Contemporary Glass Cover Just out this month from UK publisher Black Dog, Contemporary Glass features 60 glass artists, ranging from the obvious choices (Kiki Smith, Dale Chihuly) to a diverse selection of artists, including Mark Zirpel, Olafur Eliasson, Tobias Rehberger and Beth Lipman. I am pleased to be included in the mix, with a smart write-up that makes a connection between my work to Cai Guo Quiang’s gunpowder installations.

The editor, Blanche Craig, writes” “The glass artists featured… continually challenge definitions of the medium and how it can be used. They deploy glass to reassert its position as one of the most exciting mediums today, exploit preconceptions and make works that seemingly defy categorization. As such, they provide not only new parameters within which to consider glass today, but have also set out a framework that future practitioners can engage with.”

To see the full text written about my work, please go to the press section.

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Here is a picture of very big piece I just started on in the last month. It’s the largest I’ve ever made. This is only the first 1/4 of it- 90″ wide by 80″ tall. It will be a large pile of amphoras, with a sort of reflection underneath. I hope to show it in Amsterdam sometime in the Fall after it is completed. For now, the Vrij Glas studio is closed for the summer, and the furnaces are off. This month, I am in New York to see friends and family, and hopefully take a look at museums and galleries too.

 

IMG_0359  This is a little piece I started on before leaving Amsterdam. It’s not quite done in this photo; what are these things that I am drawing? Maybe they are flowers, seaforms like coral, or animals. At any rate, I think they have to “grow” a little bit more to fill out the page.

Birth Flower Birth in Process  Birth Flower Birth

In Process- Growth, Flowering, Decline                   Almost done!

It is Spring at the studio, and these recent pieces are a lot about growing, branching and interconnections- supportive systems. They are floral and botanical, and when I work on them, I like to imagine that they are growing across the paper.

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This smaller piece is about the way that rain looks on a lake.

I am reading and thinking about ruins, as a counterpart to Spring’s cycle.
Here, from Michael Roth “Irresistible Decay: Ruins Reclaimed” 1998, Getty Research Institute:

Ruins here not only signal mortality, they point at a deep belonging to the natural world, a world that is less our inevitable tomb than our eternal home… the poet walking among the ruins does not feel the terror of the sublime but instead is swept along by nature’s capacity to integrate different stages of human development into a balanced whole. Nature is not perceived as devouring the works of men and women so much as welcoming them back.

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I was out at Vrij Glas today working on two new pieces. Here are process shots- they aren’t done yet. The top one is going to be even bigger by at least 30%. We had a great day out there- I had 2 assistants (thanks to Marc Barreda, the resident expert, and Marianne Lammersen, from the Reitveld Academie). Ingunn Jonsdottir, a product designer, also came along to see what we were making. By the end of the day, we got her to try gathering glass out of the furnace for the first time.  Later that night, she sent me this song about the wonders of glass:

Wonders Of Glass song- Ubuweb

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On Friday the Reitveld Academie glass department came to Vrij Glas for a demonstration and lecture. Marc and Josie made some beautiful and delicate goblets based on old Dutch styles and then they helped me start a large paper piece. Photo credit: Marianne Lammersen