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Viewing: Editor's Letter


Friday September 13, 2013 | by Andrew Page

Editor’s Letter

FILED UNDER: Editor's Letter
"The New York Experimental Glass Workshop" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. It's a multisyllabic mouthful that manages to capture in its wordiness a sense of defiant self-importance that, in 1977, possessed Richard Yelle, just out of graduate school, to launch a nonprofit art studio in the center of Manhattan. His hubris was the best thing to happen to glass since Pilchuck. In fact, it was the first year-round open-access facility of its kind in New York City, or any major metropolitan area in the U.S. Against all odds (and the best efforts of the utility company to shut off the gas for unpaid bills), this brazen act of establishing a beachhead for glass art in the cultural capital would take root, nurtured by the collaborative spirit of artists drawn to the material; the astonishing technical skills of people like Joe Upham, Christian Snyder, and the many studio directors; and the endless fascination with the material that drew high-profile contemporary artists and those walking in off the street into a lifelong exploration of this unique material for expression.  In a feature article timed to the reopening of UrbanGlass after a two-year renovation and transformation, we explore the "Experimental" spirit, which has endured over the 36 years since the organization opened in a basement studio at 4 Great Jones Street. Across two addresses in Manhattan, and two in Brooklyn (including the temporary space out of which UrbanGlass has continued to operate visiting artist residencies, classes, and a cold-working facility during construction), the facilities have steadily grown in size and engineering, but the constant has been its role as a venue for new work to be made. In the words of many of the key players in the evolution of this organization, we tell the story of its evolution and rebirth.  A different life cycle is explored in Harold Duckett's investigation of Richard Jolley's permanent installation at the Knoxville Museum of Art, set to open next spring. Possibly the largest work in glass in the world, the glass-and-steel commission will occupy the massive Great Hall of this regional arts museum, and allow Jolley to take his recurring themes into new territory in complexity and scale. The irreverent collaborative project of John Drury and Robbie Miller known as CUD celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and we present a consideration of their calibrated artistic confrontation. Enemies to all that is decorative in glass, the two gently provoke the community of makers they are very much a part of, with art that borrows materials from everyday life to make work that is urgent in its rough-hewn qualities, compendiums of the moment in which we live in all its texture, serendipity, and rawness.  And finally, this issue's cover article examines the work of Dan Clayman, one of the most refined cast glass sculptors working in the material, whose work practically vibrates with stillness as its artist ruminates on memories of place, the qualities of light, and the many levels on which it can operate. Regular contributor Robin Rice traces the arc of Clayman's luminescent quest to solidify light, to make the abstract and poetic qualities of perception into something we cannot avoid, but must engage and be illuminated by in the process.

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Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly, a glossy art magazine published four times a year by UrbanGlass has provided a critical context to the most important artwork being done in the medium of glass for more than 40 years.