CMOG has posted some photos of the event on their flickr page.Check it out to see the finished piece!

The setup:

There were 2 stages- one with the band, in the auditorium, and one with me- the hot glass stage. In between in the hallways were wine tastings, snacks and food. On both stages and in the hallways were video screens, showing a mix from 2 cameramen at the hot glass stage and some feeds from the auditorium.

I had two professional glassblowers to help me on stage (could have had more, the sky’s the limit with Corning- but I didn’t think we could fit anyone else on stage!)- Louis Olsen and DH McNabb, who were not only highly skilled and experienced, but were also flexible-minded enough to work on this crazy project, and in the end, I think they also had a lot of fun doing it!

Louis and I wore microphones, so we could provide running commentary while we made the artwork. Steve Gibbs, the mastermind behind this evening, also came on stage to emcee for a while.

We decided that because the stage was very narrow, it would be a good idea to do a long, skinny piece. I also wanted to exploit my assistants’ high skill level, so I decided to do something with bitwork and lots and LOTS of blown pieces with optic molds, so everyone would be constantly busy, and we could create a sort of “assembly line” for… something. DH came up with the idea of hanging the finished pieces along the back wall, and walking them through the audience as each one was done, a sort of procession.

The plan:

I went home after our first night’s practice and started sketching. I’d been meaning to make a dragon for a while, and this seemed like the team that could pull it off.  I felt this was the right time and environment as well-I kept having these indications-  as I was leaving Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, I had come across a duty-free display entirely in Chinese, selling luxury New Year items,  and I had taken pictures of it. It is unusual to have anything in Holland that isn’t in Dutch and English, and it seemed an interesting sign of the changing times, that there are so many Chinese visitors now. I even tried to sign up for a raffle of something, but the card was all in Chinese, and I realized I have a lot to learn…

Then when I got to Corning, some of the first lovely people I met were two 2 Chinese translators for the hot glass show. Corning has a huge number of visitors from everywhere, but enough Chinese visitors to merit 2 translators!  So it seemed to me that the Year of the Dragon was calling me.  The next day at the Rakow library, I did some image research, and sketched the plans for the team.  I was so pleased to find out that Chinese New Year started a few days after the performance,- January 23rd- and that this year was not just a dragon year, but a “water dragon” year- a very rare and special occurrence. How ideal, then, to create a lucky dragon, born precisely of fire and water!  It seemed like an auspicious omen to create one on the stage. I decided to use 8 pieces of paper, for another lucky number.

Over coffee, we strategized a series of components that the guys could make for me, in rapid succession, so that we could print the dragon from nose to tail in 2 hours. We redesigned the stage- moved the bench and marver, took away stuff that we wouldn’t need to gain a few extra inches. It was a tight space for 3 people and lots of glass!  They had to haul out extra blowpipes and punties because we we knew we’d use hundreds of pounds of glass by the end of the session. Here is the crazy sketch:

So many people are involved each month in putting the 2300 event together, Corning is a well-oiled machine, with a real heart: docents, volunteers, safety managers, the marketing staff, catering, security, A/V and tech folks, photographers, museum staff, library staff, all the people from the Finger Lakes wineries who brought wine for the tastings, the band, not to mention the crew that brought me over- Steve, Louise…and so many others helped make this a very memorable evening for me, and hopefully for the many guests as well.

And, in case you missed it above, CMOG has posted some photos of the event on their flickr page.Check it out to see the finished piece!

More press and photos to follow, as they emerge.

Photo credit Ann Welles, from Exhibit A Gallery

*2300 refers to the temperature of hot glass, in Fahrenheit.

2300°: Fire and Wine

Thursday, January 19, 2012, 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Free admission. Refreshments available.

If you are in upstate New York, stop by Corning. I’ll be blowing glass and burning paper, and there will be wine and music and all the wonderful things to see at the Corning Museum of Glass.

Glassmaking by Anne Gant
Anne Gant, is one of the few glass artists to work on paper. Watch as she uses hot glass to make prints and drawings in a fascinating combination of glassblowing and printing or drawing with glass. First, she sculpts hot glass into shapes and lines. While the glass is still scorching hot from the glory hole, she presses the glass forms into wet sheets of high quality rag paper. Instantly, the glass begins to burn and smoke the paper. In this dramatic process, the glass becomes cracked, scarred and destroyed and all that remains is its mark on the paper.

Music by The The Weber Brothers
There are bands for which rock and roll is a lifestyle, and then there are bands for which it is life. The Weber Brothers, who have shared the stage with icons like Garth Hudson, Levon Helm, Leon Russell, Derek Trucks and Kris Kristofferson, fuses stomping country rock with the brothers’ own love of pop music in all its splendor.

Free Finger Lakes Wine Tastings
Sip away the cold with tastings from over 20 Finger Lakes wineries.

Exhibit A represented artists at the Echo Art Fair this last weekend in Buffalo, NY. About 3,000 people visited the event.
(Joshua Sperling’s work on left, Tricia Wright on right.) I FedEx-ed this work from Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago
- it’s always nice to finally see it hanging and to know that it got there safely.

Anna Boothe, Jason Chakravarty, Anne Gant, Joanna Manousis, Dan Mirer, Kari Russel-Pool, Nadine Saylor, Robert Wood
May 26 – Jul 16, 2011

Opening Reception for the public: Friday May 26^th, 5:00pm to 8:00pm

I just finished writing a short article about my preparatory process for drawings, which appears in Glass Network magazine in December- this is the UK Contemporary Glass Society’s magazine, published quarterly.

It has been a busy month, which is a surprise for the summer! -  even more new pieces have been sold, and there are whispers of some shows for the fall around the US and here in the Netherlands…so I’m going to be hard at work on some new pieces.

Mahine Rattonsey
http://www.rattonsey.com/, a lampworking sculptor from New York State (this is our third show together!)

Nancy Sutcliffe
http://www.nancysutcliffe.co.uk/, who is in Dubai, and does exquisite engravings (just look at her site)

Jacqueline Cooley
http://www.jaquelinecooley.com/ from the UK whose color-smart fused glass objects just got her a spot on the British Glass Biennale

Also on display are Candace Gawne’s glowing plasma sculptures.

http://www.luminousartworks.com/

I hope you will have a chance to look at their work as well- so many good artists are hard at work making real, original unique objects- it’s good to appreciate them, even if it’s only via a webpage!

I

http://objetosconvidrio.blogspot.com/

Anne Gant es una de las pocas artistas del vidrio que realiza su trabajo sobre papel.
Anne Gant:”Por lo general encontramos al vidrio limpio, frío, estéril y brillante.Mi trabajo muestra el otro lado del vidrio. No esta frío, lo utilizo totalmente caliente y líquido, no es estable y tranquilo.”

Anne soplo vidrio en UrbanGlass en Brooklyn durante más de seis años.

Ella primero esculpe el vidrio caliente en formas y líneas. Entonces, mientras el vidrio sigue en movimiento, caliente, presiona las formas de vidrio en hojas húmedas de papel de alta calidad. Al instante, el vidrio comienza a arder y genera humo en el papel. El resultado de impresiones quemadas tienen un alto nivel de detalle que las quemaduras pasan a través de capas de papel y también crea áreas en relieve. Los colores van desde los negros de humo denso hasta sepias y amarillos acuosos.

“La impresiones por quemaduras son conmovedoras porque existen simultáneamente como objetos estéticos en sí mismos y sin embargo, también hablan acerca de un objeto que se perdió.” dice Anne .

These are part of a new group of single prints that I am making for a show in Corning in May 2010.
The curator will install them as a cluster of drawings on the wall.
Please click on a single print for a larger view. They are all about 9 inches by 11 inches.