Each year, GAS selects three artists with promising talent to introduce their work to a large audience of established artists, educators, peers, collectors, and critics. Qualified individuals are nominated by professional academics and curators, and then evaluated and selected by a small jury. The 2016 jurors included artist and director Osamu Noda from Niijima, Tokyo, Japan, as well as artist and educator Jeff Zimmer of Edinburgh, Scotland. Noda and Zimmer selected the three emerging artists from more than 20 applications.
“The ecumenical approach to working with glass among this year’s entrants, its techniques and expressive potential, was impressive,” said Zimmer. “I’m pleased that our three winners display a diversity of aesthetic, from the carnal to the cool to the kitsch."
James Labold was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He received his BFA from Tyler School of Art and his MFA from Ball State University. Labold’s glass and mixed media work explores the connections between patriotism and mysticism through objects and installations. He is inspired by the ideals embodied in the historic sites of the American Revolution as well as the crumbling factories and neighborhoods surrounding them. His work was included in New Glass Review in 2010 and 2015. Labold was awarded a 2014 Rosenberg Residency in Salem, Massachusetts. He currently lives and works in Muncie, Indiana.
Ito Laïla Le François was born in Québec and holds diplomas in sculpture and glass art. Her works are unfolding chimeras with strong primitive touches as she examines the beauty and ugliness of living beings. Femininity, violence, and body obsession govern her art – instinctively, metaphors emerge. In her creations the human and animal anatomy are omnipresent with looming death and the coexistence of life. She studied three years in sculpture at MMAQ (Québec, QC), and continued her education in the visual arts program at Concordia University (Montréal, QC). Ito Laïla Le François recently won the 2015 RBC Award for Glass.
Wil Eldridge Sideman was born and raised in New England. He studied for his BFA at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and received scholarships from and attended workshops at Pilchuck Glass School, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and The Penland School of Crafts. In 2013 Sideman received his MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He served as a visiting artist and lecturer at the Massachusetts College of Art, and recently participated in Artist in Residency programs at North Lands Creative Glass Center and Star Works. Sideman's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and he is currently the Visiting Assistant Professor of Glass at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
The emerging artist presentations are made possible by the Saxe Emerging Artists Lecture Fund. For more information about the 2016 GAS conference, please visit www.glassart.org.
Images (L to R): Ito Laïla Le François, La Malcommode (work in progress), photo by Boris Plique; James Labold, Divisive Ruling; Wil Eldridge Sideman, Piscatoribus Sacrum
About the Glass Art Society
The Glass Art Society is an international non-profit organization founded in 1971 whose purpose is to encourage excellence, to advance education, to promote the appreciation and development of the glass arts, and to support the worldwide community of artists who work with glass. We hold an annual conference, publish the Glass Art Society Journal and provide online versions of GASnews and the Glass Art Society Online Member Directory featuring member profiles with image gallery, bio and more.
GAS strives to stimulate communication among artists, educators, students, collectors, gallery and museum personnel, art critics, manufacturers, and all others interested in and involved with the production, technology and aesthetics of glass. We are dedicated to creating greater public awareness and appreciation of the glass arts.
About the Saxe Emerging Artists Lecture Fund
Dorothy and the late George Saxe began collecting glass in 1980, and over the course of their marriage they built one of the premier collections of contemporary glass in the United States. As collectors the Saxes supported artists, galleries, and institutions, and have helped to give glass a prominence in museums across the country. At the 2015 GAS conference in San Jose, the Glass Art Society honored the Saxes with a tribute event, which helped create an endowment for The Saxe Emerging Artists Lecture Fund to support future generations of glass artists.
To make a donation to this fund, visit http://www.glassart.org/donate_to_GAS.html.
More information:
GLASSART.ORG
6512 23rd AVE NW, STE 329
SEATTLE, WA 98117
+1 (206) 382.1305
INFO@GLASSART.ORG
Venue:
THE CORNING MUSEUM OF GLASS
One Museum Way
Corning, NY 14830
+1 (800) 732-6845
www.cmog.org
