Kiln-formed works take center stage in Glass Center showcase

Featuring works on the cutting edge of kiln-formed glass, Emerge/Evolve, is the first exhibit at the Pittsburgh Glass Center dedicated solely to this technique.

Kiln-formed glass objects are made with glass that has been tested to be compatible for fusing when heated in a kiln.

The works on display are by 11 artists from around the world and were selected from current and past exhibitors in Emerge 2014, Bullseye Glass Co.'s eighth biennial kiln-glass exhibition for emerging artists. Based in Portland, Ore., Bullseye manufactures clear and colored billets used for glass casting.

The works are ambitious, to say the least.

For example, visitors will be immediately struck by Kate Clements' untitled wall installation, which is an assemblage of more than 40 separate lace-like parts that can be reconfigured to the size and space in which it is installed.

It was the most challenging work in the exhibition to install, says glass-center marketing director Paige Ilkhanipour.

Each panel is composed of fused glass frit, or granules, and is extremely thin and delicate in many areas. While the pieces are quite stable as a whole, the utmost care had to be taken to handle each piece with two hands at all times.

Clements says the Amber Room and the front gate at the Catherine Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, were the inspiration for the decorative nature of the piece. It takes the architecture of the palace and translates it into a glass wall or barrier as a stand-in for the real thing. These imitations and absences act as a veil of protection that is, ultimately, removed when the viewer discovers that the materials are standing in for something else.

The amber-colored glass can never be the lusciousness of real amber, Clements says, and it can't transcend to being gold, either.

In this way, the piece lures the viewer in but, ultimately, fails to be what it is attempting to be.

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Kiln-formed works take center stage in Glass Center showcase