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Movement Without a Center
originally published in GASNews, march-May 1999

           I recently had the opportunity to visit Corning, New York, home of Corning, Inc., but more to the point, home of the Corning Museum of Glass and the Rakow Library. Singular priceless objects, hundreds of variations on a production type, obscure catalogs, out-of-print books, self-produced videos (and in the town, a bar called The Glory Hole): all of these resources are available for your leisurely inspection and edification. For anyone with even a passing interest in the history of glass - from 3000 BC to last week - this collection of books and artifacts has the deep fascination of the Source, the mother lode, Mecca!
           On the same excursion, flipping through TV channels one night in the hotel, I came across the Chihuly Over Venice video on PBS, Dale’s latest bid for immortality (or at least nationwide name-recognition). He was talking about Seattle as having the greatest concentration of glassblowers in the world, more hot shops per capita, a phenomenal vortex of activity unmatched anywhere on the planet, etc.
            Upon my return to the little island where I live, wading through the foot-high stack of mail that had accumulated in my absence, I withdrew the last issue of the GAS News and soon came to the short blurb promoting the year 2000 G.A.S. conference in Brooklyn. At one point John Perreault, co-chair of the event, promised that "full advantage will be taken of New York City as a world art center." Hearing a discordant note of civic humility in that sentence, I went back and read the original copy - which maintained "New York City as the world art center" (italics mine). Somewhere in our production process, the absolute had become indefinite and that set me thinking about the whole idea of centrality.
           I don't believe that our particular universe - the glassy one - revolves around any one hub, be it physical, metaphysical, aesthetic, geographical or even historical. People seem to come to this medium from every possible direction and their involvement takes as many different forms. There is no presiding oligarchy or dominant school of thought. Even with the growth of glass- centric communities in Asheville or New York or Seattle (to name just some of the US locales) the studio glass movement remains remarkably widespread and independent.
           Rather than being connected by spokes from one acknowledged center, there is instead a network of people that manifests clusters but also contains a significant number of individuals working in virtual isolation. We remain connected to each other - beyond our immediate communities - through the summer programs, workshops, publications, Internet sites and organizations such as G.A.S. that foster exchange.
           When we announced Tampa as the site of the 1999 conference, more than a few people approached me with a puzzlement bordering on bewilderment. Tampa wasn't considered the - or even a - center of the glass world. But a largely scattered group of individuals from the local area, ranging from artists to students to patrons and supporters, gathered together to do the hard work of putting on a conference and will create, for four or five days in April, a temporary center. When the traveling tent show that is G.A.S. moves on, perhaps another structure will remain. But I hope the rest of us will have succeeded in locating one more pocket of activity and the notion of centrality will have further dissolved. 

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