This August, glass artists from around the world will flock to Stanwood, Washington, to dive into three days of heady conversations about how their chosen material is intertwined with the world of design, from small-scale sculptural lamps to huge architectural installations.
Pilchuck Glass School’s inaugural Design Conference follows on the heels of two earlier gatherings: the Neon Symposium in 2023 and last year’s Casting Conference. According to Michael Endo, Pilchuck’s artistic director, the response to those events revealed a desire for more focused exploration of specific areas of glass art. If he could point to any trends reflected in this year’s program, he says that contemporary artists are increasingly finding a home for their work in craft and design spaces.
“With so many art galleries closing, there’s actually this opening for galleries like R & Company [in New York] or Marta down in LA, where the line between art and design is being blurred purposefully,” Endo says. “It’s been happening for a while, but I think it’s intensifying with the rise of AI, this interest in and desire for materiality—what material means, what it means to touch something, and how materials impart meaning. That is a realm that design has been investigating even longer than some of the fine-art world.”
Brooklyn-based lighting design studio In Common With will present at the conference. In this photo, a light designed by Felicia Hung hangs in a home.
