Newsletter 3, September 2013
HOT SUMMER
It really was a hot summer!
With so many events, activities in the world of art, design and architecture we managed to keep up with the stream of information.
We would like to introduce Caroline van Diest (NL) as our Ambassador. Welcome aboard!
We met the new director of the Glasmuseet in Ebeltoft Dan Mølgaard who not only has a devoted staff but also a wonderful, open museum and interesting plans for the future.
In September I will meet with the jurors of the Stanislav Libensky Award 2013 to make the final choices and open the exposition.
As our Agenda and the number of articles grow, the stream of subscribers finding Glass is more! grows as well. To manage this fast growing list, we will start to send out the bills in October and provide the individual login codes to work through your material to build the Subscriber’s Profiles. In the meanwhile we will decide which level of the site will be closed first to be available for Subscribers only and which will stay open to new visitors.
“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”
Aristotle
As you noticed we also welcomed more advertisers and we thank them for their support: Sas Glas Glassolutions, TGK, Odile Kinart, Art Company, Van Tetterode Glass Studio BV and Glasrijk Tubbergen. Design Flanders is now the leading sponsor of our e-magazine. Design Flanders offers design advise, promotion, research, the selection of members (with a vast party of glass artists and designers), their magazine Kwintessens, the Design Flanders Gallery in Brussels, and they subsidize various projects to support contemporary design and to connect companies with the designers and artists.
Glass is more! sponsors the special project by designer and glass artist Carina Riezebos who for Hammers & Heels 2 will visit Lesotho, Africa, with 14 ladies combining their forces and taking up cement, bricks and trowels and paint to build good, safe and sturdy stone houses as new homes for AIDS orphans and their caretakers there. We hope you will support this project and buy glass design and forward the message.
“He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.”
Abraham Lincoln
We want to congratulate the organisation of De Glaskunstbeurs Leerdam (Glass Art Fair Leerdam) – displayed on our homepage with their advertisement – with the 25th edition of their art fair. The Glaskunstbeurs is an annual event, which is held in September. Once a year the world’s largest collection of glass art is on show in Leerdam (the Glass City). The more than 100 exhibitors will show and sell glass art in all shapes and sizes. At this fair you will find antique and modern side by side. In addition to glass and glass art, visitors will find extremely rare books and magazines on glass, will be able to have professional auctioneers evaluate their glass items, and they can visit a series of lectures.
Glass is more! also congratulates the winners of the Kanazawa Award 2013. Please, find the two expositions and elected works by clicking on the photo.
And Glass is more! welcomes the Biennale Internationale du Verre 2013 as advertiser with their vast series of expositions in and around Strasbourg, France.
The 5th edition of the International Glass Show REFLECTIONS RÉFLEXIONS will take place from 18 October to 30 November, 2013 (and the exposition in the Barrage Vauban even to 2/1/2014) as a journey through twenty venues in Alsace and Lorraine. Organized by the European Studio Glass Art Association (ESGAA) in collaboration with the city of Strasbourg and the Alsace region, the Biennale Internationale du Verre offers a diverse programme – solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, multidisciplinary artistic interventions – around glass. The first Crystal and glassware settled in Alsace Lorraine let these regions master the material glass. Glass allows all forms of art: contemporary art, decorative arts, design, architecture, installation, media-mix, etc. Exceeding the boundary between art and craft, the Biennale combines know-how and creative force, and invites to consider work around this material in all its forms.
After the strong 4th edition with more than 60,000 visitors in 2011, the Biennale Internationale du Verre is now implanted in the landscape of the major events of contemporary art and asserts itself as a major event.
“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.”
Susan Sontag
One of the goals of Glass is more! is to look with a critical eye to all these glass activities and encourage to develop the trade. That is why you also find articles like Cutting Edge, fairs, workshops and school/training programs to support working with glass, like 3D-copying, the activities of the Textile Museum in Tilburg and Beeldenstorm, workshops for metal and synthetic material. Presented during the Dutch Design Week Eindhoven at Dutch Invertuals: Revaluate together with Sundaymorning@ekwc and Nationaal Glasmuseum: De Glasblazerij.
“What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.”
Octavio Paz (Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat, 1914-1998)
In its editorial article ‘Art deserves reflection’ the Dutch newspaper NRC pointed out the alarming attitude during the performance of The High Priest of Pop Prince in Amsterdam where taking pictures was strictly forbidden (including by mobile telephones) and where the writing press was kept under strict control; a reporter was even temporarily removed. This worrying attitude reaches its height in the new theatre magazine Scène immediately announcing that no negative criticisms will be published.
With Winston Churchill I would like to say: “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
The NRC article concludes: “A critic is more than a sourpuss who gives thumbs up or down. Art is effort and emotion on the part of the artist and it represents financial value. Art is also the experience of the audience. And it is a measure of the ‘sign o’the times’, to quote Prince. The art critic moves between both as an interpreter. He faithfully follows, often for years, a particular art form. Based on his experience and knowledge he formulates a well-founded opinion which becomes part of the work of art in historiography. Art cannot do without the reflection of these professional aficionados. Artists who do not want to know this, are burying their heads in the sand, especially when they also want to blindfold their audience.”
Design.nl Newsletter #259 wrote the mysterious article Job Smeets Speaks About the Infamous Gate Fiasco… no name or reason of this publication mentioned….
It seems to be an answer on the subject described in Cutting Edge 1 –or craft as an exotic novelty.
“Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.”
Andy Warhol
That same newspaper NRC writes about handicrafts in their article of 16 August on the Economic pages: “Rehabilitate manual work”. The article is an indictment of the Netherlands having grossly neglected manual work. Now unemployment is rising to record highs, the shortage of skilled workers is growing. Arjo Klamer, Professor of Cultural Economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam says that in Japan, Sweden, China and Italy creative craft stands in high regard. But, comparing the Dutch situation with the German situation, the biggest and most painful differences are: well organized, graduated as Master and organized in regional Handwerkkammers. Working with your hands must, according to Klamer, again become a respected learning path from kindergarten to the end of the secondary education. The Ambachtsscholen (technical schools) should be restored in a modern way, and organizations (guilds) should promote the quality of art and craft and award master titles. Yesterday 30/8/2013 the NRC published the first article in the series Craftsmanship: The Glassblower.
Keep us informed, as Glass is more! is your eyes and ears and we will report critically because we have a warm hard for art, design, glass and the people behind it.
Angela van der Burght
General editor Glass is more!
