Tucson Glass Festival

The Tucson Glass Festival was held from April 8-10, 2011 to celebrate art in glass. Originally the show was planned to be national but too many participants canceled after Arizona passed its racist anti-immigration law earlier in the year, so the organizers soldiered on with a local festival, and it was intimate and successful (from the point of view of a consumer of it, anyway).

There were tours of the Sonoran Glass Art Academy, which included demonstrations and instruction, with plenty of “product” for sale in the galleries, and likewise at the Philabaum glass studio and gallery, and other galleries around town.

A special highlight was a demonstration of technique by the brothers de la Torre, Einar and Jamex, originally of Guadalajara, now living and working in Esenada, Mexico and San Diego. They worked at Tom Philabaum’s studio in Tucson to produce a fantastic, life-sized glass head in their signature style of cartoonish, colorful, ironic, and witty construction that the three of them had designed the night before in the Ethiopian restaurant across the street from the studio.

The brothers were assisted by Tom Philabaum and a team of experienced glassworkers. The two-hour project was fascinating and almost medieval in its exercise of techniques that go back many centuries. I asked Tom Philabaum about the absence of safety equipment. All those bare arms and legs look awfully vulnerable moving around glass at fourteen hundred degrees, I said. But he replied, "I would rather work naked. You have to be able to feel the heat from the glass to know what it is doing." The man is clearly one with his material!

The glass bust that emerged was grotesquely beautiful, pinkish, as if its scalp had been removed, and decorated with something like a crown of laurels, except they were prickly pear pads, and topped with a sort of Mohawk haircut that made the whole thing reminiscent of a conquistador. It’s gaping mouth displayed the words “Baja Rizona.” Why not “Baja Arizona?” someone asked. Because, Jamex said, the two middle “A’s” are combined to one, and then it sounds like somebody is laughing, “Ha-ha, Rizona!” That is the kind of weird, eccentric humor the de la Torre brothers are known for.

The brothers have a major show now at the Tucson Museum of Art, called Borderlandia. It is a show that has traveled through the west, perhaps elsewhere. It presents a wide range of colorful glass pieces, some free-standing, some wall mounted, some animated by electric motors and videos; all of them baroquely elaborate, immensely intricate, and stuffed full of “found” trinkets and souvenirs culled from dollar stores. Some of their iconography is serious, tragicomically cultural, religious, and bitingly political, and some of it is just plain goofy fun.

The work highlights, overall, ethnic commonalities and differences among people living along the southwest border. They use images from Mexico, American pop culture, the Mayas and the Aztecs, and even some pre-Columbian images. Juxtaposition is their preferred method for making narrative comments, such as by filling a traditional religious altar with pop-culture icons and images of politicians. The show is overflowing with political and cultural meaning, but it is also a huge dose of eye-candy and a magnificent display of the glass artist’s craft.

The bizarre bust that the brothers made for the Glass Festival demonstration ended up looking something like a Spanish Conquistador who plays in a punk rock band in a Day of the Dead celebration. It was hastily stuffed into the annealing oven before it could be thoroughly appreciated, but even so, the artists asked the small crowd of observers if there were any early bids for it. The bidding stalled out at $2,000, but at least it was an open.

I’m not sure when the formal bidding for it is, but they said they would not be surprised to see $7,000. Proceeds benefit the nonprofit Sonoran Glass Art Academy’s Youth Development Program.

Viva el vidrio!

Philabaum Glass Studio

Tom Philabaum (pictured left) is a glass artist in Tucson. Originally from the Midwest (Illinois, Wisconsin) he has had his own studio in Tucson since 1975. There is a large gallery exhibiting his, and others’ works, and visitors can go right into the studio to watch craftsmen blow glass (they do a lot more than blow into it, actually). His students and assistants use the studio for their own work on the weekends.

It was plenty hot in the glass studio, but what caught my attention more than anything was the lack of safety gear, not even safety glasses. Human flesh sure looks delicate next to a glowing ball of molten glass. These were weekend studio users, not the master himself, of course. I hope they all signed liability waivers.

I was impressed by the glass art objects I saw at the Philabaum gallery. Here in the northwest, glass is omnipresent, but it is usually from Dale Chihuly, the internationally known glass artist from Tacoma, just down the road from Seattle. Chihuly glass is indeed beautiful but it is vastly overexposed here in the Northwest and one becomes inured to it.

Chihuly glass is grand, swirly, and dramatic. His pieces often take organic forms, like the shell-shaped pieces in the ceiling of the “Glass Bridge” at the Chihuly Museum (yes, his own museum), in Tacoma.

My first reaction to many Chihuly pieces is to wonder how they were made. The objects are so spectacular that you are dazzled by the technology and craftsmanship, which is indeed amazing.

But after a while the novelty wears off. You begin to understand that anything that can be done with glass, has been done. It ceases to be glass and becomes just a set of colorful artifacts without context, unconnected to the ancient craft.

The Philabaum work is not spectacular in the same way, just quietly beautiful. It is a different approach. The forms are often simple, elegant, and compact. You can get an appreciation of glass as glass: its texture, color, refraction, transparency, and so on. And because of that, you also appreciate the artist’s craftsmanship and intentionality. The pieces look like they were made by someone who had something in mind, not like they just arrived from Mars.

Not that Philabaum glass isn’t technically sophisticated work. It is. He is known for his “scavo” technique, in which glass chemicals are applied directly to hot glass, which gives the product an ancient, antique look. His work is varied, and to my eyes, refreshing after having seen too much Chihuly.

If the Chihuly museum is the Disneyland of glass art, the Philabaum studio is the MOMA. They’re both good in their own way, but not comparable. Another difference is that you can own a Philabaum piece like the handsome orange vase above for about $700 (see www.philabaumglass.com) whereas you need many thousands of dollars to even stand near a Chihuly. Small imitations of Chihuly pieces (not even by Chihuly himself) in his museum store are in the thousands. A fair price, perhaps for artifacts from Mars.