Hunterdon Art Museum Symposium - “Pipe Art: Understudied Glass”

Please note: this free program will be held virtually using Zoom Webinar. Pre-registration is required. CLICK HERE TO PRE-REGISTER.

This symposium, “Pipe Art: Understudied Glass” considers the glass pipe as a fluid work of art fundamental to the art history of glass. Sometimes demoted by law or public opinion to the category of “paraphernalia,” the artwork of the pipe nonetheless defies its sometimes categorization as sub-sculpture. Celebrated artists Kim Thomas and Dan Coyle, whose works are featured in the current exhibition, and Luken Sheafe, whose artist name is SALT, will present their intensely wrought, figural, and in the case of Thomas, sometimes kinetic, pipes.

Joined by Susie J. Silbert, Curator at the Corning Museum of Glass, these artists will further contextualize their work within the burgeoning field of pipe-making. The symposium additionally will consider historical glass that is sometimes demoted by structures of power and hierarchy and therefore figures in an understudied cultural history of the United States. Art historian Joseph Larnerd will illuminate the rich personal history and aesthetic power of a 1909 cut glass bowl, and Jason Vartikar will reflect on 19th-century blown-glass jugs.

Panelists:

Susie J. Silbert, Curator of Postwar & Contemporary Glass, Corning Museum of Glass
Dan Coyle, Artist, Pipe-maker
Joseph Larnerd: Assistant Professor, Art History, Drexel University
Luken Sheafe, known as SALT, Artist, Pipe-maker
Kim Thomas, Artist, Pipe-maker
Jason Vartikar, Curator of Special Projects, Hunterdon Art Museum; Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Art & Art History, Stanford University
Caitlin Vitalo, Curator of the “Glass in the Expanded Field”