It sounds like a great idea – taking the classic blown glass Venetian goblet and super-sizing it American-style. But John Miller’s collaborations with 27 other artists to make the giant, 4-foot-high goblets in “Gathering” at the Museum of Glass don’t have the same effect as intricately crafted human-sized cups. Rather than impressing with skill, they shout their ideas at you like a holiday-lights display. The effect ranges from cheesy to weird to fascinating, with a few managing pure beauty.
In the cheesy department are several at the gallery’s entrance. In his “High Volume” goblet series begun 15 years ago, Miller creates the goblet’s bowl and base, inviting various glass artist friends to create the stem based on their own particular style. The cheese comes when the two don’t match or when otherwise good ideas are blown up super-scale, rather like inflatable 8-foot Halloween pumpkins on your lawn.
“Dirty Dog Daquiri” takes the Victorian dog figurines of Karen Willenbrink-Johnsen and Jasen Johnsen and has them swilling poolside beneath a giant goblet of glass cocktail. The pink drink looks like a Frankenstein potion, the lemon like an enormous caterpillar and the dogs are too kitschy for their own good.
Jen Elek’s “Scintillator” is likewise kitschy: Her usual bubblegum-bright glass balls are swirled all over a clear goblet, connected with a cobweb mess of cords and plugged in, like holiday-light art that’s really hard to look at.
Further in, the cheese gets rather weird. Miller’s own “Slider” goblet splices a glass hamburger between a ketchup-red bowl and base. You can see the point he’s trying to make about icons and fond memories, but the effect is disconcerting, as is Fritz Dreisbach’s “Untitled” piece which wedges a childlike glass red truck in the middle of two flared red and gold ends, like a Christmas firecracker (or salt shaker, maybe – the kind you buy at very strange garage sales).
Paul Nelson’s “Lino Cup” starts with a good idea – a plain black wine glass perched on a glassy head with inebriated smile – but the proportions aren’t right. Why not make the bowl into a giant head, rather like Oliver Doriss’ glass babies?
Other pieces in “Gathering” work well, their size drawing you into their fascinating suggestions. Rik Allen’s “Flurbian Maximous” sits one of his gorgeous Verne-like underwater vessels, silvery and steampunk beneath a bubbly sea-water bowl with octopus tentacles crawling over the base. The De La Torre brothers’ margarita glass has a drunken, flower-strewn cartoon character supporting a matching lime-green drink like a Bacchanalian party. Martin Blank’s “Quiver Cup” has a delicate stem of his crinkled glass “logs,” such as the ones in the pool sculpture outside the museum delicately balanced beneath a pink martini glass. The dialogue between large and fragile is wonderful, though it would have looked even better with Blank making the bowl, too. Scott Darlington also plays on the juxtaposition of size and delicacy, his clear glass goblet “tattooed” all over with white canework, with a wrench for a stem.
Finally, visitors will find goblets that are simply beautiful to look at, merging size and style in a unified whole. Mark Petrovic places a black-beaked bird under a long cream and brown bowl like an homage to Edgar Allen Poe. Richard Royal’s “Salvo” is tall and elongated with classic grace, blending olive and sage with a tiny pink stopper enveloped in the stem. Paul Marioni’s oddly titled “Drinkin’ and Drivin’ ” isn’t as good as his small goblets, but the blobby, vacant face on the stem of his clear glass is subtly fun. Robert Carlson paints enamel borders (blue and black dots, yellow and blue knots, squares and diamonds) on his clear glass chalice to subtly highlight its waists and curves, like a Turkish mosaic.
“Gathering” isn’t the deepest art show ever hosted by the museum, but the one opening this weekend – Paul Stankard’s tiny, flameworked still-life sculptures encased as if by magic in clear crystal paperweights – looks far more promising and definitely more subtle. If subtlety isn’t what you’re looking for, the giant goblets in “Gathering” make fun eye candy, at least for a holiday mood.
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568, rosemary.ponnekanti@ thenewstribune.com
NEW GLASS AT MOG
What: “Gathering: John Miller and Friends” giant glass goblets, plus “Beauty beyond Nature: The Glass Art of Paul Stankard,” which is opening Saturday
Where: Museum of Glass, 1801 Dock St., Tacoma
When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 12-5 p.m. Sundays, 10 a.m.- 8 p.m. third Thursdays through June 10
Admission: $12/$10/$5/free for those younger than 6 and 5-8 p.m. third Thursdays
Information: 866-468-7386, museumofglass.org
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