks mission.” For more information,
please contact Chad Balster at 502.386.
6319 or chadbalsterglass@gmail.com
Bill Boysen was right: one’s mother
or father must have a rich sister if one
is to be all that a glassblower can be
and experience all the riches and lush
offerings the glass art world has to bear.
Glassblowing brothers from Mexico
obviously don’t apply to this rule. (Props
to Einar and Jaimex!) On both US coasts,
there are museums of glass with rich
aunts that take educational outreach
programs to the stratosphere with their
mobile glass studios! Cue: Museum of
Glass (MoG) in Tacoma, WA, and the
Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) in
Corning, NY.
MoG’s truck-with-hotshop sports
eye-catching graphics. With a mission
involving education and entertainment,
the truck – a fully loaded vehicle with
a state-of-the-art audio-visual system
carrying an entire hotglass studio and a
tent for the event – drives to the client’s
location, where a trained commentator
will explain the glassmaking process step
by step and answers questions. Clients
include schools, community festivals,
and private event hosts. For schools,
demonstrations are designed to comply
with state standards (EALRs and GLEs)
and may include hands-on lessons. Other
packaged offerings include straight-up
demonstrations with highly skilled professional
glassblowers making Venetianstyle
goblets. For further information, visit
http://www.museumofglass.org/page.
aspx?pid=406 or contact Rebecca Jones
at 253.284.2137, mobilehotshopinfo@
museumofglass.org
The Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG)
calls their live glassmaking experience
the Hot Glass Roadshow. Their outreach
program audience includes the public,
the design community and museums
worldwide. In conjunction with exhibitions,
events and art and design initiatives, the
museum’s gaffers demonstrate hotglass
techniques. The Roadshow comes in two
forms: one is the Hot Glass Roadshow,
which is a fully equipped 28-foot-long,
35,000-lb. glassmaking studio and stage
transported by tractor trailer. GAS
conference attendees surely appreciate
the numerous times Corning has been so

Glassworks’
Juicy Lucy,
the Blowin’ Hot
Rod, at a public
demonstration
(photo courtesy
of Glassworks)
G L A S H A U S
The International Magazine
of Studio Glass
generous as to lend the Hot Glass Roadshow
to GAS as a demonstration venue.
CmoG’s UltraLight Hotshop is a modular
group of highly portable units that can be
arranged to meet the needs of individual
venues or events. The set-up requires
minimal utility support and can include
a flameworking unit. Both set-ups were
uniquely conceived of and designed by
the Corning Museum of Glass. For further
technical information, please click here.
But that’s not all when it comes to
CMoG, who also sponsors the GlassLab,
a unique mobile glass shop concept that
brings molten glass and the skills to work
with it to a workshop of designers who
possess the skills to design it. CMoG’s
inspired and talented road crew has
taken GlassLab to such design venues
as the Design Miami/Art Basel Miami
and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design
Museum. Workshops have also been
held at Vitra Design Museum during Art
Basel in Weil Am Rhein, Germany, and at
Domaine de Boisbuchet in Lessac, France.
At workshops with such titles as “Earth,
Glass, and Fire” and “Liquid Fusion,” a
live audience is provided a rare glimpse of
the collaborative process that often takes
place between designers and gaffers.
Hot glass studios have even been
set up on watercraft. Take Chris Taylor’s
rowboat for example. In 2009, Chris
paddled the one-man, pond-going vessel
out into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of
Providence, RI, to work on top-secret glassmaking
approaches in private, working out
of a small furnace fired by a venturi burner.
The furnace was designed with an annealing
oven on top of it that was heated by
the furnace exhaust. The furnace was
installed on a gimble so that as the boat
rocked with the waves, the furnace would
remain relatively stable. Taylor realized
that if the craft overturned, he was likely
to experience a sensationally hot steam/
bubble bath. For this reason and because
of the aforementioned secret nature of the
voyage, he chose to leave the annealing
oven – it made the dingy too top heavy
– on the shore. Other watercraft include
the barge in the canal at GAS’ 2002
Amsterdam conference and Celebrity
Cruises’ Solstice Class ships, whose CMoG
hot studios’ objective is to keep valued
cruise guests buying drinks at sea. Turns
out glassblowing can do that for a crowd!
My idea of putting a studio on a
spaceship was shut down recently when
the US government cut spending on the
space program. Such is life in these hard
economic times.
Here’s a tip from Scott Benefield,
should you decide to build a mobile
hotshop for yourself or your organization:
“Ask Mitchell about the time they were
dragging [Hell on Wheels] to Baton Rouge
on the highway and they saw a trail of
streaming fiber insulation from the crown
in the rear view mirror... ” Mobile hotshops
might not be for everyone.
Image Gallery
To see more mobile
glass studios,
click here.
German/ English, 4 issues p.a. 42 Euros
Dr. Wolfgang Schmölders
Glashaus-Verlag, Stadtgarten 4
D-47798 Krefeld (Germany)
Email: glashaus-verlag@t-online.de
Web: www.glasshouse.de
17

International
Window
Highlights in Europe
By Angela van der Burght
As fall approaches, there are so many interesting
expositions to visit in northern Europe!
Belgium (image 1)
At Glazen Huis in Lommel
October 8 - Spring 2012:
Bernardine de Neeveprijs
October 4 - 23:
Presentation Ledenobjecten, books available
Glazen huis
Vlaams Centrum voor Hedendaagse Glaskunst
Dorp 14
B-3920 Lommel, Belgium
info@hetglazenhuis.be
www.hetglazenhuis.be
By Musée due Verre de la Ville
de Charleroi in Marcinelle
October 1 - November 27:
Quand Charleroi pointe la technique
This is a 3-part exhibition. The first, Le
verre peint en Wallonie de 1900 à 1930,
shows 60 or so works by artists from the
southern region of Belgium, Wallonia,
including Paul Bernard, Pierre Jost, Henri
Heemskerk, Jules Michez, Karel Heller,
Léon Mairesse, Henri Martin, De Winner.
The second part of the exhibition, Le verre,
une matière sans limite, pays tribute to
the contributions the region of Charleroi
has made to industrial flat glass. This
interactive and educational exhibition
covers from Émile Fourcault’s innovations
in 1911 to Pixelglass incorporating LEDs.
The third exhibition, Label Charleroi, shows
the results of the encounters between the
following designers and artists: Bruyerre
et Hugo Meert, Caterpillar et Sylvain
Busine, GVK et Atelier Blink, Plastiservice
et Dustdeluxe, Sirris et Raphaël Charles,
Trans’Form et Atelier Design Addict.
Musée du Verre
Site du Bois du Cazier
Rue du Cazier, 80
B-6001 Marcinelle, Belgium
http://charleroi-museum.be
www.charleroi1911-2011.be
18
1 2
Denmark (image 2)
At the Glasmuseet Ebeltoft in Ebeltoft
Through April 22:
Glass Mad
To mark the museum’s 25 years of
existence, works from the museum’s
permanent collection are on view. Danish
sculptor Bjørn Nørgaard’s work provides
the setting. In connection with the 25th
anniversary, the museum will publish a
168 page lavish book titled Glassified.
The main author is writer and art critic
Niels Houkjær. Today the internationally
acclaimed collection numbers more than
1,500 works donated or deposited by
700 artists from 48 countries. Among the
first artists who supported the museum
by donating works to the collection, are
legendary pioneers such as Kyohei Fujita,
Harvey K. Littleton, Dale Chihuly, Sybren
Valkema, Åsa Brandt, Ann Wolff, Bertil
Vallien, Klaus Moje, and Lino Tagliapietra.
October 15 - March 7
Venice. 3 Visions in Glass
Works by Cristiano Bianchin, Yoichi Ohira
and Laura de Santillana
October 15 - February 26:
Studies in Search of Order and Chaos
Works by Stine Bidstrup
Glasmuseet Ebeltoft
Strandvejen 8
DK-8400 Ebeltoft
+45 (0)8634-1799
glasmuseet@glasmuseet.dk
www.glasmuseet.dk
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France (image 3)
At the Musée-Atelier du verre
in Sars-Poteries
October 21 - March 4:
Inlandsis
Works by Michèle Perozeni, exploring the
theme of Antartica. Perozeni served as artist
in residence at the museum in early 2011.
Musée-Atelier du verre
1, rue du Général de Gaulle BP2
F-59216 Sars-Poteries
www.cg59.fr
This page, clockwise from upper left:
1. Koen Vanderstukken’s Virtual - reality 1 (2011; 120 x
60 x 60 cm; LCD-TV, camera, float glass, aluminum);
2. Glass Mad (Fenestra Ateliers photo);
3. Michèle Perozeni’s Péril en la demeure, 2011
(Jean-Louis Hess photo);
Next page, clockwise from upper left:
4. Mona Hatoum’s Nature morte aux grenades,
2006-2007 (Ela Bialkowska photo);
5. Harvey K. Littleton’s Ellipsoid Prismatic, 1981
(Contemporary Glass Art Collection, MUDAC,
Lausanne; Claude Bornand photo);
6. Emmanuel Babled’s hanging installation of chandelier,
Digit (Emmanuel Babled photo)

Sweden (image 4)
At the Millesgården Museum
in Stockholm
Through January 15:
Glasstress Stockholm
Works by 32 artists, including: Jean Arp,
Mona Hatoum, Fred Wilson, Marie-Louise
Ekman, Charlotte Gyllenhammar, Ernst
Billgren and Bertil Vallien. Book available.
Millesgården Museum
Herserudvägen 32, Lingö-Stockholm
info@millesgarden.se
www.millesgarden.se
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The Netherlands (image 6)
At the Machinekamer in Eindhoven
October 22 - 30, During Dutch Design Week:
Glass is more!
Participating artists and designers:
Jan Stel/Past Glory, NL, Jan Doms,
Barbara Nanning, Koen Vanderstukken,
Jan-Willem van Zijst, Sunny van Zijst,
Angelina Pavlova, Mariëlle van den Bergh,
Emmanuel Babled, Elleke van Gorsel,
Vesa Varrela, Daniel Gaemperle, Saskia
van der Steen and Simone van Bakel.
A catalog is available on www.blurb.com.
Information also available at Lineo Modern
Interior’s website at www.lineo.nl.
Machinekamer
Glaslaan 2
NL- 5617 AB Eindhoven op Strijp-S
www.strijp-s.nl
Switzerland (image 5)
At Musée de design et d’arts appliqués
contemporains Mudac in Lausanne
Through October 31:
The Taste for Glass: Evolution of the
Conception of Beauty in Contemporary
Glass Art, Seen Through the MUDAC
Collection
Peter and Traudi Engelhorn, with the collaboration
of Rosmarie Lippuner, have collected
works by more than 300 glass artists,
and the collection boasts glass made in
different styles, countries, and times.
November 22 - September 2, 2012
Ettore Sottsass and Pierre Charpin.
Taking up the Challenges in Glass Design
Works from the Marseilles CIRVA
(International Center for Glass and Visual
Arts Research)
Musée de design et d’arts appliqués contemporains
Pl. de la Cathédrale 6, CH-1005 Lausanne
info@mudac.ch
www.mudac.ch
6 5
19

International
Window
4th International Glass
Festival Luxembourg,
August 26-28, 2011
By Scott Benefield
Artists from around the world working
with glass seem especially fond of coming
together. Every gathering like this – be it
a conference, festival or symposium – has
its own unique character. That character
is formed by the nature of the host
organization, the setting (both physical
and cultural), the intended audience and a
number of other factors including, perhaps,
the seasonal weather.
For example, a GAS conference gains
its character through its setting (which
changes every year) but also through its
scale, with multiple simultaneous events
and its attendance numbered in the
many hundreds; which is different from
a Bullseye BECon, with its deep roots in
the city of Portland and the patronage of
a major manufacturer; which is different
again from the Crystalex symposia of the
’70s and ’80s, which were by invitationonly
and centered around participatory
collaboration with the factory resources.
The 4th International Glass Festival
Luxembourg has the feel of a weekend
in the country with friends – a big house
party where old acquaintances are
renewed, meals are communal, wine
appears out of nowhere and the hours
are a bit irregular. This festival – first held
in 2006 and repeated three times since
then – is a labor of love by two artists,
Robert Emeringer and Zaiga Baiza, with
the volunteer assistance of numerous
friends, colleagues and neighbors. Most of
the activities are held in their backyard –
literally – in the small village of Asselborn,
in the northern tip of Luxembourg, where
they maintain a studio for the restoration
of ecclesiastical stained glass and their
other works in glass.
20
At the heart of this festival is the
familiar impulse to come together, to be
drawn from your local community to meet
your peers, exchange opinions and information,
to expose your work and be exposed
to the work of others, and to reconnect with
friends in the field. As word of the festival
has spread throughout Europe through
the years, it has grown beyond their initial
circle of friends and professional acquaintances
to encompass a much wider network
of artists and students.
Attendance for this year’s festival
numbered around 75, drawn from over
25 different European countries. At this
one small gathering you could meet – you
could not help but meet – glass artists
from Belgium, France, Switzerland, Norway,
Estonia, Latvia, Russia, England, Germany,
Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Israel,
Turkey, Lithuania and so on. Part of the
reason for the wide variety of participating
countries comes from Luxembourg’s geographical
location in the middle of Europe
and its easy accessibility by car or train.
But it can also be accounted for by both
Emeringer and Baiza’s extensive network of
friends, especially as it extends into some
of the smaller Eastern European countries.
Emeringer and Baiza have managed
to get some funding from government
agencies and local businesses, but
Dutch artist
Ed van Dijk
(in foreground)
monitors his
wood-fired
furnace as it
comes up to
temperature
(Scott Benefield
photo)
they manage to produce the event each
year with no formal organization, paid
staff or permanent facilities. There’s
a limit to how far you can stretch this
shoestring – and this year’s festival may
have been approaching it – before a
different organizational structure becomes
necessary, but in the meantime their
continued efforts on behalf of this event
are nothing less than astonishing.
This year the festival expanded its
scope to include formal exhibitions at
venues in Luxembourg City and Diekirch.
The Luxembourg City exhibition was
curated by Matt Durran (see the Member
Profile in this issue). Baiza produced a
handsome hardbound catalogue that also
serves as a record of the entire festival.
Participation in the festival was
determined by an open call for entries to
artists. Accepted artists were invited to
send work to the exhibition and to attend
the festival free of charge, where a nightly
evening buffet meal (cooked by neighbors)
and seemingly endless amounts of
excellent local wines were generously
provided. Accommodations could be
booked at local inns and hotels, but many
attending artists elected to pitch their tents
on lawns and surrounding green spaces.
One of the virtues of this Luxembourg
festival is its near absence of formal

Scottish artist Graham Muir's work at the outdoor exhibition (Scott Benefield photo)
structure, coupled with its location in a
rather small and remote rural setting.
Artists are not thrown together in any kind
of artificial way; they tend to find each
other by chance or intention. Introductions
are offered and conversation, or even
collaboration, follows. The setting inflects
the interactions as well, as the energy
that is created is not dissipated by an
environment that offers any distractions or
competing entertainments.
The festival is primarily a gathering
of artists, but its secondary intent is
to expose a wider general public to
contemporary glass, to educate and
cultivate a greater appreciation for the
breadth and quality of work that is being
done at diverse locations. To this end,
all of the exhibitions and demonstrations
associated with the festival are open
to the public with no admission charge
and, based on my own observations,
surprisingly well attended over the somewhat
rainy weekend when it was held.
With a dearth of galleries devoted to
showing studio glass in Luxembourg,
this has to be the primary vehicle for
promoting glass art in that country.
There were demonstrations of glassblowing
from a mobile furnace (organized
by Patrick van Tilborgh); lampworking,
casting and coldworking demonstrations
by attending artists; a wood-fired, brickand-clay,
glass-melting furnace built on site
and managed by Ed van Dijk; and a small
selection of individual artist presentations.
Attending artists were invited to exhibit
additional pieces at the site of the festival
in an improvised sculpture garden, where
plinths were either shipped with the work
or constructed from materials at hand.
It seems petty to point out areas
that might be improved, when the entire
manifestation represents an immense
gesture of generosity on the part of the
organizers. Plus, they seem to be on the
cusp of deciding whether to keep growing
the festival or scaling back to an earlier,
more intimate incarnation. As a first-time
participant but seasoned veteran of GAS
activities, to me the 4th International Glass
Festival Luxembourg became a fascinating
experience of grassroots organizing and its
structural limits as it approached greater
levels of complexity.
The three-day festival ended under
sunny skies with an outdoor auction and
a final evening meal before artists started
to disassemble displays of work, pack up
tools and equipment and take down their
tents. Books and catalogues circulated;
contact information was exchanged,
and everybody left with a slightly altered
awareness of who is out there and what is
going on in the European glass community.
Image Gallery
For more images
from the Luxembourg
Festival, click here.
21

Social Programs
The Glass Furnace
By Karen Donnellan
Looking forward to its 10th anniversary
next year, The Glass Furnace in Turkey
is now one of the world’s leading glass
schools. Located in the Black Sea Region
near Istanbul, the studio has seen hundreds
of world-renowned artists, designers and
makers come through its doors, while
thousands more students have had the
opportunity to absorb the expertise and
creative energies offered there.
History
The Glass Furnace was founded by the
glass lover Yilmaz Yalcinkaya and his
wife, Nimet, a metal worker and jeweler.
Yalcinkaya is a textile engineer by trade
but has had an incurable infatuation with
glass since his childhood. His daughter,
Elif, tells of how, for years, he would spend
his free time watching the glass masters
work at the enormous Paşabahçe factory.
Approaching retirement in the late 1990s,
Yalcinkaya took some classes at the glass
schools Bildwerk Academy and Pilchuck.
For him, the experience highlighted the
lack of such a school in Turkey and so
his journey commenced. Eventually, in
1999, the Paşabahçe factory put one of
its disused establishments up for sale, the
Yalcinkayas immediatedly purchased it.
The disused glass décor factory was then
transformed over the three years that
followed into the incredible multi-workshop
campus it is today.
Programs
The impressive list of facilities include
workshops for glassblowing, sandcasting,
kilnforming, flameworking, mixed media,
mosaic, metalworking and enameling as
well a big swimming pool! The summer
workshops draw between 100 and 150
every year, with 60% of the students being
international. Yalcinkaya’s most essential
mission is to spread his love of glass to
children. And indeed, he has had great
success in this venture through the running
of various tours and events geared towards
Sandcasting at The Glass Furnace with Mitchell Gaudet (image courtesy of The Glass Furnace)
Istanbul (image courtesy of The Glass Furnace)
school children. In fact, The Glass Furnace
welcomes around 40,000 little visitors
every year and around 5,000 big ones.
Aspects of The Glass Furnace that set it
apart from other well-known glass schools
include its diversity. The pool of students in
any given class is invariably a smorgasbord
of nationalities which only goes to enrich
the experience even further. Additionally,
the hotshop hosts the school’s production
team on one side of the facility, while
classes run on the far side. As a result,
students can investigate the similarities
and differences of traditional Turkish
glassworking during their stay.
Effect on the Local Community
The school’s effect on the local community
is immeasurable. Several of its graduates
have opened up their own studios in
Turkey, such as Beady Cats in the center
of Istanbul. Furthermore, they run a
superb social program for disadvantaged
women. To date the school has taught
beadmaking to over 150 women, which
in turn helps them to support themselves
and their families. The school currently
employs approximately 29 staff members,
most of whom are from nearby villages.
It is also important to mention that this
is the first and only non-profit glass
organization in Turkey, a fact that lays
bare the hard work and brilliant initiative
behind its success.
22

The Glass Furnace is located in the
green fields of the Black Sea Region, in a
small village outside the city of Istanbul.
The area is synonymous with Beykoz Glass
and the Turkish filigrano technique Cesm-i
Bulbul. Past Glass Furnace instructor
Pamina Traylor made the most of the
natural wonders of the area when she took
her class on a number field trips during the
session, noting how much the long history
and rich culture affected the experience
of students and teachers alike. Another
past instructor, Michael Rogers, recounts
a particularly odd but magical experience
of his time at the school: “I had expressed
an interest in the poetry of Rumi, whose
followers founded the Order of the Whirling
Dervishes, famous for its Sufi dance. I was
engraving Rumi’s text onto my glassworks
one day in the studio and was asked if I’d
like to blow glass while a Dervish danced
in the glass studio. I said of course, then
in a day or two it happened. To blow glass
within that atmosphere was to me an
experience beyond words!”
While writing this article, I noticed that
the experience of those who have been
to The Glass Furnace always seems to
be blessed with the generosity and warm
nature of the staff and locals. Visitors feel
immediately at ease despite the difficulties
Traditional beadmaking
at The Glass Furnace
(image courtesy of
The Glass Furnace)
that the language barrier can and does
present. The experience there cannot help
but be different from other great glass
schools that exist. It is totally unique.
Image Gallery
To see more from
The Glass Furnace,
click here.
Thesis Done!
Justin Ginsberg
Masters of Fine Art - Glass
University of Texas at Arlington
Thesis Completed: May 2011
Justin Ginsberg’s artwork dramatically
depicts a highly personal vision of
gesture, balance and the nature of
fragility. His work combines unorthodox
technique with dramatic installations to
pose questions about the nature of body,
time and mortality.
His study of glass as an expressive art
material has always been about exploring
its limits both physically and conceptually.
His initial explorations investigated
sculpting glass into figurative forms
by utilizing non-traditional techniques of
literally pushing the hot glass from the
inside of hollow glass shapes.
A subsequent variety of diverse
experiments expressing Ginsberg’s sense
of figure, movement and communication
led to his unique approach to manipulating
hot glass. By stretching thousands of
molten glass threads and bundling them
into either fused calligraphic movements
or delicate large-scale glass-thread
installations, these performative sculptures
enact the danger of glass and its potential
disintegration – its tenacious delicacy and
futile impermanence.
David Keens
Professor & Area Coordinator – Glass
University of Texas at Arlington
Please click here to access Justin
Ginsberg’s thesis, located on GAS’s
new Thesis Shelf.
Justin Ginsberg’s 810 South Davis, 2010 (16’ x 2’ x 2’; glass)
Do You Know a Glass Student?
Imagine how much he or she would
enjoy all the GAS benefits — including
GASnews, the Weekly Digest, the
chance to apply for GAS scholarships
and the opportunity to submit works
for the annual International Student
Exhibition & Sales. GAS student
memberships are only $40. Contact
the GAS office at info@glassart.org to
give the gift of GAS.
23

A detail of Jessie Blackmer’s Pinkies, 2011
(4.5” x 4.5” x 4.5”; OSB, dryer lint, flameworked glass)
Student Profile
Jessie Blackmer
Showing the Space We Share
By Jessi Moore
Home is where the heart is. Jessie
Blackmer would also remind us that home
is a breeding ground for insects, bacteria
and other creatures. Even in our most
personal, private moments, we share our
space with thousands of other organisms.
In her artist statement, she addresses
this interest. “We live with small nibbling
animals and sucking and biting insects,”
she writes. “They live in the folds of our
couches, beds, and clothes, run over us
in our sleep and nest in the walls of our
homes. They eat the crumbs we carelessly
drop, and the skin we slough off; they
drink our blood, leaving welts and take tiny
bites of our flesh.”
Our cohabitation with small crawling
things is a fact that many would choose
to forget. Blackmer’s work brings the
uncomfortable truth about the domestic
relationship between humans and other
creatures to the forefront. She does this
in a way that is both attractive and slightly
nauseating. Visually referencing bacteria,
pests, strange growths and illness, she
beautifies and draws attention to the
smaller things in life. Blackmer wants her
viewer to consider the “complexity of the
mundane,” asking them to think twice
about the surrounding world.
A prime example of this is her work
Pinkies. Several small, pink, flameworked
mice are housed in a diminutive chipboard
box, cradled by dryer lint. They rest as
if sleeping. There is something delicate
about the small appendages and closed
eyes. The work has an air of innocence
yet at the same time is a bit off-putting.
Pinkies, like much of Blackmer's art, both
compels and repulses.
As an artist, Blackmer utilizes glass for
the inherent luminosity of the material.
In the work Pinkies, this quality plays well
into the believability of the piece. Blackmer
does not just work in glass; she uses
many other materials as well. Glass only
makes an appearance when the material
enhances her idea. In another series of
work, Excision, Blackmer uses plaster
to build sections of wall with strange
cancerous growths. Playing off a similar
theme as Pinkies, Blackmer explores
the visual language of mutations and
skin diseases in the context of domestic
building materials.
Much of Blackmer’s aesthetic draws
from her childhood. Raised in rural Maine
Jessie Blackmer’s Preserved Wart, 2010
(6” x 6.5” diameter; ceramic, glass, mineral oil)
and home-schooled, she spent many hours
of her formative years living in an unfinished
house. Insulation, exposed plywood and
other industrial building materials are
utilized and highlighted. Blackmer’s work
references the skeletal structures that
house our everyday experience.
Blackmer received her BFA with honors
from Massachusetts College of Art and
Design in 2004. After receiving her undergraduate
degree, Blackmer moved to Seattle,
where she worked for several prominent
artists as well as at Pratt Fine Arts Center.
At Pratt, she worked both as an instructor
and as the Glass Fusing Studio Coordinator.
Blackmer has been a scholarship
student as well as a teaching assistant and
staff member at Pilchuck Glass School.
She has also has served as technical
assistant at both Penland School of Crafts
and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
Having received her MFA this previous
spring, Blackmer is spending the next five
months hiking the Appalachian Trail, starting
in Vermont and continuing on through to
finish in Georgia. It’s a trip that could be
rife with inspiration for future works.
Image Gallery
For more images
from Jessie Blackmer,
click here.
24

GAS Toledo 2012: Key Dates & Information
Pre-Conference Reception –
A Fundraiser
TMA Glass Pavilion
Wednesday, June 13, 6:30 pm - 9 pm
Closing Night Party & Fashion Show
Huntington Center
Saturday, June 16, 8 pm - midnight
Live and Silent Auctions
Previews: Friday & Saturday, June 15 & 16
Live Auction: Sat, June 16, 6 pm - 7 pm
Free & open to the public
Gallery Hop
Friday, June 15, 6:30 pm - 10:30 pm
Free & open to the public
18th Annual Goblet Grab
Friday, June 15, noon - 1:30 pm
Free & open to the public
Old Timers Blow
Friday, June 15, 5 pm - 9 pm
The Glass Art Society Collectors Tour
Tuesday - Saturday, June 12 - 16
Days of Glass
Toledo: Wednesday, June 13
Motor City: Sunday, June 17
Open to the public; many events are free
Tom McGlauchlin Memorial
Golf Outing Fundraiser
Wednesday, June 13 (Register by April 12)
Wednesday, June 13, Tours
• Libbey Glass Factory Tour
• Tour of Pilkington Float Glass Operation
• Mark Matthews Studio, Sauder Village
Tour & Luncheon
• Tour of Johns Manville in Waterville
• Architectural Tour
• Public Art Tour
Tech Display
Browse the newest and best equipment,
supplies, services, and publications in
the glass industry. Vendors can sign up
for booth space between Dec. 1, 2011,
and Feb. 15, 2012. Free and open to the
public on Friday and Saturday afternoons.
Register Early to Save
The onsite registration fee is $340
($200 for full-time student members).
But take advantage of our early-bird rate,
which saves you $65 ($55). Early-bird
registration runs December 1, 2011, to
March 1, 2012. Register online or by using
the form in the conference brochure.
Look for the GAS 2012 Toledo brochure
in your mailbox in November!
GAS
Resource Links
To access the Glass Art Society’s
up-to-date resources, just click
on the links below.
Exhibitions
Classes & Workshops
Job Opportunities
For Sale
GAS 2012 Sponsors
The Glass Art Society salutes the following, who have already pledged their support.
Block Communications, Inc.
Calls to Artists
Ohio Arts Council
Toledo Museum of Art
Libbey, Inc. Owens Corning O-I Pilkington NA
Health Care REIT Kingston Healthcare Company Lucas County
Margy and Scott Trumbull
Mary Wolfe
Other Opportunities
Mansour Wealth Management
ProMedica
Entelco Foundation HCR ManorCare Brooks Insurance KeyBank
Arts Commission of Greater Toledo, Inc.
Bowling Green State University
Hanson, Inc. Johns Manville Madhouse Design Owens Community College
25