Adding color to hot glass. Photo credit: Foci MCGA
Night demonstration view. Photo credit: Foci MCGA
Glass is common to every person’s daily life. Glass has held long traditions in many countries throughout the world, each with their own shapes and colors that identify the culture. This project will use the idea of the functional object made of glass and transform it into something unique for each participant. While each drinking vessel will be unique, the under lying theme that each creation exists as a common functional drinking vessel remains. Through a common object we can examine a commonality between the members of our community.
Foci Minnesota Center for Glass Arts will have our mobile glassblowing studio at Northern Spark. We will blow a series of drinking vessels that are patterned and designed by the participants of Northern Spark. The patterning will be created using fine colored glass grains to create a unique pattern. This pattern will be applied to the glass and blown into a drinking vessel. The participants will provide a statement about glass, the pattern that they created and how it relates to ideas of commonality and what the vessel means to them. The finished work and statements will be presented at our gallery after Northern Spark.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
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The Foci Focus Group is formed of highly experienced glassmakers with 60 years of collective experience. It is a group of creatively-minded individuals working together to actualize each others’ conceptions in glass, in new formats and scales to realize new potential for ideas.
Contributing Artists:
Chad Holliday – Director of Studio Operations
Kelly Nezworski – Director of Administration
Ellie Gagner – Studio Technician
Jon Rees – Studio Technician