Make Your Own Glass participants at the annual Museum Holiday Open House at the Corning Museum of Glass.
Corning Museum of Glass
The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY ushers in a new era as the world’s foremost authority in the art, history, and science of glass on October 17, 2024. On that day, the Museum’s revolutionary $55.3 million state-of-the-art glassmaking studio opens following several years of planning and construction.
The facility will be a boon for artists as the only in North America able to support the creation of large-scale works in cast glass along with an expanded residency program, and the public, offering additional educational opportunities and an expanded “Make Your Own Glass” program.
Corning has been a global capital for glass production since the late 1800s. The Corning Museum of Art’s new 60,000-square-foot studio assures it will remain so through this century.
“I thought it was like a submarine; it had everything it needed, but everything was really tight everywhere and we had some things we wanted to do that we didn’t have space to do,” Director of The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass Amy Schwartz told Forbes.com about the Museum’s previous studio established in 1996.
The new facility is more cruise ship than submarine.
For Artists
A TA demonstrates for their instructor in an advanced flameworking class, taught in the Schwartz Family Flameshop.
Corning Museum of Glass
“For the artists, the casting center is going to be a unique element, and for artists who work that way, it’s a game changer,” CMoG President and Executive Director Karol Wight told Forbes.com
In glass casting, unlike glassblowing, cold glass is placed in a mold and then heated, allowing the glass to melt and flow into the mold’s form, cooling to take that shape. In bronze casting, the material is molten before entering the mold. In plaster casting, the plaster is soft before hardening in the form. Casting glass requires the material heat and cool, go from solid to liquid to solid again, inside the cast. A delicate, demanding process.
“Glassblowing is immediate and exciting, and you can see it,” Schwartz, a glassblower herself, said. “Casting is not immediate, and you can’t really see it.”
The results, however, can be staggeringly beautiful. Only a scant few places in the world have the machinery and knowhow to do it–and nowhere in America as large as what CMoG is unveiling. In the new studio, glass casts larger than a person will be possible.
Schwartz recruited celebrated glass casting master nonpareil Richard Whiteley from Australia as Senior Programs Manager for The Studio in 2019 with this day in mind. Whiteley will be teaching kiln casting classes, mentoring visiting glass artists, and continuing his own groundbreaking glass casting practice, taking all to new heights thanks to the expanded facility.
Educating current and future generations of glassmakers, pushing the medium, and expanding its possibilities are central to the mission for the new studio. A year-round residency program and additional Artist-in-Residency opportunities have been added. A two-year, “Glassmaking Institute” certificate program offering intensive practical training in glassmaking and professional development developed. A new technology center with next-generation equipment, including super precise computer programmed glass cutting machines, 3-D printers, neon-making facilities, a mold shop, a metal shop, and a wood shop to support glass working built in.
For Visitors
Make Your Own Glass Pod 4, where guests participate in longer, In-Depth Hot Glass Working projects.
Corning Museum of Glass
The Corning Museum of Glass is home to the world’s most important and comprehensive collection of glass, with the finest examples of glassmaking spanning 3,500 years. In addition to live glassblowing demonstrations, “Make Your Own Glass” experiences at the Museum enable visitors to create their own artworks.
“(Guests) start with a gob of molten glass and pull and shape it into a flower,” Schwartz explains of one hands-on glassmaking opportunity at CMoG. “You really get a feel for how the glass moves.”
Don’t worry, it’s safe.
“We put an apron on. We put gloves on you, if you come in sandals, we put little booties on your feet so you feel very safe, and then the artist takes you through the making of the flower,” she adds.
Closed-toed shoes, essential when working around a 2,300-degree Fahrenheit furnace.
Since opening to the public in December 2023, the Make Your Own Glass facilities have engaged guests to learn experientially about glass. The studio expansion allows for the program to be scaled up to serve more daily participants.
New glassmaking opportunities have also been introduced, including an hour-long, one-on-one in-depth glassblowing tutorial pairing guests with a member of the expert Make Your Own Glass team.
The public is invited to further try their hand at glass cutting, glass fusing, glass engraving, and sandblasting via instructional courses offered throughout the year, some as long as a week.
“When visitors come to the museum, we like to say that they can see glass, they can see glass being made, and then they can make their own glass,” Wight said. “If they haven’t already booked a Make Your Own Glass experience as part of their visit before coming, hopefully they’re inspired somewhere along their journey inside the museum to make a reservation and walk over to the studio and have that experience.”
Unlike a traditional art museum, many visitors to the Corning Museum of Glass are unsure what they’ll find inside.
“Is this a museum of Corning Incorporated? What is a glass Museum? We’ve tried to construct a path for guests–if you follow the numbers, because some folks like to follow numbers on their museum visits–they’ll see the contemporary collection, then their next stop is a glass making demonstration so that they can see people blowing (glass), understand how the material is manipulated, and gain a deeper understanding of what they’ve just seen, how that might have been made,” Wight continued. “Hopefully, that’s inspired them to want to try making something themselves.”
Christmas ornaments. Pumpkins. Bowls, vases, suncatchers, picture frames. All can be made by visitors at the Museum. Alongside some of the greatest practicing glass artists in the world.
Set amongst New York State’s bucolic Finger Lakes Wine Country, CMoG is housed in a unique collection of award-winning modern glass architecture, making it an ideal centerpiece for a weekend getaway.
Kids under 17 are admitted free.
Source link
