Artisans’ Section next meeting Thursday April 8

Doug Auer, co-founder of Third Degree Glass Factory, will discuss St. Louis's largest, public-access glass art education center on Thursday, April 8, 7:00 pm in the second floor Members' Gallery of the St. Louis Artists Guild. Third Degree Glass Factory promotes contemporary glass art through education, studio facility rental for artists and students, a gallery shop featuring glass art made by Third Degree artists, and event venue rental. Located in a refurbished industrial building at 5200 Delmar between University City and the Central West End, it has become a popular venue through its Third Friday events that feature artisans blowing glass for the public with live music, cash bar and a fun atmosphere. Watch a great video about the creation of the Third Degree Glass Factory on their website.

There is no charge to attend the Creative Artisans' Guild section meeting. All members of the St. Louis Artists' Guild and guests are welcome. After Doug’s presentation there will be a business meeting for section members.

St Louis Artists’ Guild, Two Oak Knoll Park, Clayton, MO 63105
For more information contact mike@michaelandersonstudio.com
Photo: Third Degree Glass Factory

The Greatest Daffodil Show On Earth 2010

For most of us the sight of daffodils in bloom is always a welcome sign of spring. For St. Louis Artist Guild member, Debra Pratt, it is also the highlight of the year. Debra has a passion for daffodils and is the Chairperson of the Photography Division of the annual exposition of flowers and photographs to be presented this weekend at the Missouri Botanical Garden. The photo competition is open to all including children as well as professional photographers. Information and registration forms are available at The Greater St. Louis Daffodil Society website. The show opens Saturday March 27 at noon and is open until 5pm. Hours on Sunday are 9am-5pm.


I also promised Debra that I would post a photo of a work by Louis Comfort Tiffany inspired by her favorite flower, the daffodil. Between 1902 and 1905 Tiffany constructed Laurelton Hall, an 84-room country home on his family's 600 acre estate in Long Island, New York. It was "the culminating vision of a complete aesthetic environment, one imbued with a profound appreciation of nature." Although the opulent home was destroyed by fire in 1957 some remnants survive including complete glass and concrete capitals from a transition area between the house and gardens known as the Daffodil Terrace on display at the Morse Museum in Winter Park, FL. In 1906 Samuel Howe wrote that Tiffany "For years a Painter has given himself up to the peculiar study of transmitting beauties of Nature to elements of decoration.... The garden his school, the flower his companion, his friend and his inspirer."

Update: L. C. Tiffany art glass in St. Louis

As described by the St. Louis Union Station website, "A most impressive feature of the Grand Hall is the "Allegorical Window," a hand-made stained glass window with hand-cut Tiffany glass strategically positioned above the Station's main entryway. The window features three women representing the main U.S. train stations during the 1890s -- New York, St. Louis and San Francisco." There are thirteen Tiffany Company windows in the collection of the Second Presbyterian Church in the Central West End. The windows of Second Church show a number of features typical of the Tiffany style: The inclusion of nature, especially plants and water, the use of layers of glass to achieve dimensional effects and the use of "drapery glass" to add texture to the robes in the scenes. Drapery glass is made in the glassmaster's studio by working molten glass with tongs to create a thick and thin texture, the resulting glass looking like natural folds of fabric. More information about the history and the architecture of Second Church is at the church's website. Finally the dramatic red and blue rose windows of the magnificent Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis are the work of the Tiffany Company. They can be seen along with beautiful images of mosaics and sculptures by taking an online tour at Cathedral's excellent wbsite.

Algorithm based furniture design, Joris Laarman

Dutch designer Joris Laarman's unique aesthetic merges cutting-edge technology and the life-sciences to create work of unexpected beauty. In 2008, Laarman's Bone Chair and Bone Chaise, his first two works since graduating from Eindhoven, were displayed in MoMA's exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind. This marked a major milestone in his career and the chair subsequently, was added to the museum's permanent collection.
In 2006, Laarman's Bone Chair revolutionized the design process by using an algorithm to translate the complexity, proportion and functionality of human bone and tree growth into a chair form. The algorithm, originally used by the German car industry, enabled him to reduce and strengthen his designs by optimizing material allocation, weight and stability, while minimizing material input. In his own words, he sculpted "using mother nature's underlying codes."
His new exhibition(Freidman Benda, New York) is the culmination of five years of trial and error, exploratory material research and his continuous quest to translate science into functional objects of beauty now, on a monumental scale. His new body of work expands on his core investigations; it includes Skyline Storage, Fractal Bookshelf, a table that captures patterns inherent to flocks of birds, and a sustainable lamp made from living cells.

Photo: Bone Chair, Joris Laarmin

http://www.friedmanbenda.com/artists/joris-laarman/

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/9336/joris-laarman-at-friedman-benda-nyc.html

The Favrile Pottery of L. C. Tiffany

Louis Comfort Tiffany introduced his line of ceramics in St. Louis at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904. Compared to Tiffany glass in all its forms the pottery is rare. The total pottery production of Tiffany Studios is around two thousand pieces. The remaining number of existing pieces is small due to the fragility of ceramics and neglect by collectors in favor of art glass lamps, windows, fine jewelry and metal work. The Morse Museum in Winter Park, FL has the largest known collection of Tiffany Favrile pottery, about 90 pieces. Pottery was one of the last mediums Tiffany would explore and he had a great passion for it. Tiffany may have been more personally involved with pottery production than any other line he ever sold. It was named Favrile Pottery using the same old English term that Tiffany used for his glass. Registered as a Tiffany Trademark Feb. 1892 “Favrile” means hand-made or crafted.

Tiffany’s ceramics reflect the same formal and thematic concerns that distinguish his work in other mediums and include naturalism, historicism, exoticism and abstraction. Tiffany’s ceramic garden often amounts to nearly life-size representational sculpture. The use of ideas and forms from China, Japan, North Africa, Assyria (Iraq) and Persia (Iran) reflects the general interest in new travel and trade opportunities of the time. The movement away from realistic images in Tiffany’s ceramics and his work in general heralded the development of abstract art later in the century.


Throughout his 40-year career, Tiffany exhibited at every major international exposition, winning numerous honors, including a gold medal at St. Louis’s 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. In St. Louis, at least seven churches and the tombs of two prominent families were adorned with Tiffany stained glass. Other significant Tiffany commissions in St. Louis include interior decoration for the Busch family in 1911.


This information is based on notes compiled by Anthony Mier, the St. Louis Art Museum and the Morse Museum of Winter Park, FL.


Photo: Tiffany Furnaces, Vase, 1904-14, The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art collection, Winter Park, FL


http://www.lctiffanypottery.com/history3.htm


http://www.morsemuseum.org/home.html


http://stlouis.art.museum/emuseum/code/emuseum.asp?collection=6737&collectionname=Decorative%20Arts%20and%20Design&style=Browse&currentrecord=1&page=collection&profile=objects&searchdesc=Decorative%20Arts%20and%20Design&quicksearch=tiffany

Artisans' Section Next Meeting Thurs, March 11

Time: 7 - 9pm
Place: Members Gallery, 2nd floor, St. Louis Artists' Guild,
Two Oak Knoll Park, Clayton, MO, 63105

The next Artisans' Section meeting will focus on our members. All are encouraged to participate. Each member is invited to give a short informal presentation about recent work to our group. The presentation should be in a digital format such as jpg photo(s), a Powerpoint file, etc.and should be on a cd, a flashdrive or other usb type media. Members may bring an actual sample of work as well. The purpose is to allow section members an opportunity to utilize the Members' Gallery which the Artists' Guild staff has designated for members' exhibitions, section meetings, etc The room is an excellent space for digital projection. We will follow the presentations with a general discussion of goals and ideas for the Artisans' section including a future showcase event. A brief business meeting will conclude the evening. Need more info? email me at mike@michaelandersonstudio.com