Glass blowing at the Atheneum: 'Fired Up' brings new exhibit and live demonstrations to museum

Tim Leininger, Journal Inquirer, Manchester, Conn.
·4 min read

Sep. 29—HARTFORD — The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is celebrating modern glass art with a new temporary gallery "Fired Up: Glass Today," running through Feb. 5.

"FIRED UP: GLASS TODAY"

WHERE: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 600 Main St., Hartford.

LIVE GLASS DEMONSTRATIONS: Temporary glass-working

studio, free with museum admission. Sept. 30-Oct. 2, Oct. 13-Oct. 14; drop-in: noon-4:30 p.m., demonstrations: 1-2:30 p.m.

CONVERSATION WITH AN ARTIST: Amber Cowan, free with required reservation via thewadsworth.org, Friday, Oct. 14, 5 p.m., gallery viewing, 6 p.m. artist talk.

GLASS RODEO: Glass artists come together for a rodeo-style hot shop glass fest, free, outdoor lawn party, Saturday, Oct. 15, noon-4 p.m.

THEME TOURS: Thursdays-Sundays, 3:30 p.m.

MORE INFORMATION: 860-278-2670; thewadsworth.org.

"'Fired Up: Glass Today' represents 57 contemporary artists where their primary material of choice is glass," said Brandy Culp, Richard Koopman curator of American Decorative Arts. "This show encompasses many different techniques that are significant in creating art from glass. The artists represent this very unique moment in time, born out of relatively recent history, the studio glass movement."

Before the 1960s, she said, glass art was predominantly created in factories by hundreds of people.

"The story of American glass is primarily rooted in the factory," she said, and its mass production.

"In the 1960s there's a movement to situate glass artists, take them out of the factory and put them in a studio setting to create momentum and artistic intent," she said.

Jason McDonald, an artist from Philadelphia who is featured on season 2 of the Netflix show "Blown Away," said about factory glass artists, "The talent (was) anonymous. They don't own the capital means of production. They're just laborers."

"What happened in the '60s, a lot of ceramic artists who were working in colleges were wanting to learn glass," said artist Caroline Landau, currently of San Francisco but imminently moving to Japan.

McDonald and Landau both have pieces presented in "Fired Up."

McDonald has two, "Inclusion Number 1" and "Black Figure Number 1."

"Inclusion Number 1" depicts a glass goblet embedded in a solid block of glass with silver and black waving bands running diagonally behind the goblet.

"I take this object that is perceived as utilitarian, but in reality is difficult to produce, too costly to sell for what it takes to make it, and I try to elevate it by giving it a stage by removing it from its function and embedding it in a block of glass by putting a pattern behind it," he said of the piece. "I try to showcase it as what I see it as, a little sculpture."

"Black Figure Number 1" is an orange and black vessel similar to classic Greek black figure pottery. The image depicts a Black man behind bars with marijuana leaves around the neck of the vessel and justice scales around the base.

"This piece talks about the continuation of America's consumption of free labor," McDonald said. "There are statistics that say Black and brown people are disproportionately targeted, and where our cheap labor is coming from. For me it's talking about our justice system and who finds themselves on what side of the bars."

Landau's piece, "Archiving Ice: Newfoundland," is a glass model of a block of ice she took a mold of in Newfoundland and is part of a larger series that she said she has been working on for five years.

"I make molds of different pieces of ice," she said. "I bring back those molds and replicate them in glass. I brought my camping stove on site and paint a mold making wax on site. People would ask if it would melt right away. It freezes up. It's not like candle wax."

Accompanying the exhibit gallery are glass blowing demonstrations in the courtyard in the center of the museum Fridays through Sundays, through Oct. 14.

"These guys have been a part of it since it's conception and also bringing new work to the Wadsworth," Culp said of the artists who have contributed pieces to the exhibit.

"Many people made objects specifically for this exhibition and others are showing their work for the very first time. The support has been tremendous."

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