China Hejian International Lampwork Glass Art Festival
On December 11, 2020, the 4th China Hejian International Lampwork Glass Art Festival, co-sponsored by China National Arts and Crafts Society, China Arts and Crafts Association, Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, and Hejian Municipal People’s Government, was officially staged at the Shangde Glass Museum. This year’s art festival kicked off with the demonstration of lampwork glass art by domestic and foreign artists, and an address delivered on site by Professor Wang Jianzhong at Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University. As the academic host of this event, Professor Wang first thanked the Hejian CPC Municipal Committee and Hejian Municipal Government for their vigorous support. He noted that in such a special year, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic had rendered preparations for the event very difficult in the early stage. Nevertheless, with the unremitting efforts of all parties, this year’s art festival had been successfully opened as scheduled.
The event had drawn wide attention from the glass art circles at home and abroad. Because of the pandemic, communication and exchanges were conducted both online and offline. Five Chinese glass artists and lampwork art masters, including Zhou Lei, Cheng Shengyuan, Wang Chaohong, Sun Fengzhu, and Sun Fengjun, brought all participants many wonderful live creative demonstrations at the lampwork art performance area of the Shangde Glass Museum. Three international artists, Kathleen Elliot, Madeline Rile Smith and Eriko Kobayashi, prepared creative demonstrations of lampwork glass art of different styles for the audience on the other side of the ocean, and shared their personal artistic creation experiences.
Photo: Zhou Lei (left) and Wang Chaohong (right) give live demonstrations
Zhou Lei, a teacher from Jilin University of Arts, gave the audience a look into the production process of lampwork blue prawns, which seemed to jump from Qi Baishi’s painting to the artist’s hands. Cheng Shengyuan, Sun Fengjun, and Sun Fengzhu, lampwork glass masters from Boshan, showed Zibo’s traditional lampwork skills, vividly presenting innocent giant pandas, goldfish, mandarin ducks, swans and other animals. Associate Professor Wang Chaohong at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts exhibited exquisite lampwork design works, and displayed the logo of this festival with consummate lampwork glass techniques.
Photo: Traditional lampwork glass masters Cheng Shengyuan, Sun Fengjun and Sun Fengzhu give live demonstrations
Kathleen Elliot from Ohio, USA is celebrated for her sculptures of lampwork plants, and has recently started to make multimedia and collage works. In 2003, Elliot began to make a series of glass sculptures Natural Plants based on such plant forms as branches and leaves. In 2007, she started to create the Imaginary Botanicals series, focusing on the discovered species and the imaginary ones created by mixing.
Photo: Kathleen Elliot’s remote online demonstration
In this event, Kathleen Elliot showed online how to make her personal series of works with lampwork glass. She praised the beauty of nature by creating glass sculptures with natural themes, enticing people out of the confines of ordinary realities. Elliot conveyed to the audience the following message, “I usually use glass tubes and colored glass rods to create lampwork art. Every day, we are so busy and life seems so pressing. The existence of nature can remind us that we actually belong to a world that is mysterious and far greater.”
Photo: Madeline’s remote online demonstration
Madeline Rile Smith is an adjunct professor and lampwork technical director at Salem Community College, USA. She usually uses high borosilicate glass in her creations that mainly consist of sculptures and interactive works. Madeline first introduced her Arthropod series. In her imagination, these ferocious and primitive creatures will be the species to dominate the earth after human extinction, and silicon-based creatures will replace the extinct carbon-based creatures as the new masters of the earth. In the series of Connected Breath, she explores, by lampwork glass, the intimate contact among people through breathing. This work was created before the COVID-19 outbreak in 2019, and its significance has changed greatly since then. In the artist demonstration session of this year’s Hejian Lampwork Glass Art Festival, Madeline used white glass tubes and red, orange and yellow glass rods for creative demonstration, re-presenting her classic Arthropod series.
Photo: Eriko Kobayashi’s remote online demonstration
Artist Eriko Kobayashi is from Tokyo, Japan. Glass inspires her desire to create. With passion for materials, Eriko Kobayashi has integrated playfulness into concrete glass production, so her works can deepen thoughts and release a positive and energetic atmosphere. Eriko Kobayashi has demonstrated online her unique series of lampwork glass pencil works, which are also exhibited at this festival.
Photo: Audience at the demonstration site
On the afternoon of December 11, two academic activities were held: keynote speeches and youth forum. Jessica Jane Julius, President of the Glass Art Society, first delivered an online keynote speech, in which she pointed out: Our love and curiosity for glass unite us here. We are in the era of glass, as we are surrounded by it. Glass appears in our daily life as something we are used to; but it is still being ignored or unnoticed. Jessica also noted that if there was no glass, we couldn’t store vaccines to fight against the pandemic.
Photo: Jessica Jane Julius delivers an online keynote speech
In the speech, Jessica introduced the development and discipline characteristics of the Tyler School of Art and Architecture where she teaches, as well as the artistic ecology of Philadelphia. As the President of the Glass Art Association, Jessica also presented the achievements of the Association as an international organization of glass art, and many preparations for celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Pilchuck Glass School. Next, she shared her personal experience of artistic creation and noted that she likes to use visual symbols similar to geometric figures and some basic graphic languages, such as points, lines, arcs and simple figures. As they symbolize data and information, the use of them is non-utilitarian. This allows Jessica’s works to fall into many different categories, and makes the process of creation and the choice of materials full of intersection, instead of using glass only. The main body of her work You Can Not Be Manufactured is made by the lampwork process, and is put in a solution that can separate crystals out. Like snowflakes, the shapes of these crystals can never be repeated, each of them being unique. This is one way to explore the identity and experience as an artist and the uniqueness of being an artist.
You Can Not Be Manufactured
Static
Jessica ended her speech by forecasting the future of glass art: Creative activities require that we get used to trying with unknown results, and we need to take risks and try things we are not familiar with. This applies not only to creation, but also to life. Our younger generation and our students are experiencing a more complex world, such as the contemporary society under social media. To accept this challenge and find one’s own way of reconciliation will bring more creativity.
Delimitation & Transboundary: Glass Art Youth Forum
As an important part of the academic activities at the Lampwork Glass Art Festival, “Delimitation & Transboundary: Glass Art Youth Forum”, planned and hosted by Associate Professor Li Jing at Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, was also held on the afternoon of December 11. This forum brought together four emerging artists and glass enterprise managers, as well as a number of artists and art educators as guest speakers. At the beginning of the forum, Associate Professor Li Jing first introduced that the definition of “glass art” is constantly changing, because the boundary of glass art is artificially demarcated. “Delimitation” shows its adherence to its own characteristics, while “Transboundary” requires that an artist have his/her own height and vision. A contemporary young artist should have greater courage and determination to cross this tangible or intangible barrier. Under a broader artistic background, and based on the understanding of glass materials, young artists can study and interpret the unique charm and various possibilities of glass in art from the multiple current situations of art, industry, design and education.
Associate Professor Li Jing presides over the forum
Guests and Speakers
Glass Art Youth and Their Works
The theme shared by Zhou Zizheng is "Place Transparent Boundaries". Zhou Zizheng is a graduate student studying fine arts at the Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University, working and living in Shanghai. In his speech, he used "glass" as an example to guide everyone to think about the "label behind the object".
Herstellen
Uncertain white cuboid
The theme shared by Mu Chenyang is "HEAR YOU—Glass In Installation Art". Mu Chenyang graduated from the Experimental Design Department of the School of Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the Glass Art Department of the Rochester Institute of Technology in the United States.
Hear You
Evoke
Li Songlin talked about “Glass Material in Conceptual Art”. Graduating from Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University with a BA in glass art and from Rhode Island School of Design, USA with a master’s degree, Li has been exploring glass materials spanning almost all glass processes, and constantly combining concepts with his material attempts.
Truth
Live in Solitude, But Don’t Die in Solitude
The topic shared by He Xueyu is "Salute Glass- How Glass Casting Me". He Xueyu graduated from the China Academy of Art in both undergraduate and postgraduate studies with a major in glass. He currently works in Hangzhou and is an external glass researcher in Hangzhou Rong Design Library.
Salute π: Test 4
Carve or Sstraightness I
