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Every time I gaze up at the multi-hued light pouring through stained glass windows in a Renaissance-era cathedral, I’m captivated. Art glass has always been a fascination, so maybe it’s sublime fate that nanotechnology is part of its beauty.

It’s true -- nano-gold was used to create red glass going back to ancient Egypt, and in the Middle Ages gold and other nanoparticles became elements in the new art of stained glass. So nanotechnology is surely part of the secret of the deep purples, heavenly blues and warm golds that have tinted the sun’s rays on centuries of pilgrims.

With a heritage like that, it’s no surprise that glass and nanotechnology are intertwined in today’s art glass applications – perhaps the surprise is that it’s taken so long. There’s a long history of nanotechnology’s benefits for workaday glass.

Probably the most familiar are glass nanocoatings to repel water. What started as rain-repellant car windows has found a new use in our high-tech society. Today, there are moisture-resistant nano-coatings on your smart phone and iPad – so you can chat in a rainstorm or weather a coffee spill.

I like the self-cleaning or anti-soiling coatings, too. Solar panels lose efficiency when they’re dirty, so you could say nanotechnology turns glass “green” by keeping sun-power more powerful. It also boosts sustainability because the panels need to be cleaned less often – less water use, fewer detergents. The same applies to easy-clean or self-cleaning architectural windows, ceramic tile walls even glass dinnerware. And, certainly, sustainability is something to admire.

Still, I take special delight that art glass makers are embracing the advances of nanotechnology, coming full circle with their ancient past. The advance? Nanocoatings are now helping protect and beautify sand-blasted glass. In architecture. In art. In furniture. This story came to me from Fox Fire Glass, a Michigan glass studio. They make custom sand-blasted art glass – from residential balcony railings to conference tables.

A sandblasted surface needs to be protected so microscopic pieces won’t chip off the peeks of the roughed surface and so dirt and oils won’t be trapped in the valleys. While glass sandblasting is a very old art, it seems the available protective coatings did more harm than good. They were known to “dampen” the white-toned sandblasted area, obscuring the contrast that makes a design visible.”

Maybe nanotechnologists were thinking of the grand old stained glass when they developed a nano-coating that retains the contrast of sandblasted glass, as well as protecting it. You can see the artisan’s (and nanotechnologist’s!) work shining through in the images of art glass I’ve included here.

Now I’m eagerly anticipating ways designers and architects will begin using art glass in work. What about a sandblasted image as tall as the gleaming glass office tower it adorns? Or basking in the sun of a sandblasted restaurant mural wall? Or a bus shelter as handsome as it is functional?

Now think small. Etched crystal has always required a “handle with care” label, but maybe nanotech can make it an everyday delight. Glass furniture – from tables to front doors, wet bars to chandeliers – could be etched in an ultra-thin layer of subtle artistry.

Topic : news world report
Genre : News

Dublin will soon host two works of art by Angelica Pozo.

The ceramicist is doing an artist in residency program at Davis Middle School that will result in a mural.

Pozo, who lives in the Cleveland area, is no stranger to central Ohio or Dublin.

She has art works in a Worthington elementary school, Upper Arlington community space and Ohio State University's Stillman Hall.

Pozo's work can also be seen in Dublin at Dublin Spring Park as one of the Dublin Arts Council's Riverboxes.

Ghost Tree Sprout Riverbox was installed in 2010 for the activity that combines letterboxing and geocaching to make an art treasure hunt.

"Ms. Pozo was chosen due to her part work in the Dublin area and because she has a long history of working with arts educators in Ohio via the Ohio Arts Council and the VSA Ohio (the state organization on arts disability) organizations," said Yolanda Brown, Davis art teacher.

"She has done professional development with teachers in all fields and is quite comfortable working in diverse environments like our school," Brown said.

"At Davis Middle School we have a student body that represents the global reality of education. We have a good mix of ethnic, cultural and economic diversity at our school."

Pozo said she's also done several artist in residency programs.

"I've been doing them since 1987," she said.

"I've done several public art projects. I do art workshops around the country."

Last week, however, found Pozo at Davis Middle School, directing the students about painting ceramic tiles for a mural.

Pozo taught students about composition, color theory, basic ceramic methodologies and teamwork, Brown said.

She also showed students how to properly break a tile with a hammer after donning safety glasses.

The mural that will be installed around a water fountain will focus on water and underwater life, Brown said.

"When they're drinking water they'll be surrounded by seascape," she said.

The project also allows students to bring other subjects into the art classroom.

Brown said students have been learning about underwater life and sixth-graders go on a fishing trip this month.

"It's good integration on what they're doing in other areas of the campus," she said.

Installation is planned for next week. Pozo is scheduled to return May 21-23 to continue work with the sixth- and eighth-grade students.

Members of the Davis art club and Scrabble club as well as staff and community members have been tapped to help with installation, Brown said.

Pozo's visit was funded by the Dublin Education Foundation, Davis PTO, school fundraisers and donations from community members and Hilliard-based Mayco.

Topic : news world report
Genre : News

The Baker School Gators will soon have a life-sized sculpture of their “Gator” mascot on their campus. Student leaders are spearheading efforts to purchase the bronze alligator and are selling engraved bricks and tiles to fund the centerpiece of the refurbished school quadrangle.

The 7-foot, 4-inch-long reptile will be the community’s first piece of public art and will reside on a raised platform in the center of the “Swamp Walk,” a new central court outside the school office, said faculty member and Student Government Association adviser Denise Gronberg.

Student government leaders are spearheading the effort to acquire the sculpture, Gronberg said. To raise the $1,945 needed to buy the work of art, Gronberg said the students are selling engraved paving bricks for the quadrants formed by the Swamp Walk’s four curving walkways, and quarry tiles that will surround the artwork’s base.

“It’ll look real nice when we get it finished and get some landscaping and lighting installed,” Principal Tom Shipp said.

“We are putting the cart before the horse,” Gronberg said. “We need to sell the pavers to pay for the statue.”

The school will acquire its new official Gator sculpture from the Large Art Company, a Baltimore-based foundry that specializes in bronzes. From the original alligator sculpture by artist Guillermo Castano, the piece coming to Baker was reproduced by the same traditional “lost wax” casting process with which Castano made the original.

A wax casting is made from the original sculpture and is covered in a ceramic coating. When it’s fired in a kiln, the ceramic becomes hard and the wax melts out, or is “lost,” leaving a mold of the original. While the ceramic is still hot, molten bronze is poured into the mold and a perfect copy is made of the original sculpture.

Gronberg and her students invite members of the community to contribute to the acquisition of the Gator sculpture and at the same time, secure in the school’s history their names or those of loved ones by purchasing bricks or tiles to be placed in the permanent display in Baker School’s new Swamp Walk.

“SGA has been working on this all year and it looks like we will have the statue at least during the summer,” Gronberg said. “I really wish that we could have it by graduation, but at least we are getting it.”

Topic : news world report
Genre : News

After the digging and blasting, the dust and noise, the Second Avenue Subway will have shiny new stations with installations from art superstars.

Famed painter Chuck Close has been commissioned to install a roughly $1 million giant work of mosaics, a series of portraits representative of the city’s straphangers, at the East 86th Street subway station, according to officials from the MTA’s Arts for Transit.

“We’re so excited about Chuck,” Sandra Bloodworth, director of Arts for Transit said. “It’s so perfect for the Second Avenue subway because he’s such a New Yorker, and his work, being about people, is perfect for New York.”

Though he was tapped two years ago for the project, it’s taken some time for the funding and fabrication details to be in place, officials explained Friday.

Each of the mosaics will be 10 feet high and take up more than 1,000 square feet of the station’s wall space at different entrances at East 86th and 83rd streets and elsewhere in the station.

“The idea is to reflect the riding population: old people, young people, people of color, Asians. I’m going to do as many as 12 separate mosaics, mainly from pictures of artists I’ve taken over the years,” Close told the New York Times on Friday. “The richness of the city is all the various cultures coming together, and the richness of my art will be to simultaneously let people in on how many ways there are to build an image.”

Arts for Transit has a budget of roughly $5 million for works at four Second Avenue Subway stations, Bloodworth said.
Sculptor Sarah Sze, who recently had a show at Asia Society, will be installing an intricate work of drawings on ceramic tiles spanning nearly two blocks long at East 96th Street. Artist Jean Shin is creating a site-specific work for the station at East 63rd Street. Their selection had been announced previously.

One more artist will be selected to create a work for East 72nd Street, according to the MTA’s Arts for Transit, which gets 1 percent of funding for construction projects devoted to public art.

Arts for Transit’s Lester Burg called the installations a “phenomenal gift” to the city, saying, “It’s very exciting in the public art world to get artists of this stature. It’s like you’ll be living in a museum.”

Burg also noted how the artists will be using state-the-art techniques to create their works. Sze, he said, uses a “new visual language” with her 2-dimensional images digitally printed onto tile that play with perspective and light. Close is using a “traditional language” of portraits, but is “making it new,” Burg said.

Shin will be using archival photos from the New-York Historical Society and Transit Museum, in a work playing with the 1942 dismantling of the Second Avenue elevated line and the sky that opened up when the hulking structure was removed.

“We are really trying to envision these in a look to the future,” Bloodworth said. “Some people who will be riding this subway aren’t even born yet.”

Topic : news world report
Genre : News

Freed-Hardeman University graduate April Martin said she was one of 253 excited, nervous and proud members of the university’s Class of 2012 Saturday morning when she received her degree in elementary education.

Martin said she is the first child in her family to complete her college education. She received her degree after attending Freed-Hardeman for three years.

“I never used to look at graduation as a big deal, but it is,” she said. “I felt so relieved and proud walking today. Not many people reach that point in their college education, and so many people here are the first ones in their family to receive their degree.”

Commencement exercises were held at 10 a.m. Saturday at Freed-Hardeman’s Loyd Auditorium in Henderson. Brett Pharr, the chairman of Freed-Hardeman’s Board of Trustees, addressed graduates during the ceremony.

Pharr, a 1982 graduate of Freed-Hardeman, is also senior vice president and risk management executive for Bank of America and a preacher at Gold Hill Church of Christ in Charlotte, N.C.

Freed-Hardeman communications director Jud Davis said 30 members of the class also received graduate degrees on Saturday.

Brittany Hinson said she felt as if the past four years had flown by after she received her degree in arts and humanities. Hinson said she felt accomplished and successful as she walked across the stage to receive her diploma.

Hinson will work full time at Ceramic Tile Warehouse in Jackson after graduation. She said attending Freed-Hardeman allowed her to learn valuable life lessons along with her curriculum.

“The faculty and students at FHU are one of a kind,” she said. “They not only help you grow intellectually, but they also help you grow spiritually. I feel like I not only increased in knowledge and understanding, but also in lifelong lessons that I can use both in the workplace and in my own personal life.”

Emma Danley said she was still trying to process her feelings after the ceremony ended. Danley received a degree in exercise science Saturday morning.

“I don’t know how it feels right now,” she said. “It’s exciting, it’s scary, it’s rewarding. It’s all of these emotions at once.”

Danley said she has attended Freed-Hardeman for all four years of college. She said the relationships she has formed have been the most enjoyable part of her time at Freed- Hardeman.

“It’s all about the relationships you build with people,” Danley said. “I lived in a dorm for four years with girls. These friends I have made here are friends I will have for life. They are like sisters to me. You don’t have the same experiences in high school, especially every night of the week.”

“My friends and I have had conversations about this,” she continued. “The last four years here have changed my life.”

Topic : news world report
Genre : News