Detail Amber Cowa’s Rosaline swan triptych
Rene Lalique, Louis Tiffany, Dale Chihuly and the Murano factories of Venice are the big international names of glass art. In Australia, it’s a quintessential part of a Melbourne childhood to lie under Leonard French’s glass ceiling at the National Gallery of Victoria and important to acknowledge the pioneering work of Klaus Moje – both of whom died in the past year.
But glass artists working in a contemporary framework are often unrecognised. In this new series on ArtsHub we shine a spotlight on an often-overlooked material or aspect of artistic practice and ensure readers become familiar with important artists working in your times.
Glass is a hot topic at the moment. While the commercial market has waned for glass vessels, the contemporary art world is increasing turning to the medium as sculpture and in installations, and glass artists continue to reinvent how they make and sustain their practice.
This past week international and Australian glass artists congregated in Canberra for the AusGlass Conference, and exhibitions opened at Drill Hall Gallery, Beaver Galleries, Craft ACT, Belconnen Art Centre, Bilk Gallery, Canberra Glassworks, Sabbia Gallery in Sydney and QUT Art Museum in Brisbane.
Glass has been around as a medium since ancient times – it is said that the invention of glass blowing dates back to the Roman Empire and the 1st century BC. But it was only in the early 1960s that the Studio Glass Movement emerged, changing glass from essential an industrial material to an art medium through the use of the small studio furnace.
Since then, artists have been blowing, slumping, fusing, casting, rolling, lampworking, engraving and painting glass. Dedicated museums and galleries now collect and sell glass art. This is just a taste of the diversity of glass practice today:
Sifting through and stocking up on discarded production glass from the 1940s- 80s, Amber Cowan
1. Amber Cowan (United States)
American glass artist Amber Cowan has makes her sculptures from upcycled factory production glass and ebay finds.
Her work has quickly shot to international attention, becoming a favourite with collectors and curators. Her technical proficiency with the medium is not the only reason; her originality in repurposing a tradition of American pressed glass from the 1940s to 1980s has captured the environmental zeitgeist.
She has made a name for flameworking, blowing and hot sculpting recycled glass from Avon bottles to pre-loved vases and discarded industrially produced glass, which she describes as ‘abandoned to the dust bins of American design’.
She matches and colour codes her found elements, then works for months on elements before assembling her kitschy floral sculptures.
Cowan has been working with glass for 15 years since graduating with an MFA in Glass/Ceramics from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, where she continues to teach today. She was the recipient of the 2014 Rakow Commission from the Corning Museum of Glass and 2012 recipient of the Stephen Procter Fellowship at ANU.
Installation view Tom Moore Specimens from the Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia
2. Tom Moore (Australia)
If there was one word to describe Tom Moore’s glass creations it would be ‘quirky’. Yet his work has been included in mainstream contemporary art conversations at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and in last year’s Adelaide Biennale of Australia Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
In contrast to the minimalism of glass greats such as Stanislav Libenský and Roni Horn – Moore is a maximalist. Through his work he presents a fantastical world inhabited by hybrid creatures, part animal, part plant, part machine. He tends to present his glass hybrids in constructed landscapes or installations, so that the viewer walks into his world.
Tom Moore’s finalist entry in the the Tom Malone Prize, AGWA
Amidst all this fun, Moore has an underlying concern for the physical world and nature. He is an impeccable technician and drawn to the traditional intricacy of Venetian techniques and cane work.He writes: ‘The ancient craft of glass blowing is fundamental to my art practice. This technically rigorous and inventive work requires patience, endurance and daring. It is also fun: I enjoy using and adapting traditional techniques in the pursuit of surprising new visions.’
Moore graduated from the Canberra School of Art ANU in 1994, trained in production techniques at Jam Factory under the mentorship of Nick Mount until 1997, and worked as the production manager at Jam Factory for 15 years. In 2013 he won both the Tom Malone Prize for contemporary glass artists from the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Ranomok Prize. He is now a PhD candidate at the University of South Australia.
Vestment II, 1997 Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtová, cast glass
3. Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtová (Czech Republic)
Stanislav Libenský (1921-2002) and his wife and artistic collaborator, Jaraslava Brychtová (1924-) are known for their simple block shapes infused with subtle colours and nuances.
While Libenský’s is the better known name, their work is intrinsically connected. Since Libensky’s death, Brychtová has continued to produce castings.
This collaboration began in the mid-1950s with a glass and concrete wall for the Brussels EXPO ’58. Based on the cave paintings of animals at Lascaux and Altimira, the installation won a grand prize. Zoomorphic Stones, as the work came to be known, employed internal modeling of shapes cast in glass. The technique became the basis of most of Libenský and Brychtová’s future work, according to the Wexler Gallery, which represents them.
Libensky and Brychtová’s 50-year partnership created some of the defining cast glass sculptures and architectural installations of the 20th century. Their primary interest was exploring the optical and physical aspects of glass, through luminous geometry to spiritual figuration.
Green Eye of the Pyramid, by Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová
In 1963, Libenský’s was appointed a professor in the glass department at the Prague Academy in 1963. Despite the opposition of the Communist government, he was able not only to influence two generations of glass artists through his teaching but also, through international lecturing and exhibition of his and Jaraslava Brychtová’s works, to build world-wide interest in modern Czech glass art.
Their works are included in numerous private and public collections worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH; National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic; Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England.
Jin Hongo’s glass installation piece, The Wall 2014; image
4. Jin Hongo (Japan)
Jin Hongo came to glass from metal casting. It is not surprising then that many of his sculptures and installations combine other materials with glass. One thing that remains consistent, however, is his obsession with light and sight, in particular the way he plays with the phenomenology of sight to disorientate the viewer.
Jin extends and plays with the qualities of glass on a grand scale. He sees it as a binary – the light and the shadow of the high-tech world. To him, glass offers the complexity to explore philosophical ideas.
Following a degree in science and technology, Jin Hongo graduated from Tokyo Glass Art Institute. Today, he is Head Professor at Toyama City Institute of Glass Art (TIGA), which is the first public art school in Japan to specialise in glass.
Large Sragasso eel trap by Jenni Kemarre Martiniello, blown glass canes
5. Jenni Kemarre Martiniello (Australia)
Jenni Kemarre Martiniello is of Indigenous Arrernte, Chinese and Anglo-Celtic descent, and her work identifies strongly with her Indigenous heritage. She has reinvented utilitarian objects such as fish traps and dillibags as sculptural forms of inherent beauty and elegance.
Traditionally made of pliable fibre or bush string, these forms have been reclaimed by Martiniello in the hard polished form of glass, giving them permanency. Using a technique of drawing and blowing canes, she captures the weave and the play of light through her forms.
She explained: ‘As an Aboriginal (Arrernte) artist I seek to invoke the organic ‘weaves’ and forms of traditional woven objects in my hot blown glass works, and pay tribute to the survival of the oldest living weaving practices in the world. My intention is to appropriate the contemporary medium of glass to become a vehicle for cultural expression.’
Glass captures the light and weave in this fishtrap by Jenni Martiniello
Martiniello was introduced to glass during a group residency at the Canberra Glassworks in 2008, to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Aboriginal Referendum. Since then she has been a finalist in the 2011 Ranamok Glass Prize with her Eel Traps and was awarded the 2013 NATSIAA (Telstra Art Award). She works from a studio at Canberra Glassworks.
Roni Horn’s glass sculptures at Art Basel 2013
6. Roni Horn (United States)
Roni Horn works across materials, but she is best known for her massive glass sculptures, which have brought glass firmly into the contemporary art museum as a medium for sculptural dialogue.
Horn’s sculptures are impressive in scale. At the former Icelandic library, she presented Vatnasafn/Library of Water, replacing the library’s original bookshelves with glass pillars, reaching up to the high ceiling filled with water samples taken from the country’s 24 most important glaciers. They are like giant test tubes that evidence the way climate change is destroying the world.
installation view of Horn’s Vatnasafn/Library of Water.
Horn’s sculptures are characterised by perfection and precision. She combines glass’ inherent properties of transparency and plasticity to form sensitive reflections.
In Nine Liquid Incidents, presented at the 19th Biennale of Sydney, Horn used rough, textured sides that evidence the process of casting contrasted with smooth, fire polished top surfaces that are like bottomless pools, reflective and seemingly infinite.
‘I love the clarity, as well as the fragility of the material,’ she has said.
Roni Horn’s Nine Liquid Incidents (2010–12) as seen at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia for the 19th Biennale of Sydney.
Horn’s glasswork is held in major collections internationally and has be exhibited widely. In 2009 a travelling retrospective Roni Horn aka Roni Horn cemented that fame.
Lino Taglipietra, Samba do Brasil
7. Lino Taglipietra (Italy)
Glass artists today owe a lot to Lino Tagliapietra. Born on Murano, Venice’s glass island in the 1930s, he began a glass apprenticeship at the age of 12 and worked his way to the prestigious title of maestro. He married Lina Ongaro, whose family has been involved in Venetian glass production for centuries, and remained in that lock-hold of Venetian glass until 1990, when he moved to practice independently.
Many of the techniques that are now considered norm came from Taglipietra, and he lead the way in creating his own colours. He works are placed in museums internationally, including the De Young Museum of San Franscisco, the Victoria and Albert Museum of London, the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Among his works is an impressive 35-boat glass armada at the Columbus Art Museum (USA).
In 2009 the Museum of Tacoma curated and toured a major retrospective on his work, and in 2001 the Veneto Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts, dedicated an exhibition to him entitled, Lino Tagliapietra from Murano to Studio Glass. He has been awarded two honorary doctorates for his contribution to glass and many awards.
Installation view of Karen LaMonte’s work at Austin Art Projects; Photo: Spike Mafford
8. Karen LaMonte (United States)
Karen LaMonte creates ‘absent female forms’ through her sculptures of draped glass dresses.
She characterises clothing as a ‘vestmentary envelope’ which renders us as social beings. Her interest is not only in capturing the dress but rather the negative body within as an expression of beauty and metaphor for loss and identity.
Her collections of life-sized sculptures such as Vestige probe ‘the disparity between our natural skin and our social skin, clothing which we use to obscure and conceal, to protect the individual and project a persona’.
Karen LaMonte’s Noctures
Not long after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1990, New Yorker Karen LaMonte was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study large-scale glass casting at studios in Eastern Bohemia – notably associated with the iconic glass team Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova. She subsequently moved permanently to the Czech Republic.
Her exhibition profile includes shows with the Czech Museum of Fine Art in Prague, the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice, and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, and collection representation with The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Renwick Gallery, Washington DC, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, Knoxville Museum of Art, the Oklahoma Museum of Art, the Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, France, and The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Warren Langley’s underpass piece, Aspire 2010 for City of Sydney; photo Paul Patterson
9. Warren Langley (Australia)
Scale is what defines Warren Langley’s work. He has always existed at the intersection between art and architecture , and increasingly brings an engineer’s resolve to his use of glass in the public domain.
Langley is responsible for some of the first fused glass works for architectural settings, through to pioneering kilm-formed glass technologies. He was honoured with the AusGlass Lifetime Achievement Award last week, an organisation that he was co-founder and inaugural president.
Langley website describes that in a career spanning over 35 years, the past 16 years has seen an increasing use of light as a principal design element to create public art interventions which undergo day to night transformations.
Warren Langley ‘s most recent public piece, “Angles of Incidence” for North Sydney Public Art Trail, made from digitally coloured safety glass
Among his portfolio of major projects are diverse commissions by Australian Parliament House; the Maison de la Opera, Amiens, France; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tacoma, USA, the Australian Pavilion at the 2011 Shanghai World Expo and Hong Kong airport
In 1996 he was awarded a Fellowship by the Australia Council for the Arts, in 2010 was a finalist in the Art in the Working Place category at the International Architecture Symposium in Barcelona, and it is fair to say that he has completely transformed the way we perceive and engage with glass in a public realm; and how glass artists and architectures can work together on a sustainable future.
QUT Art Museum is currently presenting the Jam Factory touring exhibition Glass: art design architecture until 5 March.
Kirstie Rea’s “Knowing” (detail); courtesy the artist
10. Kirstie Rea (Australia)
The outdoors and a sense of nostalgia are never far from Kirstie Rea’s work. Characterised by swathes of glass cloth, exquisitely draped or folded and seemingly caught in a gentle breeze.
She has never created vessels. Her kiln-formed panels and sculptures with their cold-worked surfaces are always in pursuit of a simple form – one that connects with her surroundings.
‘I see it really as an ongoing theme that underpins it all. It’s a bit old hat to say, but it is about a sense of place, a sense of belonging, and an investigation into my local, that really knowing and loving the local,’ she said in a recent interview.
Rea work however is far from parochial. She established her studio in 1987 after graduating from Canberra School of Glass and has had solo exhibitions in the USA, New Zealand and Hong Kong and her work is included in international collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung Foundation in Munich Germany.
Rea recalled the words of her ANU (Australian National University) teacher Neil Roberts: ‘Stop looking at it, Kirstie! Chop it up, drop it on the floor! Why do you want to make it?’, noting that the conceptual element is just as critical to the success of a work as the technical.
New work “Life” by Rea’s currently on show at Beaver Gallery, Canberra
She has been an ongoing advocate for the development and success of Australian glass within the international arena, in particular as organiser of the Latitudes workshops and touring exhibition.
She was a staff member of the Glass Workshop ANU until 2003, inaugural Creative Director at the Canberra Glassworks (2006-2008) and in 2009 received the Ausglass Honorary Life Membership Award for her contribution to the education of glass in Australia.
She has also taught at Pilchuck Glass School USA, the Corning Studio, USA, Pittsburgh Glass Centre, USA, North Lands Creative Glass in Scotland and Vetroricerca School in Bolzano Italy, and between 2003–2005 served on the Board of Directors for the Glass Art Society (USA).
