Sarah Archer (MA ‘06) is chief curator at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. Prior to this, she was director of Greenwich House Pottery and curatorial assistant at the Museum of Arts and Design. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Modern Craft, American Craft, Artnet, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Hand/Eye, Modern Magazine and The Huffington Post. She most recently guest-curated Bright Future: New Designs in Glass at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery (February 10 through May 5, 2012).
Your upcoming exhibition, Bright Future: New Designs in Glass, at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, is timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the development of studio art glass in America. What do you hope the exhibition will accomplish?
What I learned in the process of developing the show and
what I hope people will take away from it is that glass is full of
possibilities they might not be aware of. Bright Future includes
both objects for use and works of art in an effort to contrast the way people
work with the material to achieve different results, and to demonstrate
connections between industry and the glass studio. The exhibition looks at
architecture, electronics, tableware, lighting and sculpture— beyond the
furnace, so to speak.
This approach reminded me
that what we non-chemists call “glass” is actually only
one typeof glass, called soda-lime. Most household goods like Pyrex
are made from tempered soda-lime glass, and artists have been using it for
millenia. Meanwhile, materials scientists are continuing to develop
different types of glass for electronics like Corning’s Gorilla Glass, which is
used in the iPhone and iPad, or glass-reinforced concrete, a new translucent
building material. Glass can be alloyed with metal, made thin, flexible and
strong, it can even have circuitry printed on it. It has a lot of advantages
for architects and designers concerned with sustainability: it is not a rare or
precious substance, and it is not plastic. So on the one hand, glass has an
incredible aesthetic and technological history stretching back over five
thousand years that is still inspiring artists today, and on the other hand it
is emerging as a high-tech material that is continuing to yield new
possibilities for designers. I find that amazing.
Was glass your focus while studying at the Bard Graduate Center? If not, how did you find yourself involved with the subject?
I did not focus on glass, though I did take a wonderful seminar
on Ancient Ceramics and Glass with Elizabeth Simpson which included a field
trip to Corning. Prior to that I didn’t know much about the science of
glass, and the combination of being able to view live demonstrations of
glassblowing and seeing their collection (which includes things like Roman cage
cups) was spectacular. My focus since graduating has been largely on ceramics,
and I have always considered ceramics and glass fraternal twins because they
have so much in common.
But working with Pratt was actually
the result of an interest in contemporary lighting. I developed an exhibition
idea that focused on new lighting designs and many of the works combined glass
and LEDs. I showed it to a curator who then recommended me to Pratt for this
project realizing that there was common ground, so I retooled the proposal but
retained quite a few lighting designs, and they ran with it.
What brought you to the Philadelphia Art Alliance? Any plans at that institution for 2012 that you are particularly looking forward to?
I have this funny combination of a love for historic
buildings and working with emerging artists, so the chance to curate
contemporary exhibitions in a 1905 mansion just hit all the right notes.
Because it was once a private residence, the PAA has domestic proportions
(albeit quite grand) and artists who are concerned with history, decoration,
fabrication, luxury, or domesticity tend to fall in love with it. It is
also one of the few organizations I know of that does not have the word
“craft” in its name, but wishes it did, rather than the other way
around. Our focus is pretty broad in the sense that we show functional objects
but we also present site-specific installations and works of art that address
materiality in some way.
2012 is shaping up to be exciting.
In particular I’m eager to see what Adam Wallacavage’s installation of Jules
Verne-inspired chandeliers will look like and what dramatic wall color he
chooses, and Sabrina Gschwandtner’s translucent quilts hand-assembled from
vintage film cells instead of fabric. Much of what we show has a kind of normal
analog out in the world—quilts and chandeliers are commonplace, but my hope is
that when people visit our galleries, they will start to look at things
differently for having seen the way artists envision “everyday”
objects.
