Arizona Glass Alliance members will travel to a great glass destination, Pittsburgh, on April 12-15. As usual, we’ll arrive on Wednesday (April 12) in time for our opening dinner, spend three full days meeting wonderful artists, seeing great museums and glass and craft centers and visiting outstanding private collections, and be able to travel home on Sunday, April 16. We’ll be staying at a beautiful, downtown Pittsburgh hotel, the Kimpton Monaco (www.monaco-pittsburgh.com), and savoring three delectable private dinners as well as three lunches. Best of all, we’ll enjoy each other’s company and comradeship.
The confirmed artists we will visit are:
Dean Allison (www.deanallison.net) Dean is known for his wonderfully expressive, life-like cast glass portraits sculpture busts, which are usually specific, real people.
Lisa Demagall (www.lisademagall.com) Lisa is a flame worker who creates terrific sculptures of everyday objects such as chairs, dollhouses and chandeliers.
Jaime Guerrero (www.guerreroglass.com) Jaime is known for two different bodies of work, mezzo-American sculptures inspired by ancient gods and other icons, and life size figures, often children, which reference Latin migrants and the challenges they face.
Mikael Owunna (www.mikaelowunna.com) Mikael is a boundary pushing, multi-media artist, filmmaker and photographer who has lectured at Harvard, directed a dance film and created large-scale public art.
Kathleen Mulcahy (www.kathleenmulcahy.com) Kathleen is a recognized master of glass who is best known for her stunning sculptures of glass raindrops running down a metal backdrop, and her work is both realistic and beautifully sensual at the same time.
We will also visit:
Contemporary Craft (www.contemporarycraft.org), which will just be opening a new exhibit by two artists who will hopefully be present for our visit. Erika Diamond (www.erikadiamond.com) is a textile artist who creates both physical and performance art, and in addition creates ballet costumes. Matt Lambert (www.mattlambertstudio.com) splits his time between Detroit and Stockholm creating unique woven and metal jewelry and adornments, and is a regular columnist in “Lost in Jewelry” magazine.
Pittsburgh Glass Center (www.pittsburghglasscenter.org) which was originally co-founded by Kathleen Mulchahy and has become a driving force in establishing Pittsburgh as a creative glass center. We are really lucky that they will have an exhibition by three Netflix “Blown Away” artists when we are there, John Sharvin (www.johnsharvin.com), Minhi England (www.minhi.com) and John Moran (www.backdoorart.com).
Warhol Museum which is the largest museum in the U.S. devoted to the work of one artist, Any Warhol, who was a Pittsburgh native, for a docent led tour.
We’ll also be visiting a number of outstanding private collections in the Pittsburgh area.
Three dinners are planned, all in private dining rooms. The opening dinner will be at our hotel, the Kimpton Monaco Pittsburgh. Thursday evening we’ll dine at the Hyde Park Steakhouse (www.hydeparkrestaurants.com) and our closing dinner on Saturday night will be at a Pittsburgh favorite, Eleven (www.elevenck.com). As usual, we’ll leave Friday night open for you to enjoy on your own.
All travel will be by private coach. We’ve negotiated a rate of $179 per night (plus tax), double or single occupancy, at the Monaco, and both American and Southwest offer a variety of flights from Phoenix to Pittsburgh. You should plan on arriving in time for our opening dinner at the hotel, which will be at 7 PM on Wednesday, April 12. The closing dinner is Saturday night, April 15, so you can plan on departing anytime on Sunday, the 16th.
The cost of the trip, excluding hotel and air, is $775 per person, which includes three dinners, three lunches, the private coach, museum admissions and docent fees and miscellaneous other expenses. A deposit of $400 per person, payable to Arizona Glass Alliance, 12026 N. 118th Way, Scottsdale, AZ 85259 is required to secure your reservation for the trip, which will be limited to a maximum of 36 members, so get your check in early. As is our normal procedure, any refund requests will be honored to the extent that funds are available after payment of all expenses. This is shaping up to be one of our best trips, so you don’t want to miss it!