Full-blown

Head of the glass show their stuff

by Leon Nigrosh

AMERICAN GLASS: MASTERS OF THE ART At the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, 220 State Street, Springfield, through May 16.

During the early 1900s, Louis Comfort Tiffany and rival Frederick Carder each began commercially producing the first viable American art glass, establishing a market that still exists today. But it was only at the beginning of the 1960s, with the advent of small, inexpensive tank furnaces, that American studio glassworkers were finally able to break away from traditional European techniques and designs.

In the ensuing three decades, American glass artists -- led by pioneers Dominic La bino and Harvey Littleton -- have succeeded in developing an independent vocabulary of methods and images that has changed the face and direction of studio glass worldwide. For the current exhibition at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, Lloyd Herman (the founding director of the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery) has assembled more than 50 works by 13 of the nation's leading glass artists. Here, in specially constructed "earthquake proof" showcases, he presents brilliant examples of the stylistic variety prevalent in today's glass sculptures.

Typical of the times, and like many of his contemporaries, Washington state artist Richard Marquis, came to glassblowing from pottery. Well-versed in clay's forms, Marquis incorporates the essential elements of goblet and teapot shapes into his non-utilitarian glass works. His whimsical Teapot Goblet series is made all the more complex and intriguing by his masterful use of the early-Venetian glass decorating techniques, atticinio and murrine. The first method creates filigree and lace-like patterns when the fiery glass is blown and expanded, while the second produces mosaic effects. His 20x12" Coffeepot Sample Box contains a dozen tiny glass "pots," each a magnificently executed, colorful, and transparent example that depicts the variations the techniques can offer.

Shifting gears in both size and technique, outdoorsman and nationally recognized gaffer (master glassblower) William Morris presents a series of nearly 4'-tall Canopic Jars. These massive blown-glass jars have the look of archaeological artifacts encrusted and opaqued by eons of burial. The jars' majestic covers are realistic bird or animal heads, each meticulously sculpted from molten glass. While the dahl sheep and hawk jars are richly toned, the buck and gazelle jars are decorated with Paleolithic hunters in animal disguises shown stalking their prey -- all rendered in colored crushed-glass flour, which is fused permanently into the surface.

Plainfield, Massachusetts, artist and former industrial designer Thomas Patti creates his glass objects in an almost complete antithesis to typical glass-forming techniques. He constructs his layered, rectangular compositions from glass plate with minimal coloration disbursed between the layers. Once assembled, the glass is heated just to its fusion point, and a small bubble of air is introduced into this glowing mass. The highly polished finished pieces, like Red Lumina with Compound Disk, are small cubes that invite us inside to reveal "the origins of creation on a molecular scale," as he has said.

While most survey exhibitions are crammed with single works by as many artists as possible who are working in a particular medium, this show offers three to five objects by each artist, presented in an expansive and illuminated area. From Thurman Statom's found-glass assemblages to Toots Zynsky's constructed glass thread "painted" bowls, we can relish in the developing strength of today's American glass artists.

The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Call (413) 263-6800.