This is my third visit to the Museum of Glass in Corning since 2017. I could probably go every day for a month and not be bored. But then, when you love glass in all shapes and sizes and uses, this place is pretty close to Nirvana. Such beautiful things, and so many of them!
Curves of Beauty
Let’s start off with one of my favorite pieces, which I visit every time. It started out as a large, clear Pyrex flask, which the artist then cut the top off of, and painstakingly made cuts into the rim to create a detailed, miniature city skyline. He then sandblasted it and used an airbrush to apply the orange and black paint. Not at all the process I would have thought, but then the creativity of artists always amazes me.
I love this next piece for so many reasons: the design, the colors, that it looks both very old and very futuristic, that I could picture it on a table in my house (not that I have an actual house or a fancy table worthy of this piece).
Art with a Sense of Humor
This summer, so far, has been the summer of crows. Crows trying to hop up on my outside table while I’m cooking, crows squacking at sunrise, a murder of crows in trees above my campsite, loudly giving their opinions on the day. So when I saw this installation, I gravitated to it.
The artist is actually using the birds eating a broken glass chandelier as a metaphor for the decline of the Murano (Italy) glass industry. To do this, he sacrificied a beautiful chandelier and somehow (I don’t really want to know) acquired stuffed crows, then wired the crows into position, with pieces of glass stuffed into their craws. Some people might have just written a passionate essay about the Murano glass industry, but Pérez is an artist and he used his particular set of skills to create an moving, disturbing image to make his the point.
As a side note, I visited Murano on a day trip way back in 2003 and even then could see the tourism and cheap trinkets on sale, pushing out the artistry and classic Murano pieces. I spent way too much money on a single piece, a necklace by an artist I saw blowing glass, and I still love it, 20 years later.
Contemporary Glass
There are chandeliers that light up a room and then there are chandeliers that make a statement. The unusual color palette in this piece, changing from white to grays to black, is making a statement about the hidden role of blacks in the evolution of Venetian art and culture. The artist was researching the history of Venice when he uncovered how Africans influenced the culture there, so he then created a series of works in tribute to those contributions. In each piece, he combines traditional Venetian style with non-traditional colors. The Corning Museum only displays this one piece, an eloquent, revealing statement. (And, yes, both this piece and the shattered red chandelier were created in Murano.)
Karen LaMonte has become one of my favorite glass artists over the last few years, and so I was excited to see a new placement for this piece that gave it more light and really showed the bluish tint to better advantage. I was amazed that people just walked by it, barely giving it a glance. I had to tear myself away to see the rest of the museum, it was that mesmerizing a display.
Related posts: LaMonte in St. Pete, Crystal Bridges, Glassworks
The piece at the top of this post is a contemporary installation, All in All (2020) by Beth Lipman (1971-). As the display noted, she has “created a table setting of prehistoric plants to put human time within geologic scale.” I’m not sure I got that when I looked at it; I simply enjoyed the combination of shapes and sizes and light passing through from different angles.
Related posts: Glassworks (2017), Glass in Color (2017), Corning MOG (2022)
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.
Edgar Degas
I’m going back and reading batches of email that I somehow missed along the way. Wonderful glass! I want to go back there.
And what is with the crows this year? I swear we have an invasion here and they don’t scare easily. Last year it was chipmunks, the year before it was hawks. Next year???
John, I always think of you when I see an insulator 🙂
Corning had a reputation for producing high quality glass insulators and it was one of the last glass companies in the United States to do so. Collecting insulators is my geeky hobby. Thanks for sharing your photos. As always, you do an amazing job photographing and describing the places that you visit.
My family and I went to the Corning Museum of Glass many (many many) years ago when I was a teenager. I remember liking it, which says a lot given I was maybe 14. What I remember most, though, was a mark on the wall measuring how high the water had been inside the building during a recent flood. I still think about that today and it’s been 50 years.
I could visit the Corning Museum of Glass over and over again, too! We’ve only been once, but I still vividly recall many of the pieces. Thanks for photos of works that we didn’t see!
Fabulous post, Annie! We have got to visit this museum one day. I absolutely love the crows!