Kathleen Morris, curator of “Ephemeral Beauty,” describes the transformation of glass in the jade-inspired “Grand Slam Fishbowl.” The exhibit at the Corning Museum of Glass runs through October 27. The “Grand Slam Fishbowl” was made with opaque green lead glass and the lost-wax casting technique. Louis Comfort Tiffany and other glass scientists developed iridescent glass. “Proof of Consciousness” by Loretta Huixiang Yang.
These pieces reflect a wide range of artistic, practical and decorative glass art across cultures and time periods, including Josh Simpson’s “Megaworld.”
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — One of the Clark Art Institute’s newest exhibits makes use of light filtering through the tall glass windows of the Michael Pavilion.
The light-filled pavilion overlooks the museum’s three-tiered reflecting pool and the surrounding mountains.
The exhibit, titled “Fragile Beauty,” will feature glasswork from the Corning Museum of Glass filling the pavilion and representing a range of cultures, eras and technologies, and will run through Oct. 27.
There will also be a number of activities marking the occasion, including talks, glassblowing demonstrations and weekly art-making drop-in events.
The Corning Museum of Glass will bring its mobile Hot Shop to Clark for a week in early August, allowing visitors to watch live glassblowing demonstrations by the Corning Museum of Glass’s team of skilled glass blowers.
Local contemporary artist Josh Simpson, from Shelburne Falls, will also be taking part in the demonstration. Simpson’s 1991 work, “Megaworld,”
The Glass Planet is just one of many fantasy worlds he has created over the years, and his creations are uploaded online.
It’s designed to look as if you’re looking down on a planet from afar.
The Corning Museum is a “wonderful place,” said exhibit curator Kathleen Morris.
According to Corning’s Gaffer District website, it is the world’s largest glass museum, housing more than 50,000 exhibits representing 3,500 years of glass-making history.
When searching for exhibits to fill their space, the Clarks want to find things that can not only tolerate direct sunlight but also benefit from it, museum director Olivier Meslay said.
“We were always thinking about a project to bring natural light into the gallery, and we came up with the idea of glass,” Morris said.
For example, the contemporary works in the exhibition “The Proof of Awareness” change their appearance depending on their surroundings.
The colorless glass peony that Clark is illuminating from below was created by Taiwanese artist Loretta Hui-Hsiang Yang in 2006.
“It certainly captures the different colors of the surrounding area, and if you come back to Clark when we’re open late every Wednesday night, you’ll see the building without the sunlight and it’ll look totally different,” Morris said.
While the themes of the exhibition are quite broad, Morris said all of the pieces on display are inspired by nature in some way and fit into the museum’s landscape, which can be seen inside the pavilion.
The exhibits vary in shape, size and colour and display a wide range of cultural diversity, with pieces from Europe, North America, Asia, India, China and Japan.
They also range in time, with some ancient pieces whose creators and dates have been lost to time, and others modern works created only a few years ago.
The fragmented fish-shaped wall decoration is just one example: the piece is made by fusing and assembling glass games embedded in plaster.
The exhibition showcases a variety of glass techniques, some of which, like 1999’s “Grand Slam Fish Bowl,” transform glass so much that it no longer resembles glass at all.
Charles Miner created this fishbowl using opaque green lead glass and the lost-wax casting technique.
“This was actually in the Corning Museum of Glass’s warehouse, and when I saw it, I thought, ‘That doesn’t look like glass,’ and that’s one of the things I love about it. It looks like it’s made of jade or ceramic or stone, but it’s actually glass,” Morris said.
Morris said glass manufacturers have produced glass in a variety of ways over the years.
Exhibits include works by Louis Comfort Tiffany and the glass scientists and manufacturers who developed the techniques and methods of producing Favrile glass.
Tiffany loved Art Nouveau and wanted to produce glass with the iridescent surfaces found in ancient buried glass, so he worked with scientists to recreate this effect in his own factory, without the need for centuries of burial.
These pieces have a shimmering, iridescent effect and were popular in 19th century Europe and America, Morris said.
In addition to offering a glimpse into the trend, the exhibit also tells the story of a lawsuit over beautiful glass through two pieces by different companies that produced iridescent glass.
One of the pieces is by Kesal Art Glass and Decoration, a company founded by two scientists who left the Tiffany & Co. company.
The other is by Frederick Carder, one of the co-founders of Steuben Glass Works.
“He was a glassblower, a scientist, a designer and an incredibly creative person who was determined to find a way to create unique, iridescent glass,” Morris said.
Tiffany sued Carder but lost the case because the courts found that the glass-making process was something anyone could figure out by trial and error, she said.
Enamelled beaker from the 16th century.
The exhibition also showcases ways of life from distant times, such as the large hunting beaker on the left, decorated with enamel paint and made in 1585 (see image on the left).
The design depicts a hunter and his dog chasing a variety of animals, including a fox, bear, deer, and wild boar. At the top is an inscription that translates to “When the hunter drinks and is full, the hound runs well.”
This design closely resembles a hunting ritual that was performed using beakers.
“These drink containers were made in great numbers and I think it’s amazing that any of them have survived given how they were used,” Morris said with a laugh.
Especially considering that there were other beakers available that were much larger in size.
The beakers were not for decoration, but in fact had a very active use: large beakers were filled with beer and passed around before the hunt.
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