Glassblowers defy the odds at Urban Glass

At UrbanGlass in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, glassworkers take the act of art-making to the extreme by harnessing fire’s destructive power in order to breathe creativity into beautiful objects. Ironically, this creative process, which demands dangerous discipline, does not stifle but rather promotes the innovation of artists, whose varied works are only classifiable by their common medium of molten sand.

The artist-access glass center is the largest of its kind in the United States and allows local and international artists to work on the mythical art form that most Americans believe exists exclusively on the Venetian isles. Really, these couture objects take shape close to home, as I realized after attending a preview dinner for UrbanGlass’s annual fund-raising auction on Thursday night.

Stepping from the elevator into the darkened studio space, I felt a bit like a Dante-esque character as a maitre d’ checked my name on the cocktail party guest list against a backdrop of the center’s three large, glowering furnaces. Meanwhile, in an adjoining gallery, artists and patrons mingled around pieces of glasswork to be auctioned at their annual gala in Chelsea the next day.

I had previously deemed the artists elusive as unicorns, but I freely spoke with them about their varied work, which ranges from two-dimensional decor pieces to installations that border on sculpture.

Glasswork is a creative solution for artists in search of a molten form that can encapsulate their volatile inspiration. For example, Carol Yorke an artist and board member at UrbanGlass, worked for years in pen and ink and now designs her forms in glass. Artist-in-residence Edison Osorco Zapata, a photographer and ceramicist, now focuses on installation glasswork, while Skitch, a glassblower since the age of eleven, enjoys working with a team to shape molten glass as he gathers inspiration from traditional Venetian techniques.

As part of the benefit, Skitch and his fellow workers entertained patrons in an unorthodox hot room demonstration by cooking food, including meats, on impromptu grills of 1200-degree molten glass. Sweat poured down the artists’ faces as they impaled pineapples with hot glass and dodged each other’s flesh as they transported pieces across the studio during a collaborative glassblowing demonstration.

The performance culminated in a fiery glass-clashing explosion on one of the dining tables, which easily confirmed my suspicions that I was tuned to the WWF channel of the art world.

Yet, this decadent use of the hot room takes place annually with great import in order to allow the epic workshop of UrbanGlass to remain a glassblower’s dreamland. At the gala, artists donated their pieces as patrons did their wallets in a collaborative funding effort to give new artists and masters the opportunity to work with this specialized medium. “To have a space like this in a metropolitan area is unfathomable,” Zapata said.

By offering beginning classes, weekend workshops, and master intensives to students while providing artists-in-residence with generous studio space, UrbanGlass fosters community and artistic exchange and allows the phantom beauty of glasswork to maintain an unwavering place in the mainstream.

Alyssa Rapp is a Barnard College sophomore majoring in visual arts. Art in Four Boroughs runs alternate Tuesdays.