CONVERSATION: Catching up with artist and former Pilchuck artistic director Ben Wright

The Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet recently checked in with artist Benjamin Wright, who served as the Pilchuck Glass School's artistic director from 2019 through 2022, to check in about his tenure at the Northwest Coast outpost of glass art, and to find out about his future plans. Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet: It sounds like the Covid-19 pandemic, which hit before the Summer 2020 Pilchuck sessions began, really defined your tenure at Pilchuck in some ways, would you agree? Ben Wright: Well, yes, but not entirely. I came on in the Spring of 2019, arriving right before the Summer program, which was entirely designed and organized by my predecessor as artistic director, Tina Aufiero. In addition to helping to run that session, I was working to put together the program for Summer 2020, which unfortunately ended up pretty much getting canceled entirely due to the lockdowns. At first it looked feasible that there would be a full summer program in 2021, but in the end, we had to pivot to an intensive residency program for that summer. I am very proud of the programs we put together for 2022, which we ran during the summer of the various Omicron variants rising and falling. It was an intense experience in terms of our staff and students all dealing with people in isolation. It was challenging but also hugely rewarding, having worked on three different programs over three years, and finally getting to see all the magic happen for everybody who works there. Having that put off year after year and finally seeing it run, it was phenomenal to see it actually happening at last in the Summer of 2022 and I can’t wait to see my last season of programs unfold this coming summer.

Thursday February 23, 2023 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Spring 2023 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#170)

The Spring 2023 (#170) edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly is on its way to subscriber mailboxes and newsstands. On the cover is a striking portrait of John Littleton and Kate Vogel as photographed by Lucy Plato Clark, who captured them refracted through a piece of optical crystal they are holding up together. It was chosen as it perfectly illustrates the cover article by contributing editor Emma Park on the phenomenon of two artists who have merged their individual approaches into a single shared practice.

Sunday January 1, 2023 | by Andrew Page

The Year in Review, 2022 edition, with a Happy New Year to all our subscribers and supporters!

As 2022 gives way to 2023, we present the Year in Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly.

Friday December 2, 2022 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Winter 2022 edition of Glass (#169)

The Winter 2022 edition (#169) of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly is in subscriber mailboxes and newsstands. On the cover is a striking image of an unusual handle from an attempted replica of an antique glass vessel. The mistakes were the result of the language barrier between British glass artist Erin DIckson and the Italian maestro she was working with in Murano.

Thursday October 6, 2022 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: John Kiley's work adjacent to Dale Chihuly's in Traver Gallery exhibition debuting tonight

For the first time, John Kiley is exhibiting his work adjacent to his former employer Dale Chihuly at side-by-side exhibitions at Traver Gallery. The dual shows, entitled "Perspective" and "Chihuly", are opening this evening, October 6, 2022, in Seattle. This opportunity is a career high-water mark for Kiley, who worked for Chihuly from 1994 to 1998 before going on to work on Lino Tagliapietra's team and on his own projects. In a telephone conversation with the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet, Kiley shared a memory of the time he was tapped to help Chihuly develop some design concepts for the chandelier series that would become the legendary "Chihuly Over Venice" installation in 2016, an unexpected honor for an up-and-coming glassblower. He remembers Chihuly leaving him to his own devices for a few hours in a studio that happened to have no glory hole, then returning to take a look at what he'd come up with on his own. He won't forget the sharp sting of rejection as the annealer was opened. "He basically said it was crap," Kiley recalls frankly, adding that he only had four or five years of glass experience under his belt at that point.

Saturday October 1, 2022 | by Andrew Page

The UrbanGlass Gala celebrates RIchard Yelle, who founded The New York Experimental Glass Workshop 45 years ago, and helped steer the artist collective's maturation into the glass art flagship its become today

Forty-five years after its founding as a scrappy artist collective located in a basement on Great Jones Street in Manhattan, UrbanGlass has steadily evolved, moving three times, renovating its building, and reaching an ever-expanding audience. In 2022, the nonprofit art center occupies a state-of-the-art 17,000-square-foot space in Downtown Brooklyn at the epicenter of New York City's dynamic cultural landscape.

Friday September 2, 2022 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Fall 2022 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#168)

Helen Lee, Like Clockwork, 2015. The Fall 2022 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#168) is arriving in subscriber mailboxes and on newsstands. On the cover is a detail of a work by Helen Lee entitled Like Clockwork (2015), appropriate for the cover article entitled "Multilingualism" because it's language. The work's glass cane patterns signify letters of an alphabet used to spell out a poem about the artist and her parents. The cane also references the chromosomal helices by which DNA passes genetic code through generations. This work, like all of Lee's artwork functions on multiple levels, often wrapping science together with emotional poignancy, and the blending of languages is second nature to this artist, who is also head of the glass program at the University of Washington, Madison. The cover article explores how Lee's art practice intersects with her career as an educator (she's also the founder and driving force behind the GEEX online ed forum), as well as a prominent advocate for economic and social justice causes. As article author Jennifer Hand explains in her article, "Instead of seeing each of these iterations as distinct aspects of Lee's practice, one need only look at the development of her artistic career to see how each facet informs and enriches the others."

Monday August 29, 2022 | by Andrew Page

A tribute to Stephen Rolfe Powell takes shape on the campus where he inspired many glass artists

Brook White, a former student of Stephen Rolfe Powell (1951 - 2019) at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, was looking for some closure after the sudden death of his teacher and mentor in 2019, when the idea hit him one day in the studio. "I wanted to do one last Steve project in true Steve fashion," says White, who is the owner of Flame Run Glass Studio in Louisville, Kentucky. After graduating, White worked for Powell for a decade, and can rattle off a number of "Steve ideas" that might have sounded unattainable or unwise when first proposed, but would turn out to be epic adventures that usually worked out. Take the story of the time Powell bought a 40-acre farm, and decided one day that the pond should have a massive sand beach. The two tractor trailers delivering his sand order weren't able to get close to the muddy pond, so dumped their tonnage 30 yards from the water's edge. The solution? Powell directed White to the shed where there were shovels and wheelbarrows they all used to move the mountain of sand.

Thursday August 11, 2022 | by Andrew Page

Glass a focal point of Washington Post's review of Renwick's "This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World"

From the opening image of a neon work by Alica Eggert to the lead paragraph, glass art dominates the Washington Post's review of "This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World" at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. Art critic Kriston Capps positions the exhibition, organized by the Renwick's Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft Mary Savig, in the context of the current political moment with court rulings restricting the rights to abortion. The review cites Karen Lamonte's 2000 work Vestige (Pleated Dress) as "prophetic" for the absence of the women who inhabited the mold used to cast the glass, a metaphor in the reviewer's mind for the "agency of people who could become pregnant."

John Moran at work at Gent Glas. photo: evert van laere

Thursday July 28, 2022 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: John Moran, Blown Away Season Three finalist, discusses the Netflix reality show and its portrayal of glass art

John Moran, whose no-holds-barred hot-sculpted works have taken on sacred religious icons as well as cultural ones such as Mickey Mouse, McDonald's, and Osama Bin Laden, identifies himself on his Belgium Studio's website as a "politically and socially engaged hot glass sculptor." Writing about his work on his website, Moran states he sees "the barrage of consumerism, religion, and politics colliding with depictions of social injustice, secular beliefs, and popular culture," and he is unafraid of engaging controversial subjects as he works out of Gent (sic) Glas, the nonprofit studio he founded in 2014 in Ghent, Belgium. In her feature article on Moran (Winter 2019, Glass #157) Glass contributing editor Emma Park wrote: "Moran has become known for works that are satirical and shocking, with unflinching portrayals of human suffering." Given his view of the "absurdity and hypocrisy of society," it is somewhat surprising that Moran not only took part as a contestant in the third season of Netflix reality show Blown Away, but deemed it "an incredible experience" in an exclusive interview with the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet. Against arguably the strongest grouping of glass artists in the three seasons, Moran made it to the final rounds of the program (you'll have to watch it to see if he won), and we are pleased to present an in-depth conversation about his experience.