Out of 40 nominated artists, Fumi Amano, Krista Israel, and Madeline Rile Smith are receiving the 2022 Saxe Emerging Artist Award because of their innovation, unique concepts, and dedication to the medium of glass.
Explore the 2022 Saxe Emerging Artist virtual exhibition!
Fumi Amano
ARTIST STATEMENT
As a Japanese woman living in the United States, I often struggle with my attempts to communicate. Not only is English my second language, but also the stereotypes of Asian women make it difficult for me to build healthy relationships. I feel the impact of being a minority much more in America, where assumptions about Asians are both superficial and hurtful. At the same time, Asian ideals of womanhood and beauty have been affected by Western culture: the resulting twisted idea of beauty is internalized by Asian women, eating away at our identity and self-worth.
I make sculptures using mundane objects such as window frames and old glass lampshades. Through the mending of old materials, I explore the concept of rebuilding our broken world. A broken world that is the result of the current political climate and the COVID pandemic.
I have been encouraged to speak louder as a minority artist since the racial equity movement has grown recently. Through my art, I am trying to expose the absurdities of a manipulative social structure. I challenge the tradition of the “silent Asian woman” to reveal the complexities that lie underneath the guise of the superficial “dream” of being an Asian woman.
Fumi Amano was born in Aichi, Japan and first learned glassmaking as a traditional Japanese craft. She earned a BFA from Aichi University of Education (2008) and studied glass at the Toyama City Institute of Glass Art (2010). In 2013, Amano moved to the United States and earned an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (2017).
Krista Israel
ARTIST STATEMENT
Looking at my work it is like entering a story. The artworks are pleasing to the eye but there is a layer of bittersweetness in everyone of them. My works are in a realistic style, but it is not about the obvious reality – it must be viewed past the sparkles and gold. I use a broad variety of techniques, using the natural characteristics of glass to express my thoughts and reflections of the world and people and thus address the needs of our wellbeing.
Krista Israel graduated with honours at IKA Glassdepartment (BE) in 2013 and 2016. She participated in exhibitions in multiple countries within the EU, in the USA and China. Her work is selected for Coburg Glas Preis, 2022; nominated for the Dutch glass prize Bernadine de Neeve Prize, Association Friends of Modern Glas, 2021; received Stipend 2018, Association Friends of Modern Glass; was invited for ‘Originality & Ingenuity’ residency, Liling Ceramic Valley Museum, China, 2017; received the academic grant for Dutch glass artists by Glass Gallery Aventurijn, 2014; she designed/produced the collectors object Dutch Association Friends of Modern Glass, 2015.
Madeline Rile Smith
ARTIST STATEMENT
I use glass as a performative vehicle to consider notions of intimacy and embodiment. Informed by my experience with chronic pain, my work explores degrees of ability and compromise of the human body. Pain has caused periods of isolation in my life, and as a result I have a strong impulse to connect with others. Through objects and performance, I examine the pleasure, intimacy, and discomfort that accompany the interpersonal experiences, which we all seek.
Drawing upon glass’s capacity for sound and optics, I create objects for sensory disruption and amplification. I am curious where the line is drawn between help and hindrance, between intimacy and unease. My instruments of connection and compromise invite people to engage in acts of intimacy and potential discomfort. These objects ask the question– how close is too close? What are the limits?
In the studio, both body and material navigate and transform through tests of strength, stamina, and speed. Just like the human body, glass has physical limits which ask to be challenged. My work draws a parallel between the physicality of glass and the human body, comparing material affordance to corporeal affordance. I utilize the material metaphors inherent to glass–invisibility, luminosity, resilience, and fragility– to consider the dualities of pain and joy; fluidity and rigidity; and isolation and connection.
Madeline Rile Smith is an artist specializing in glass with a focus on performance, video, and body-activated sculpture. Madeline’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Museum of Arts and Design, Toyama Glass Art Museum, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, and in New Glass Review 41 and 35. She earned an MFA at Rochester Institute of Technology, and a BFA from Tyler School of Art. A passionate educator, she has instructed glassworking in numerous institutions and is currently an adjunct professor of glass art at Salem Community College and Tyler School of Art.
Jurors
Anthony Amoako-Attah
Anthony Amoako-Attah is a current PhD student at the University of Sunderland. He started his artist career from KNUST- Ghana where he did ceramics and later continued to pursue his masters in glass at his current university. Taught as teaching assistant and ceramic technician in KNUST and Sunyani Technical University respectively. Unlike many contemporary artists, Amoako Attah is primarily self-taught whose work focuses on migration, integration, dislocation and life chances. Anthony put his traditional Kente designs and Adinkra symbols on glass through printing of glass powders and enamels through kiln forming techniques making the glass looks like a woven or printed fabric.
Timothy Horn
Timothy Horn’s work embraces several disciplines and draws from a broad bank of materials, including cast glass, blown glass, various metals, transparent rubber, and sugar. The focus of Horn’s work is the meeting point between the natural and constructed worlds, where he attempts to locate the area of slippage between the organic and artificial. Scale is important, but he also chooses to work with materials for their inherent physical and metaphorical qualities. The fabled ‘Amber Room’ belonging to Catherine the Great of Russia, considered
“the eighth wonder of the world”, inspired a crystallized rock sugar encrusted carriage and chandelier that featured in the exhibition ‘Forces of Nature’ in 2021 at the Renwick Gallery in Washington DC. His recent ‘Tree of Heaven’ and ‘Gorgonian’ series were exhibited at the 2018 Adelaide Biennial at the Art Gallery of South Australia. These works combine the two distinct sources that have inspired his work over the past decade: those being patterns of 17th century jewelry, and 19th-century studies of natural forms such as lichen and coral. Other exhibitions featuring Horn’s work include the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Weatherspoon Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. Originally from Australia, Timothy Horn now lives and works in Truro, Massachusetts.
Paul Marioni
For decades, Marioni has stressed that glass is a medium that may be used freely for artistic expression and refused to be limited by either tradition or expectation. Marioni served as instructor in many schools around the World and at the Pilchuck Glass School from 1974 through 1988 teaching classes and workshops in architectural glass, casting, conceptual art, and flat techniques such as stained glass. His influence on generations of artists is undeniable. He is a Surrealist and has degrees in Philosophy and Literature.
Zesty Meyers
Zesty Meyers was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1969. In 1990, he formed the radical installation and performance art group B Team, which became one of the first non-profit arts organizations comprised of visual artists using installation and performance with molten glass as their primary medium. The B Team integrated craft, fine art, and performance in groundbreaking ways and served as inspiration for a deeper interaction and dialogue between art forms. In 1997, Meyers founded the gallery R 20th Century (now R & Company) in New York City with fellow B team member Evan Snyderman. R & Company has since established itself as one of the most prominent galleries in the world and contributed to creating a renewed global interest in collectible design. Through their research, exhibitions, and publications, R & Company has resurrected interest in now-iconic designers like Verner Panton, Wendell Castle, Greta Magnusson Grossman, and Joaquim Tenreiro, and helped further the career of contemporary artists such as Jeff Zimmerman, Katie Stout, Rogan Gregory, and Serban Ionescu, to name a few.Through R & Company, Meyers currently develops exhibitions and publications on design from North and South America, Europe, and Asia, produced between 1945 and today.
Yoko Togashi
Yoko Togashi is a glass artist based in Kanagawa, Japan. She studied oil painting and printmaking at Musashino Art University and learned the basic knowledge of glass at Toyama Institute of Glass Art and Pilchuck Glass School. Her technique is wide-ranging, such as blown glass, kiln-work and painting. She and Yosuke Miyao established the Miyatomi Glass Studio in Kanagawa in 2010, and created artwork for hotels, offices, temples, and public spaces using lenticular glass (which they invented in 2004), and various other techniques. From these experiences, she is conscious of the faint light of joy, compassion, and support that brightly illuminates people’s lives, and is exploring whether the work has a role to play. Togashi has been challenging her sculptures in recent years using the technique of blown glass. Although it was canceled due to COVID19, her work was selected to be exhibited at TEFAF 2021. She also has experience teaching students at Musashino Art University and Tokyo University of the Arts.