Search results for ""museum of glass: international center for contemporary art""

Complementary Contrasts: The Glass and Steel Sculptures of Albert Paley highlights the significance of glass in the work of the celebrated sculptor Albert Paley. Though best known for his large-scale metal sculptures, Paley has incorporated glass in many works for over a decade. After beginning his career as a jewelry maker, Paley soon transitioned to furniture and freestanding sculpture. In the 1970s, Paley delved into large, site-specific works that blurred the line between sculpture and architecture. Despite disparity in size, Paley’s collective artworks display a synergy of forms and philosophy, favoring natural curves and lines that defy their rigid materials. In 1999 Paley was invited to Pilchuck Glass School to collaborate with artist Dante Marioni. His experience utilizing fire to manipulate metal translated naturally into his glass design and allowed him to embrace the new material with ease. Since this initial introduction, Paley has collaborated with a number of glass artists and created over a hundred sculptures incorporating glass. The first book to focus on Paley’s glass and steel sculpture, Complementary Contrasts includes approximately forty new sculptures created at the Museum of Glass in collaboration with Seattle-based glass sculptor Martin Blank. These sculptures will be supported by earlier works from Paley’s personal collection. Thirty works on paper that illuminate Paley’s process of incorporating glass in his sculpture are also illustrated. Collectively, the objects in this publication demonstrate a culmination of Paley’s talents as a sculptor.

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The need to describe the world around us is an impulse as old as the earliest cave wall depictions of running horses and wounded bison. In this descriptive enterprise we have consistently found nature to be a valuable and inspiring companion, and over the centuries, as we moved beyond simple narrative to the complex, exhortative inventions of allegory, nature has reciprocally grown with us, giving us a crucial and familiar framework to help us to know our place in the universe. As a consequence of this evolution, the human imagination can claim innumerable--often epic--accounts built on the marriage of nature and allegory. Fresh! Contemporary Takes on Nature and Allegory features the works of fifteen artists from the United States, Europe, and Asia, encompassing pieces that vary tremendously in medium, technique, and scale--not to mention subject matter. It does not pretend to cover all of the allegorical tendencies in contemporary art, but nevertheless does represent several significant strains in the use of this mode in examining our relationship to nature.

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The story Raven and the Box of Daylight, which tells how Raven transformed the world and brought light to the people by releasing the stars, moon, and sun, holds great significance to the Tlingit people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. A new body of work by artist Preston Singletary (American, born 1963) will immerse readers in Tlingit traditions by telling this story through his monumental glass works and installations. Primarily known for his celebration of Tlingit art and design, Singletary will explore new ways of working with glass inspired by Tlingit design principles. Tlingit objects were traditionally used to show wealth and tell stories by representing elements of the natural world, as well as the histories of individual families. By drawing upon this tradition, Singletary’s art creates a unique theatrical atmosphere, in which the pieces follow and enhance a narrative. This book includes texts that place Singletary’s work within the wider histories of both glass art and native arts traditions—especially the art of spoken-word storytelling. Also included are a biography and an interview with the artist.

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René Lalique: Selections from the Steven and Roslyn Shulman Collection introduces the artistic innovations and legacy of renowned French Art Deco artist René Lalique. Born outside of Paris in 1860, Lalique was recognized as one of France’s foremost Art Nouveau jewelry designers before turning to the material of glass in the early twentieth century. By the 1920s, Lalique’s glass artwork embraced the new ideas and technologies that swept the United States and Europe. He brought an artistic aesthetic to new industries such as automotive and electrical products, as well as to new clienteles including the rising middle class and the increasingly independent female consumer. His legacy has influenced subsequent generations of designers and artists, in particular contemporary artists working in the medium of glass. Lalique’s considerable imagination and eye for design is evident in the Steven and Roslyn Shulman Collection, one of the most comprehensive selections of Lalique glass in the United States. The collection features perfume bottles, vases, automobile mascots, and a wealth of other objects that exemplify the Art Deco style and celebrate Lalique’s sense of design.

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