Felicia LeRoy’s Drift is part of “Absolute Zero” at UW-Memorial Union.
UW-Madison is home to the first collegiate glass program in the U.S. It turned 60 in 2022, and the glass program is kicking off a year-long celebration called Glass Madison, starting this month. October features six gallery shows on campus, all open to the public.
Helen Lee, associate professor of glassworking, is spearheading the exhibitions as well as pulling together info on all the Glass Madison public programming for the rest of the year (including a show of her own work at Arts + Literature Lab in January). A registration-only symposium for other college and community glass programs takes place on campus in October.
Lee is keen on “updating the narrative of glass at UW-Madison and offering the public an opportunity to learn about how contemporary glass artists are working with glass today.”
The story of the glass program at UW often centers on Harvey Littleton, known as the “father of the studio glass movement,” who launched the program in 1962. And sometimes, people know program alumnus Dale Chihuly, who may be the closest the glass world has to a pop star.
In the 1980s and 1990s the program centered on more commercialized market-oriented glassmaking, Lee says. The program’s more recent alumni and current students are using glass “in far more exploratory, research-based, creative fine art practices,” and that will be showcased in the six exhibits this month.
“The Sixth Decade of UW Glass,” at Art Lofts Gallery and Backspace Gallery (111 N. Frances St.), Oct. 1-22, includes works from 2013-2023 alumni and a few current students. This is the site for larger installation-based works, says Lee.
“Flameworking,” at the Gelsy Verna Gallery, also at the Art Lofts, Oct. 1-22, highlights the use of flameworking (i.e., glass made using a torch) at UW-Madison.
“Research and Outreach” at the School of Education Gallery, Oct. 2-17, focuses on ways of thinking about glass — “how we use it, where we use it, who has access to it,” Lee says. Exhibitors are alumni from the last decade. One is working on how to recycle window glass to make it a viable blowing glass for educational glass studios, explains Lee; another on how to reformulate glass so it does not need to be fired at such high temperatures in order to blow it. Also featured are outreach and education projects and “artistic-leaning but similarly research-based projects” that Lee characterizes as “different ways of visualizing glass.”
“Absolute Zero” is a two-person show at the main gallery at the UW-Memorial Union, Sept. 29-Nov. 17, featuring the work of Felicia LeRoy, a 2014 graduate, and current master of fine arts candidate Carolyn Spears. Both are interested in ice. “They’re trained in some of the hottest material on earth, and using those skills to speak to some of the coldest material on earth,” Lee says.
In the 7th floor gallery of the Humanities building, glass works from 18 artists from collegiate programs nationwide are featured in “Good Things: Intercollegiate Small Works,” Oct. 6-22, to “see where the pulse of glassmaking is today,” Lee says.
Tom Zickuhr
A neon "person" watching a television.
Tom Zickuhr's neon installation at Art Lofts.
Work from Tom Zickuhr, lecturer in neon at UW-Madison, is in the Micro Gallery, a window on the ground floor of the Arts Lofts, Oct. 1-22. Zickuhr notes that UW-Madison’s glass program is one of just four in the country that includes neon.
“Wrestling with Balance” is the title of his installation of neon art, which he calls “weird” but also “fun.” Because it will be displayed in a window, it will be visible from outside the Art Lofts 24/7; the window is near Harvey House and Bandit at the West Washington depot area and should get a lot of eyes. Says Zickuhr: “It will look really cool in the dark.”
More info on Glass Madison events throughout the year will be found at glasslab.art.wisc.edu/glassmadison.
