Spring 2013 / Issue 130
On the cover of this issue is new work by Dale Chihuly, a former student of Littleton's at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who would go on to renown for his prodigious creativity matched only by the scale of his output. Though directly connected to Studio Glass, Chihuly would hasten a return to the factory model after his eyesight and mobility were impaired in a car wreck. Much of his new work, a dramatic departure from the exuberance that characterized most of his career, was fabricated by Flora Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick, Studio Glass artists in their own right. His monochromatic baskets recall his early breakthrough series assisted by Kate Elliot and others. Chihuly's best work is done steering teams of people necessary to realize his epic vision, and he is an expert at harnessing an army of highly-trained and talented hands in service of it. Unlike other contemporary artists who hire fabricators, Chihuly is deeply grounded in the material, knows what it can do, and this shows in every piece he produces.
Beverly Fishman, in contrast, is highly trained as a painter. In fact, she heads the painting department at Cranbrook Academy of Art, a top-tier program. Fishman's paintings are highly worked, technical tour de forces, marrying the intricate language of medical imaging with the hand-wrought, breathtaking works of muscular skills with the brush. Fishman's early forays into glass reference the highly worked surfaces of her paintings in color, but have a cool manufactured quality that betrays the novelty of the material to her. While her work was fabricated during a residency at the Toledo Museum of Art, she claims total ownership of the art work.
Andrew Erdos, a recent graduate of Alfred's undergraduate glass program, represents a third type of artist/craftsperson, one that we will likely be seeing much more of. A highly trained glassblower, Erdos is also a budding art strategist with more than a little luck on his side. Only in his mid-twenties, he has already caught the eye of a contemporary art dealer in Manhattan's Chelsea art neighborhood who is grooming him for the wider art world. Erdos knows glass deeply, and can evoke expressive shape and gesture, which he employs as distorting surfaces for his reflected light shows that dazzled crowds at Art Miami last December.
As glass is embraced by a contemporary art world with few preconceptions of what media belongs in a gallery, the artists benefiting from academic training in glass technique at programs that are increasingly blending the practical with the theoretical, look for other emerging artists with equal chops as theoretician and gaffer. They will populate an increasingly complex landscape for glass art with a variety of approaches, all of them employing a material uniquely suited to creative expression for the next half century.
Editor's Letter
The three artists whose work is featured in this issue, and their respective methods of making, offer a perfect opportunity to consider how art from glass is made in 2012. Some fifty years since the Toledo Museum of Art hosted Harvey Littleton's now-famous workshop that marked the dawn of the Studio Glass movement in the United States, the glass art universe is far more intricate and nuanced. For Littleton, it was critical that the artist and the maker were one and the same, and the workshops (in March and June of that year) were the direct result of a dogged pursuit, including trips to Europea and confabs at craft conferences, of a way to free glass from the factory setting, to blow glass independent of industry.
On the cover of this issue is new work by Dale Chihuly, a former student of Littleton's at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who would go on to renown for his prodigious creativity matched only by the scale of his output. Though directly connected to Studio Glass, Chihuly would hasten a return to the factory model after his eyesight and mobility were impaired in a car wreck. Much of his new work, a dramatic departure from the exuberance that characterized most of his career, was fabricated by Flora Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick, Studio Glass artists in their own right. His monochromatic baskets recall his early breakthrough series assisted by Kate Elliot and others. Chihuly's best work is done steering teams of people necessary to realize his epic vision, and he is an expert at harnessing an army of highly-trained and talented hands in service of it. Unlike other contemporary artists who hire fabricators, Chihuly is deeply grounded in the material, knows what it can do, and this shows in every piece he produces.
Beverly Fishman, in contrast, is highly trained as a painter. In fact, she heads the painting department at Cranbrook Academy of Art, a top-tier program. Fishman's paintings are highly worked, technical tour de forces, marrying the intricate language of medical imaging with the hand-wrought, breathtaking works of muscular skills with the brush. Fishman's early forays into glass reference the highly worked surfaces of her paintings in color, but have a cool manufactured quality that betrays the novelty of the material to her. While her work was fabricated during a residency at the Toledo Museum of Art, she claims total ownership of the art work.
Andrew Erdos, a recent graduate of Alfred's undergraduate glass program, represents a third type of artist/craftsperson, one that we will likely be seeing much more of. A highly trained glassblower, Erdos is also a budding art strategist with more than a little luck on his side. Only in his mid-twenties, he has already caught the eye of a contemporary art dealer in Manhattan's Chelsea art neighborhood who is grooming him for the wider art world. Erdos knows glass deeply, and can evoke expressive shape and gesture, which he employs as distorting surfaces for his reflected light shows that dazzled crowds at Art Miami last December.
As glass is embraced by a contemporary art world with few preconceptions of what media belongs in a gallery, the artists benefiting from academic training in glass technique at programs that are increasingly blending the practical with the theoretical, look for other emerging artists with equal chops as theoretician and gaffer. They will populate an increasingly complex landscape for glass art with a variety of approaches, all of them employing a material uniquely suited to creative expression for the next half century.