Happy Australia Day!

Glass Kangaroos; blown glass figurines created by Kevin Prochaska, a Disneyland glass blower for 10 of his 35 years experience.

Wishing all me mates in Oz a Happy 'Stralia Day! Looking for appropriate imagery caused me to reflect. For 10 years, essentially, the 1990's, my wife and I lived in Australia. Working in design in Brisbane, Queensland is where I first was introduced to cast glass. Love the place and the people.

I've become nostalgic for the carefree time I was in Australia, happily riding me favourite 'Roo - "Bazza" - around the Sydney Opera House.

All was fun and games until some unspoken line is crossed and it got ugly.

In Oz, McDonald's are called Macca's... and they serve hamburgers with slices of violently purple beetroot.

And that is normal.

And these friendly critters are considered "little".

Hallo! Glass is More!

The new international glass news website "Glass is more!" posts about the Washington Glass School.

A new e-magazine all about glass is online - "Glass is more!" Based in Holland, Glass is more! promises to bring a new worldwide review of the glass scene with info on conferences, symposiums, exhibits, new techniques, opinions and essays and the latest in awards, competitions and entries. 
Editor Angela van der Burght worked as the general editor of Glasbulletin, Glashelder and This Side Up! and leads an international team of authors including Erica Adams in the US.
Their new website Glass is more! will cover art, craft, design, history, science and architecture for the collector, layman and the professional.

Click here to jump to Glass is more! home page.

Opening of Audrey Wilson Solo Exhibit

Audrey Wilson exhibit in the WGS Gallery.

Audrey Wilson’s solo show “The Aberrant Collection of the Spurious Calamus” opened this week to great success!

The glass/mixed media sculptures presented are a collection of ingenuity, with a focus on the delicacy of the calamus - the hollow shaft of a feather; the quill. The feather often symbolizes bravery and wisdom. The motif of the feather is used by the artist in this show as a symbol of ingenuity and invention, and she combines the motif with technological components as a way to capture our complicated relationship with technology and mirror it back with poetic glances.

Audrey Wilson "Wan Hu's Chair" pâte de verre glass, mixed media; photo by Pete Duvall. This work shows Ms. Wilson's wit, as it references 16th-Century official who attempted to become the first "astronaut" by being lifted by rockets into outer space. Wan supposedly had a chair built with 47 rockets attached. He climbed into his rocket chair and had servants light the fuses. There was a huge explosion. When the smoke cleared Wan and the chair were gone - never to be seen again.

Collectors Maggie and Syl Mathis with the artist Audrey Wilson on opening night.

It was also the inaugural opening of the Washington Glass School Gallery, and the opening night crowd gives the promise of more successful shows!

Audrey Wilson's solo show opens the WGS Gallery.

Part of the entertainment was Tim Tate trying to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew - using a shoe. Erwin Timmers - anticipating a wine fountain helps out - ready to capture the wine.

"Primary Colors" Opens @ Alexandria's Del Ray Artisans

Betsy Mead's "roll-up" vase

Opening with an artist reception on Friday, January 3, 2014 from 7-10pm is Primary Colors at Del Ray Artisans' gallery in Alexandria, VA. This all area artist show kicks off the New Year with an artistic challenge to create artwork using only the three primary colors.
Curator and glass artist  Betsy Mead challenged Del Ray Artisans and all local-area artists to think outside the box in using basic red, yellow, and blue to create their compositions. The only restrictions were that artists must not tint or mix primary colors; they could use white and black to highlight, outline or lowlight objects in their compositions.

In conjunction with the Primary Colors exhibit, the non-profit artist group will feature the movie Primary Colors, a 1998 drama based on the novel Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics.
Opening Reception on Friday, January 3 from 7-10pm: Chat with the artists in the show and other art appreciators during the reception!
View the Show: January 3 - February 2, 2014 during gallery hours at Del Ray Artisans gallery at the Nicholas A. Colasanto Center, 2704 Mount Vernon Avenue, Alexandria, Virginia 22301. 

Betsy Mead's glass in a flat state.

As a side note - read about how artist Betsy Mead created the work featured as the show's image in an earlier WGS post about what happens when fused glass is introduced to a hot shop! Click HERE to jump to "Roll-up your glass!"

Audrey Wilson SOLO Opens at WGS Gallery Jan 11

 “The Aberrant Collection of the Spurious Calamus”, by glass artist Audrey Wilson opens at the Washington Glass School on January 11th thru 31st, 2014 with a reception on January 11th from 6-8pm.

"Generator" by Audrey Wilson, 2014, 16" x 10" x 9" mixed media, blown and pate de verre glass. photo: Pete Duvall

Audrey Wilson

AudreyWilson's sculptures are a blend of created and altered elements that reflect evolving science and machinery and explore the relationship between man and technology. Technology is merely an extension and reflection of mankind. In fact, no objects contain more human essence than do tools. 

Audrey’s sculptural projects and multi-media works are metaphors evoking our endless manipulation of environment, our need for control, and our longing for a meaningful union with nature and the other, in a supreme balance of power and delicacy. People are becoming increasingly alienated from the objects which surround and sustain them, as they have lost the emotional link to technology. 

"Ibn Firnas' First Glider", Audrey Wilson, 2013, 26"x 9" x 6",
mixed media, pate de verre glass. photo: Pete Duvall

“The Aberrant Collection of the Spurious Calamus” captures our complicated relationship with technology, mirroring it back with poetic glances.

“The Aberrant Collection of the Spurious Calamus” by Audrey Wilson 

Washington Glass School Gallery

3700 Otis Street, Mount Rainier, MD 20712

Opening Reception – Saturday, January 11, 6-8 pm

On View January 11 - 31, 2014 and is free and open to the public.

Glass Sheds Light On the New Year!

In honor of the regulations that phase out incandescent light bulbs starting in 2014, photographer Pete & Alison Duvall had a cast glass light fixture for their home in Silver Spring, MD. 
In 2007, President George W. Bush signed into law an energy bill that placed stringent efficiency requirements on ordinary incandescent bulbs in an attempt to have them completely eliminated by 2014. The law phased out 100-watt and 75-watt incandescent bulbs in 2013.

As artists that depend on light and its transmission, the photographers worked with artist Erwin Timmers to get every kind of light bulb they could referenced in their ceiling mounted glass artwork. 

Cast glass lightbulbs

 

Inspired by a commissioned ceiling mounted artwork that Michael Janis did in 2007 for a Washington, DC collector. The couple that commissioned the work had limited space in their apartment, and felt that the creating an artwork piece mounted on the that diffused light would be a crossover of art and function. In the earlier suspended artwork panel, faces look down from a textured surface. 
Pete Duvall noted that the light source for the new artwork piece is from energy efficient LED bulbs.

Original cast glass panel by Michael Janis - Photo by Pete Duvall.