Encore international glass festival set for next spring

Hampton Roads will heat up like a furnace next spring with "Art of Glass 2," an encore presentation of international glass exhibitions. The project builds on a 1999 series of shows that helped make this region into a center for glass art.

The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk and the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia in Virginia Beach, which saw large crowds in 1999, will again be partners along with the Virginia Arts Festival. Most shows and programs will take place from April through July of 2009.

"I think almost from the day after that show closed, people have been talking about 'When are you going to do another one?' " said Bill Hennessey, director of the Chrysler, which has an internationally known glass collection. "We were waiting for the right combination of people and timing and artists."

Headlining the Chrysler's lineup is a major retrospective of work by Lino Tagliapietra, an Italian master some experts have called the world's finest glassblower. His sleek "Endeavor," consisting of six abstract "boats" floating in space, is a featured work in the Chrysler's glass galleries.

A "light painting" by Stephen Knapp will enliven the exterior of the museum. The Massachusetts artist will position pieces of coated glass on the building and shine light through them, creating colored prisms, Hennessey said. The result will be a vivid abstract painting, entirely from light, that will be especially visible at night.

Also, the Chrysler has invited major glass artists to create pieces based on works in the Chrysler's collection.

The Contemporary Art Center will feature Seattle-area glass master Dante Marioni. "He learned the great Italian style of blowing glass, but adds to it this American sensibility of scale and color and audacity," said Cameron Kitchin, the center's director.

Whimsical work by Hank Murta Adams also will be featured.

The center also will exhibit emerging glass artists, and glass art that entered local collections in the past decade.

For "Art of Glass 2," the Virginia Arts Festival will include the glass programs in all of its promotions. Rob Cross, festival director, said he will book a dance company that performs in ways suggesting the color and movement seen in glass art.

The festival will stage concerts in local churches with stained-glass windows by significant artists. Also, a glass furnace will be set up at festival venues, so patrons can watch glassblowers at work.

So far, 15 or so other local museums and galleries have expressed interest in providing glass-related programs during "Art of Glass 2," said Suzanne Mastracco of Norfolk, who is co-chairing the event with Andrew Fine of Virginia Beach.

The 1999 project drew about 150,000 participants and resulted in the creation of a glassblowing program at Tidewater Community College and more local glass artists and collectors, festival organizers said. During next year's events, Fine said, as it was in 1999, "we will be the place in the world to come and see contemporary art glass."

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com