Introducing the 2014 Jurors for New Glass Review 36

New Glass Review is an annual survey of glass in contemporary art, craft, and design created in the previous year by emerging and established artists, as well as students. The works are chosen by a changing jury of curators, artists, designers, educators, and critics.

This year’s jurying panel recently braved the snow and convened in Corning, NY to decide which works will be featured in New Glass Review 36. The 2014 panel members included Italian artist and designer Laura de Santillana, American artist Beth Lipman, and American artist and educator Angus Powers, along with the Museum’s senior curator of modern and contemporary glass, Tina Oldknow.

A deep connection to the natural world and the realm of the senses lies at the heart of Laura de Santillana’s art and design. Subtle in color and minimal in form, her modernist objects inhabit a liminal space between painting and sculpture.

A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, de Santillana worked as a graphic designer at the New York design firm of Vignelli Associates (1976). She returned to her hometown of Venice, Italy and began an active collaboration with Vetreria Venini & C. in Murano (1976–1985), founded by her grandfather, Paolo Venini. Her work first appeared in the United States through the traveling exhibition “New Glass: A Worldwide Survey,” organized by The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY (1979). She was the designer and artistic director of Eos in Italy (1985–1993), and later worked as a designer for international clients such as Rosenthal and Ivan Baj.

Beth Lipman is best known for her sculptural works in glass that are inspired by still-life paintings from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Continuing her exploration of material culture as a means to understand desire and consumption, she has more recently investigated Victorian decorative arts, juxtaposing reimagined 19th-century domestic objects with their contemporary counterparts.

Lipman received her B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, in 1994. She has received awards from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts/NEA and the Brooklyn Arts Council/DCA. Her work has been the focus of solo exhibitions at galleries and museums across the United States, and she has participated in group exhibitions worldwide.

Angus M. Powers works with blown and cast glass to create sculpture, installations, and functional wares. His work pushes the viewer to consider multiple interpretations, challenging set notions of logic, scale, and perception.

Powers received his BFA at Alfred University in New York and his MFA at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia.  Powers is currently Sculpture Chair/Associate Professor of Glass in the School of Art and Design, Sculpture/Dimensional Studies at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. He exhibits his art and design at a variety of venues.

Tina Oldknow has been the curator of modern glass at The Corning Museum of Glass since 2000. She is responsible for all curatorial aspects of the glass collections dating from 1900 to the present. During her time at the Museum, she has reinstalled the Modern Glass and Contemporary Glass Galleries, and curated many exhibitions, including Curiosities of Glassmaking (2007), Voices of Contemporary Glass: The Heineman Collection (2009), and Making Ideas: Experiments in Design at GlassLab (2012).

Oldknow is the author of numerous books about contemporary glass and glassmakers. Her forthcoming publication, Collecting Contemporary Glass: Art and Design after 1990 from The Corning Museum of Glass (2014), will be released with the opening of the Museum’s new North Wing in March 2015.

New Glass Review 36 will be published in May 2015. Browse hundreds of previously selected works starting from Volume 2 (1980) at www.cmog.org/NGR.