Daily Art Muse's Susan Lomuto Is Here to Work!

Susan Lomuto, a Connecticut based artist / writer, established a blog called "The Daily Art Muse" (DAM), showcasing contemporary fine craft.

DAM covers the global landscape of handcrafted artwork with thousands of readers of her weekday posts and content in over 3,000 archived posts. Susan created the site to inspire "artists, designers and collectors worldwide" and the website is frequently used as an educational resource in traditional classroom settings (high school and college) as well as online learning environments.
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As part of exploring what it takes to be dedicated to art and fine craft, Susan has set out to work as an apprentice for a number of artists across the country. She wants to learn – about art and about the life of an artist; ultimately writing in-depth about the working artist’s life. Many of her experiences will be featured in the Daily Art Muse blog. Susan is working at creating a multimedia experience complete with pictures, video and text.

The apprenticeship project continues this coming week, as she begins a 6-week internship with several DC area artists - including the Washington Glass School.

Said Susan of the process: "I suppose I could have just planned a road trip to visit artists around the country, asking questions, taking lots of pictures, shooting video – but that felt incomplete. Instead, I wanted to develop a solid understanding of the how/why/when/what that makes this a well-lived life, so I am getting my hands dirty as an intern – in many cases jumping out of my comfort zone and into their studios, working in mediums unknown to these hands (like glass), sweeping floors, conditioning clay, gathering supplies – and whatever else they need me to do."

How Washington Glass School welcomes Susan Lomuto.

"My first internship, with jewelry artist Dina Varano in Connecticut, was a quiet one, working in a studio nestled in the woods, away from the distractions of the outside world.
The DC internship promises to be a lively experience in an arts complex that is home to several busy studios and more than two dozen artists. I will make sure I’m ready for the “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” moment once I get there!"

Read more of Susan's travels and internship - click HERE.

For an update on Susan's kick-off mtg with the studios - Click HERE

To help fund the arts endeavor, Susan has created a great fundraising project, complete with perks for donations. Click HERE to learn more about perks.

Matt Duffy joins WGS

Please join us in welcoming our newest member of the Washington Glass Studio staff - Matthew Duffy. Matt will be coordinating the Safeway supermarket public art project for the studio.

Matt looks for the tin side of float glass.

The production of the wall of cast glass panels and installation into the steel framework will take place thru the spring. Next time you are at the studio, be sure to say hey!

"Color and Shape" at City Gallery DC

"Color and Shape" showcases Nancy Donnelly’s glass art and Jill Finsen’s oil paintings.

Fascination with texture as a component of color and shape is apparent in the work of both these artists. Surface abstraction contributes to the success of these art pieces—the texture of the glass plays off the layered textures within the paintings. These works truly complement each other.

Both artists find negative space crucial to this effect, moments of rest that energize each work and in this sense make each stronger. Donnelly and Finsen’s artwork provides an elegant balance between familiarity and abstraction.

Color & Shape

February 5-26, 2011

City Gallery

804 H Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002

202.744.6439

Opening Reception Saturday: February 5, 2011 from 6-9pm

"Dead or Alive" Exhibition at MAD Update

The Apothecarium Moderne Marc Petrovic/Tim Tate

Readers of the WGS blog might remember earlier postings about Tim Tate & Marc Petrovic's collaborative work " The Apothecarium Moderne" that was part of the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) exhibition "Dead or Alive: Nature Becomes Art".

The museum's curators just received notice that the International Art Critics Association (AICA) will be giving the exhibition an award. These awards are given in recognition of the exceptional and important work in the visual arts contributed that year by artists, curators, gallerists, writers, scholars, and cultural institutions. Past winners include the nation's most important and innovative art institutions. Last year they included the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Los Angeles County Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art among others. The award ceremony will take place on March 14, 2011 at Cooper Union’s Rose Auditorium in New York City.

Category: Architecture or Design Show
Title: Dead or Alive: Nature Becomes Art
Institution: The Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY
Dates: April 27 – October 24, 2010
Curators: Chief Curator David Revere McFadden and Senior Curator Lowery Stokes Sims

Congrats to all the artists and the museum!

Glass Sparks: Jeff Zimmer

Washington Glass School alumn Jeff Zimmer had returned to the school for a visit in January. Now a resident of the UK, Jeff lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he received a MDES in Glass & Architectural Glass, at the Edinburgh College of Art, (ECA), where he is now an instructor.

In the UK, Jeff has been making quite a name for his artwork - recently featured in the British Glass Biennale and shown in a collaboration between Contemporary Applied Arts & Contemporary Glass Society This year he will be exhibitng at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery, in the UK .

Jeff’s work was selected to be part of the Corning Museum of Glass’ New Glass Review 31. Tina Oldknow, Curator of Modern Glass, The Corning Museum of Glass said of his work:

“… glass is not immediately apparent in Jeff Zimmer’s '1/1000th the Distance between Me and You (in a Deadrise)', but it is an essential part of the work. A dark and dramatic object, it is constructed of 22 layers of enameled and sandblasted glass in a light box. In the obscured photograph, an object in the distance that emerges from black clouds under a clearing sky can be faintly discerned: is it a ship or something else? Using a box of cut glass sheets, Zimmer creates the depth and luminosity of a painting, but it is an image that undoubtedly changes every time it is viewed, depending on the angle and the ambient light.”

While at the Glass School, Jeff worked on a piece that will be shown at the WGS 10th Anniversary Exhibition to be held this May at Washington, DC’s Longview Gallery.

A strong narrative is created by meticulously layering imagery made from enameled and sandblasted glass.

The layered composition works in a tremendously subtle way; the depth of field changes as the viewer moves around the work, allowing one's perception to shift and migrate.

Jeff evaluates and modifies each individual layer of glass as he fires the enamel onto the glass sheets.

Jeff constructs a box of glass for presentation, and installs LED lighting to illuminate the panels.
The box-like construction of each work creates an almost cinematic experience of space, volume and depth. One is drawn in by the emergent light from beneath the horizon or trailing into the distance like a wake.
Check out the final piece - titled "Fog Of Communication" at the 10th Anniversary Show!
Click HERE to jump to Jeff's website.

For other glass artist profiles:

Diane Cabe

Sean Hennessey

Teddie Hathaway

Elizabeth Mears

Allegra Marquart

Jackie Greeves

Call for International Artist-In-Residency: Finland

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Glass Secessionism

Tony Oursler

The Internet and social network groups continue to create changes and offer options in art criticism and discussions. A new Facebook group "Glass Secessionism" has sprung up, creating a venue for artwork with a narrative or content-driven aesthetic.

According to the group description:

The intent of this group is to underscore and define the 21st Century Sculptural Glass Movement and to illustrate the differences and strengths compared to late 20th century technique-driven glass. While the 20th century glass artists contributions have been spectacular and ground breaking, this group focuses on the aesthetic of the 21st century.

Kiki Smith

The object of the Glass-Secession is to advance glass as applied to sculptural expression; to draw together those glass artists practicing or otherwise interested in the arts, and to discuss from time to time examples of the Glass-Secession or other narrative work. This movement is modeled after Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secessionists and how they redefined photography.

It was said of Stieglitz" What, then, was this secession from? It was not only from artwork that had gone stale through the copying of Victorian, conventional styles, but more importantly from the dictatorship of the entrenched institutions, galleries, art schools and professional art organizations that enforced or at very least sanctioned copying or imitation."

Stephen Paul Day & Sibelle Peretti

Keep in mind, by Glass Secessionism it is not to say that we as artists are seceding from glass, just from the aesthetic of purely technique, material and process driven sculpture. There is no disrespect meant towards technique driven work. Glass Secessionism is a different branch of the glass tree. Think of them as separate but equal.
Glass Secessionism, with notable exceptions, is focused on 21st century sculptors in glass - and can include mixed and new media. There is a strong movement which begins at the graduate school level, to focus more on the narrative content and less on materiality. The newest emerging artists in glass tend to be much more focused on this direction.

Christina Bothwell

Glass is finally being allowed to be just another sculptural medium. The fine art world is certainly beginning to take notice, as so many notable fine art galleries and museums (not focused on glass in the past) are allowing and, in fact, promoting work and artists that are glass based.

Members are encouraged to post and share their own or others examples of 21st century glass sculpture and open discussion topics regarding this issue. Click HERE to jump to the Facebook group.

Kiln Tips From Paragon Kilns

From Paragon Kiln's Arnold Howard-

Repair bulging elements. Please see Paragon’s video before attempting the repair.

HOW TO GET THE LONGEST LIFE OUT OF YOUR ELEMENTS

The lower the kiln temperature, the longer the heating elements will last.

Long holds at high temperatures add wear to the elements. Use only as much hold time as you actually need.

Contact with foreign materials such as ceramic glaze, glass, kiln wash, and glass separator can ruin an element. Do not coat the kiln walls, lid, or roof with kiln wash; it can flake off into an element groove and burn out an element.

Occasionally vacuum the element grooves. A build-up of dust can overheat an element and reduce its efficiency.

Repair bulging sidewall elements. Elements that bulge out of a sidewall groove are susceptible to breakage since elements are brittle after they have been fired.

Avoid reduction firings (burning carbonaceous materials) in an electric kiln.

When replacing elements, always use new element connectors, and tighten them to your kiln manufacturer’s specifications. Loose element connectors burn out.

Click HERE to jump to Paragon's website.

Support Craft - Win A Class!

The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design (CCCD) is an inter-institutional Center of the University of North Carolina.
The mission of the regional UNC Center is to support and advance craft, creativity and design in education and research, and, through community collaborations, to demonstrate ways that craft and design provide creative solutions to community issues. The mission of the nonprofit CCCD is to support the mission of the UNC center through funding, programs, and outreach to artists, craft organizations, schools in the community, region and nation.
They are having a raffle Jan 21st to win a free one-week class at Penland, Arrowmont or John c. Campbell. Pick the craft school & the class and they pay for it - including board (double room w/ shared bath) & meals.

The tickets are $25 each. Proceeds go to support the programs of the Center for Craft, Creativity & Design non-profit foundation.

Click HERE to jump to the CCCD announcement - and to pay online!

For more info on the CCCD - click here.

Viva Tysons!

Artist/author/coach Brit Hammer-Dijcks writes about artists and overcoming stagnation in an article in this month's Viva Tysons! Magazine. Brit had interviewed and quotes WGS' Robert Kincheloe and Tim Tate.

The article encourages readers to begin creating and is based upon the premise that we are ALL born artists. Picasso said it best: “Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once they grow up."

Click HERE to jump to the full article.

BECon 2011

This coming June, Bullseye Glass hosts their glass arts conference in Portland, OR. The biennial conference is a great way to see the latest BE glass products, tour the factory and network with other glass artists and educators. Scholarships are available – read below:

BECon 2011

CROSSOVER: A Material Exchange
Exploring the interface between kiln-glass and other media

What can the “makers” in the field of kiln-glass learn from artists working in other media? What lies at the interface of kiln-glass and forms of expression like painting, architecture, photography, digital technologies, printmaking and textiles? Exploring such questions is precisely the goal of the Bullseye Conference, 2011.

WHAT IS BECON?
Every two years, aspiring and accomplished kiln-glass professionals from around the globe enjoy the opportunity to gather, network, compare notes and expand their horizons. That opportunity is known as BECon (the Bullseye Conference).

WHEN IT WILL HAPPEN
June 16-18, 2011.

WHERE IT WILL HAPPEN
Portland, Oregon, USA—on the metropolitan campus of Portland State University, which is central to the city's vibrant, arts-rich core.

WHO WILL SPEAK
A partial list of presenters includes:
Elizabeth Aro Invorio, Italy
Steve Brown London, England
Bruce Guenther Portland, Oregon, United States
Alex Hirsch Portland, Oregon, United States
Alex Hoare Winchester, England
Munson Hunt Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States
Tom Jacobs Portland, Oregon, United States
Silvia Levenson Lesa, Italy
Dante Marioni Seattle, Washington, United States
Richard Parrish Bozeman, Montana, United States
Marc Petrovic Essex, Connecticut, United States
Laurel Porcari New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Rick Potestio Portland, Oregon, United States
Judith Schaechter Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Shapeways Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Karlyn Sutherland Lybster, Scotland
Lino Tagliapietra Venice, Italy
Karen Yair Birmingham, England

WHO WILL ATTEND
About 250 artists, designers, fabricators, instructors, and students from around the globe.

PRE- AND POST-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS
Are in the planning stages. Update - click HERE to jump to BE workshops.

STUDENT SCHOLARSHIPS
Bullseye is offering 25 scholarships for students. Recipients can attend the conference for $250, less than half the standard price. To qualify, you must currently be enrolled full time in an accredited university or have graduated from an accredited university no earlier than May 2010.

To apply for a scholarship, please email the following information to marketing@bullseyeglass.com by February 13, 2011:
1) your contact information, including name, website (if applicable), mailing address, and email address
2) your CV or résumé
3) a short paragraph describing how you will use what you learn at BECon 2011
4) four to six .jpg files showing your work (no file larger than 100 kb.)
5) a list identifying each work shown in the .jpg files by title of image, title of work, year, technique/media, dimensions, and photographer.

Scholarship recipients will be notified by email no later than February 27, 2011. Once notified, recipients will be able to register for the conference at the reduced rate of $250.

APPLICATIONS
Will open early in 2011.

CONTACT & INFO
Contact conference@bullseyeglass.com for more information.
Click here and here to learn about Portland, Oregon.

Foundry Gallery Awards

Foundry Gallery opened the Celebrate Gay Marriage show this past weekend - with a packed gallery and serenade of love songs performed by the Gay Men's Chorus 'Potomac Fever' a capella group.
Awards for the artwork were given on Friday with awards to Stephen Honicki, Tom Hill, Susan Singer and first place award to Washington Glass School's Michael Janis - congrats & well done all!

Still to come:
Special Free Event: Saturday, January 15, 2011, 4 pm
Well-known art historian Dr. Jonathan Katz was co-curator of the "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. The lecture is free to the public, but admittance will be on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The Foundry Gallery
1314 18th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Alison Sigethy Solo Show @ The Art League Gallery

Eco-artist Alison Sigethy’s solo artist exhibit Understory, January 6 – February 7, 2011 will be featured in The Art League Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Art Center on Alexandria's Potomac River waterfront.

Alison Sigethy draws inspiration from the natural world surrounding her - from her works made from natural fibers to sculptures made from recycled glass. Her multimedia solo exhibit, Understory, will be featured in The Art League Gallery, January 6 – February 7, 2011.

With this collection of works, Sigethy is creating an installation that invites the viewer to explore the often unnoticed, yet essential parts of the forest. She emphasizes the “quiet beauty” of the unseen through layers of glass fungi, collages that evoke the striations of cliff sides, and delicate snowflakes.

Alison works almost exclusively with recycled materials; the majority of her glass comes from the lenses of solar collectors. Dead tree trunks and driftwood collected on her kayaking sojourns are used as anchors for delicate crystalline elements. The use of these salvaged materials reinforces a pervasive theme in Alison’s work: we, as a culture, generate too much waste. How can we reuse “trash” to create something beautiful? After leaving the world of marketing and print production to pursue both art and kayaking, Sigethy was drawn to glass for its various hues and effect on light.

A trip to Greenland in 2006 inspired her to work with recycled materials to create her environmentally conscious work.

One of the Washington Glass School's instructors, Alison was named Torpedo Factory “Artist of the Year” in 2010.

Understory

The Art League Gallery , Room 21

The Torpedo Factory Art Center

105 N. Union St.

Alexandria, VA 22314

Exhibit Dates: January 6 - February 7

Opening Reception:Thursday, January 13th (special performance by Karen Reedy Dance) 6:30-8pm

Artist Talk: 7:00 pm on Thursday, January 20th

Afternoon performance by storyteller Laura J. Bobrow at 1:00 on Sunday, January 23rd

Judith Schaechter Creativity Workshop

The Sin Eater Glass 25 x 46 x 6 inches

As part of the James Renwick Alliance Distinguished Artist Series, Judith Schaechter will teach a Creativity Workshop on May 21, 2011. Designed to help artists explore ways to break through “artists block” and expand their creative practice, participants will engage in group discussions as well as individual exercises. On Sunday, May 22, Judith Schaechter will present a lecture on her work in the Grand Salon at the Renwick Gallery. The lecture will be free and open to the public.

Lockdown Glass 21 x 31 x 6 inches

Judith Schaechter, renowned stained glass artist, is the recipient of many grants, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Crafts, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, The Joan Mitchell Award, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a Leeway Foundation grant. Her work is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Corning Museum of Glass, The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick and numerous other collections. Judith's work was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, and she is a 2008 USA Artists Rockefeller Fellow.

The Minotaur (detail) Glass 38 x 25 x 6 inches

Workshop Description:
Creativity is mysterious, miraculous and utterly crucial to an artists’ practice. Because Judith Schaechter herself experienced some difficult bouts of artist’ block, she did a great deal of research into this fascinating and elusive subject. How does one become inspired? How does one choose the one idea to pursue amongst many ideas? Are there techniques to improve oneself creatively?

Ultimately, Judith divided creativity into the following: Inspiration, Perspiration (developing ideas into pieces), Practice (work habits, motivation), Audience and Beliefs.
This workshop will begin with a questionnaire, which should identify areas of interest to the participants. Judith will then share a presentation on what she has discovered. Lively group discussions and individual exercises will follow.

Distinguished Artist Series workshops are $30 for members, $40 for non members. The subscription cost for all four programs is $100 for JRA members and $140 for non-members.
For more information or to register for any of these programs please e-mail: admin@jra.org

Call for Sculptural Glass Entries

HYPEROPIA PROJECTS has sent out a call for entries for a juried show called Superposition that challenges traditional notions of glass artwork.

Made up of a group of practicing artists with backgrounds in glass art (Helen Lee, Alexander Rosenberg and Matthew Szösz ), Hyperopia Projects focuses on artwork that is outside the traditional glass world, drawing simultaneously from the glass, sculpture and/or new media disciplines - hovering in a "state of superposition, between disciplines and media, with infinite possibility and little actual opportunity — i.e., the discomfort of glass" They are seeking "to support a longer view of where glass is headed — where the identity of glass may be intermingled with the larger world of contemporary art."Call For Entries:

{SUPERPOSITION} will be a juried show of sculptural glass and glass related sculpture to be held at the Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle WA in June, 2011 concurrent with the Glass Art Society Conference. They are now accepting submissions.

"We are looking for artists whose works inhabit so many places simultaneously that they might not fit into any of them. We are interested in works that directly address this condition of being in multiple places at once, as well as projects produced by artists who inhabit the fringes of genres.

The conventional work and commerce associated with glass is limited in scope, exhibition space, and growth. There is a general lack of awareness in greater contemporary practice of the fertile growth and development of glass as a sculptural medium in recent years.

Material-based artists offer a bridging ground, coming out of the material and physical understanding of their traditions and exploring the conceptual territory offered by contemporary practice, often creating their own definitions of what they are doing. Likewise, non-glass artists approach material and the issues surrounding glass from fresh and intriguing perspectives, mapping areas outside conventional glass practice, but linked to the whole."

APPLICATION DEADLINE | FEBRUARY 11th
WHEN - June 2011, in conjunction with the Glass Art Society Conference
WHERE - Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle Washington.
JURORS - Jin Hongo, Jocelyne Prince, Michael Scheiner, Jack Wax
APPLICATION DEADLINE - February 11th, 2011
For more information about the exhibition, please visit http://hyperopiaprojects.com/

Glass Fun Facts - Shattered Glass Can Help Predict the Weather

"Tut-tut, it looks like rain."
Yeah, and I'm a little black rain cloud.

Clues to future climate may be found in the way glass shatters.

Results of a study published this past week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences find that microscopic particles of dust can break apart in patterns that are similar to the fragment patterns of broken glass and other brittle objects.

The research, by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Jasper Kok, suggests there are several times more dust particles pumped into the atmosphere than previously believed, since shattered dust appears to produce an unexpectedly high number of large fragments.The finding has implications for understanding future climate change because dust plays a significant role in controlling the amount of solar energy in the atmosphere.

Depending on their size and other characteristics, some dust particles reflect solar energy and cool the planet, while others trap energy as heat. "As small as they are, conglomerates of dust particles in soils behave the same way on impact as a glass dropped on a kitchen floor," Kok says. "Knowing this pattern can help us put together a clearer picture of what our future climate will look like."

The study may also improve the accuracy of weather forecasting, especially in dust-prone regions. Dust particles affect clouds and precipitation, as well as temperature. "This research provides valuable new information on the nature and distribution of dust aerosols in the atmosphere," says Sarah Ruth, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which funds NCAR. "The results may lead to improvements in our ability to model and predict both weather and climate."

Physicists have long known that certain brittle objects, such as glass, rocks, or even atomic nuclei, fracture in predictable patterns. The resulting fragments follow a certain range of sizes, with a predictable distribution of small, medium, and large pieces.

Scientists refer to this type of pattern as scale invariance or self-similarity. Physicists have devised mathematical formulas for the process by which cracks propagate in predictable ways as a brittle object breaks.

Kok theorized that it would be possible to use these formulas to estimate the range of dust particle sizes. By applying the formulas for fracture patterns of brittle objects to soil measurements, Kok determined the size distribution of emitted dust particles.

To his surprise, the formulas described measurements of dust particle sizes almost exactly.

"The idea that all these objects shatter in the same way is a beautiful thing, actually," Kok says. "It's nature's way of creating order in chaos."

Shattered glass = beautiful thing. Glass artists might disagree.

Click HERE to jump to complete article in the National Science Foundation News.

Other WGS : Glass Fun Facts

Glass Fun Facts: Gaffer/Composer

More Glass Fun Facts: Bullseye Glass

Float Glass Fun Facts

Why is Glass Transparent?

Historical Glass Fun Facts - How the Invention of Pyrex and The Studio Glass Movement are Connected.

New Work by Erwin Timmers

Self-Scrutiny by Erwin Timmers
24" x 40" x 8" cast recycled glass, steel

photos by anythingphoto.net

detail showing interconnection of cast glass rods and knots

"Self-Scrutiny" is a new wall-mounted artwork by Erwin Timmers made from cast recycled glass and steel pipe. Erwin casts recycled glass into twisted tube-like shapes that he joins and creates forms with steel connectors. On the wall they form a maze that creates positive and negative spaces while highlighting the complex qualities of recycled glass.

detail showing depth of work

Glass for the piece is recycled - sourced from windows, household vases, and bottles. Unlike the glass made specifically for craft and art use, industrial glass is difficult to re-melt. Erwin has developed new techniques to exploit the characteristics of this material.

Erwin writes of his work: "My work references environmental issues of concern to me - primarily I see my artistic process as being involved with the process of recycling to create art..."

"I choose to recycle or reinterpret not only for reflection on environmental issues, but also for fun, play, and ultimately art. My work showcases the possibility and beauty of recycled material, while encouraging the viewer to consider their environmental impact."

Erwin feels that one of the artist’s most important roles is to reveal the hidden value inherent within a particular object. His work encourages a re-examination of objects around us. By framing the object in a new way, one is challenged to rethink the value of everyday objects and one is encouraged to find aesthetic pleasure from what might seem to be the most mundane and ordinary of things.

In today’s society, the philosophy exists that once something has fulfilled its use, we should throw it away rather than try to find another use for it. Yet, finding new uses for discarded objects is one way to breathe life back into the objects around us. To see art where others see trash is one thing, but to lead others to see that art for themselves is what artists have been engaged in since the turn of the century.

Click HERE to jump to Erwin's website.