The Museum of Glass Presents New Work by Mildred Howard

Written by Kathryn Vordeman Wednesday, 29 June 2011 00:27

Tacoma, WA.- The Museum of Glass is pleased to present "Parenthetically Speaking: It’s Only a Figure of Speech", a new collection of work by San Francisco-based artist Mildred Howard. Comprising more than 40 glass punctuation marks, proofreading symbols and musical notes, the exhibition will open on July 2nd and remain on view through April 29th 2012. Howard began working on the series while she was an artist in residence at Pilchuck Glass School in 2010. Her inspiration came from 'At the End', a poem by Howard’s friend and Peabody Award winner Quincy Troupe. Both the poem and the exhibition reference punctuation as a metaphor for the passage of time. “Life is a series of questions,” comments Howard. “As soon as you answer one, you’re on to the next.” Howard continued to create objects for the exhibition during a Visiting Artist residency at the Museum of Glass in January, 2011.

The individual sculptures are made in either opaque red or black glass and will be installed on charcoal gray walls in the gallery.  Troupe’s poem will also be presented in the exhibition space. Howard’s "Blackbird in a Red Sky (a.k.a. Fall of the Blood House)" was one of the Museum’s acclaimed inaugural outdoor art installations displayed on the Mezzanine Plaza in 2002. The piece consisted of a house made of red glass panes set alongside dozens of red glass apples floating in the reflecting pool. Mildred Howard is a prolific mixed media and installation artist whose work draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary experiences. Her work explores the layers of personal and historical meaning and metaphor surrounding everyday objects. She has received numerous awards including the Anonymous Was a Woman Fellowship; an NEA grant in sculpture; the Eureka Fellowship; a Rockefeller Artists Fellowship to Bellagio, Italy; and a Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Traveling Fellowship to Oaxaca, Mexico.  She lives and works in Berkeley, CA.

The Museum of Glass provides a dynamic learning environment to appreciate the medium of glass through creative experiences, collections and exhibitions. In addition to the Hot Shop Amphitheater where visitors can watch artists work, the facilities include galleries, outdoor exhibition areas, a theater, hands-on art studio, grand hall, café and store. The Museum’s Visiting Artist Program invites internationally known artists and emerging artists from the region and around the world to work with the Museum’s resident Hot Shop Team to explore, invent and create with glass. The museum gives artists an opportunity to experiment and push the limits of their work. Offering a diverse mixture of culture, style, focus and expertise, each artist creates a sense of excitement and wonder, giving you the rare opportunity to witness professionals making art. The Museum invites artists for week-long residencies (usually Wednesday-Sunday) and shorter residencies (usually Mondays and Tuesdays in the summer and Fridays the rest of the year). Visiting Artists have included Dale Chihuly, Preston Singletary, Lino Tagliapietra, Ginny Ruffner, Marvin Lipofsky, Dante Marioni, Anne Wilson, and Maya Lin. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.museumofglass.org

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