In three dramatic decades, contemporary artists working in glass have revolutionized a medium with a history of five thousand years. Until 1962, whether glass was plain or fancy, whether it was produced in small shops or huge industrial complexes, it was designed primarily as a functional object for the marketplace. Then, at a now-legendary workshop in a garage behind the Toledo (Ohio) Museum, a small band of pioneers transcended the assumptions that had restricted artists from open-ended experimentation in the medium. The strategy was twofold: first, to design a furnace scaled down to fit an individual artist's studio; second, to develop a formula for glass that would melt at a lower temperature than that used in commercial furnaces. Starting with the first crude bubbles produced in Toledo, the Studio Glass Movement has forged a path of discovery leading to the ambitious and mature works seen around the world today.
The saga of contemporary glass is documented in a current exhibition, Glass: From Ancient Craft to Contemporary Art: 1962-1992 and Beyond. The exhibit is curated by Karen S. Chambers, a writer specializing in glass, and Ferdinand Hampson, founder of the Habatat Galleries in Michigan and Florida, which were among the first galleries to focus on glass. Consisting of 105 works by sixty-six artists, the show illustrates the beginnings of studio glass, surveys current work, and projects directions for the future. Organized by the Morris Museum of Morristown, New Jersey, where it opened last fall, it will travel to five other sites around the United States.
Spiritual Disunion
As the story of glass unfolds in the show, the sweep of ideas grows progressively wider. Early on, pieces by different artists shared a common spirit; now, there is such diversity that each piece seems an isolated climax.
A prelude includes a few items such as a plate by Maurice Heaton formed by slumping (bending flat glass by heat), which underscores the limited potential of a small glass studio prior to Toledo. Looking forward from 1962, the chronological presentation starts with the initial gropings for technical control. This is seen in exploratory works by Harvey Littleton and Dominick Labino, whose seminal investigations precipitated the Toledo workshop.
Some artists from that early period are represented by several pieces, tracing the growth of the movement as well as individual careers. Dale Chihuly, a giant in the field, can be identified as an innovator in a 1968 bottle with an extended neck and his 1992 ACM Floats, whose three-foot diameters place them among the largest forms ever blown. The massive size of the "Floats" (the name refers to glass
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