Florida’s flora, fauna and mythos are central to much of “Hot Glass,” the Cornell Art Museum’s newest exhibition. The medium is glass art, and with most of the artists hailing from our home state, the subject matter often presents as a scenic amble through our tropical paradise.
Joshua Fradis, with his focus on marine life, typifies this approach through standout sculptures like his life-size vision of ruby and purple jellyfish in mid-flight, casting their reflected doubles on the gallery wall behind them; and his “My New Home,” in which an octopus emerges from one of many coral-like vases. Creatures of our seas also dominate the sculptures of Chadd Lacy, whose “ROYGBIV Whales” features humpbacks in a circular formation that together encompass all the colors of the rainbow. Like many pieces in “Hot Glass,” it exudes a sense of joy and play.
In the oversized vessel “Bird Island, Florida,” by Chuck Boux, a figure stands in front of a blazing orange sunset and framed by palm trees, while silhouetted birds soar overhead. Meanwhile, Florida’s cultural topography provided inspiration for Claudia Henao’s “Reflective Reality,” an aerial, cartoonish assemblage of the state’s landmarks in glass and clay, from rockets launched out of Cape Canaveral to beaches, galleries and the iconic Guitar Hotel.
While everything selected for “Hot Glass” is beautifully crafted and of professional quality—one artist, Rob Stern, whose “Copper Cairn” captures an impressive sense of motion, even competed on Season 3 of “Blown Away,” a glass-blowing competition series on Netflix—a few of the more striking works ascend above and beyond creative representation and into the realm of commentary. The whales are having far less fun in Chadd Lacy’s “Balance of Power,” in which a harpoon is presented in its normal size atop a comparatively tiny blown-glass humpback.
Likewise, repurposed shards of green glass form the bulk of Jenna H. Efrein’s “Once Was…”, a site-specific standout in a corner gallery space, in which sea life navigates an ocean floor littered with the human detritus of broken beer bottles. Efrein also contributed my favorite piece in the exhibition, “Chair Up, It’s Not That Bad,” a series of miniatures showing the evolution of a ladderback chair from its first inklings as a visual concept through its complete execution. Presented on a circular table, the collective piece serves as a meta-reflection on the creative process, revealing every step of its construction.
Not all of the artists in “Hot Glass” are Floridians. The majority of one of the three galleries in the Cornell consists of glass artists in Murano, Italy, the international nexus of the medium, from Alexis Silk’s cleverly titled “Feminine Suspense,” a rose-colored female torso hung from a hook like a piece of meat—the feminist symbolism is clear—to Davide Salvadores’ exotic and seemingly functional stringed instruments. But it’s to the credit of the homegrown core of “Hot Glass” that most of our artists equal the quality and creativity of the glass-art giants of Murano.
This is certainly the case for “The Art of Misdirection,” Lou Ann Wukitsch’s enormous assemblage hanging from the atrium ceiling, in which some five thousand pieces of orange-colored glass combine to form an arrow amid the visual white noise of clear glass, while playing tricks on our eyes in the process. So don’t forget to look up on your way in or out of the Cornell—it’s both easy to miss and unlikely to forget.
“Hot Glass” runs through February 2025 at Cornell Art Museum, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Admission is free, and donations are welcomed. Call 561/243-1077 or visit delrayoldschoolsquare.com.
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