The Mysteries of Glass

Magic and mystery illuminate the portal that leads artists, viewers and collectors to the medium of glass and its myriad interpretations of expression and technique. It is both centuries old and cutting-edge contemporary as devotees employ time-tested methods and push the boundaries of what is possible. 

“Glass can be considered quite a mysterious material,” says Joanna Manousis, who has worked with the material for 17 years and is pursuing her PhD in glass at the National Glass Centre at Sunderland University in England. “There’s a magic to it when you first start working with it that pulls you in and you can’t get enough of it.”

Alli Hoag, who received her MFA from the renowned glass program at Alfred University in NY and is currently Assistant Professor and Glass Area Head at Bowling Green State University’s School of Art, hears the same siren call. “There is an act of making in glass that provokes a sense of the magical for me,” she says. “There is risk involved and it is not a forgiving material. Taking something that seems impossible and then creating something that is possible is exciting.” 

Jordan Ahlers owns Momentum Gallery in Asheville, NC with his wife Shifra Ahlers, and represents both artists. (An area of the 15,000 square foot gallery is devoted to blown glass pieces and serigraphs by Dale Chihuly.) “Glass is a magical medium,” Ahlers asserts. “It has a wonderful versatility and immeasurable potential for rendering imagery, optic effects and alluring color and transparency.”

Recall the childlike wonder viewing a ship in a bottle -- how did it get in there? – and amplify it to Manousis’s creation of negative space in her Bottled Pear, Distilled Portraits and most recent Golden Thread Series of glass decanters that appear to have coils of gold thread passing through from one to the other yet contain nothing inside. 

One of her earliest portfolios is Lace, panels of glass lace made of fused discs of murini glass, a composition inspired by pieces of lace that also provoked memories of her childhood. “My grandmother worked in a haberdashery called Ben’s Buttons and when I visited her there as a child, I would be allowed snippets of lace she worked on and buttons. I saved them in a glass jar and stared at them through the glass. It’s interesting how cyclical that is.” Momentum has what she believes is the best Lace piece she made – an installation of three panels about 2’ high and 4’ wide. “When they are hung in a window like a drape, they not only look beautiful but amplify the source of light coming into the room.”

Hoag marries blown and cast glass – as well as a gift for dissection and fascination with nature – to her Taxonomy/Memory Butterflies and Taxonomy/Memory Cicadas. “The domes are blown glass with a blown class cover over the dome, and the insects inside are cast glass, made from real insects I take apart and make molds of to cast. I situate them within a concave lens which magnifies and distorts. This one little object like a cicada or butterfly can incite a wide and lush environment.”

Meticulous realism informs the gossamer-like scrims of butterflies in Blues for Nabokov and Lepidopterist Conundrum, cast then captured in flight and formation. “They were real butterflies,” Hoag explains. “In Lepidopterist, the largest is the atlas moth, the medium is the owl butterfly and the smallest ones are monarchs. With sunlight, they cast colored shadows on the wall which are almost like stained glass.” 

Hoag is extending her expedition into taxidermy to her new series encrusting cast clear glass butterflies over taxidermy forms. “I have gotten the castings to be transparent enough so they act like little windows and create a blur over the face of the animal and a time frame of uncertainty.”