Q Is glass art a legitimate art form worth collecting?
WHAT THE EXPERT SAYS:
Julie Lambe, of Gaffer Studio Glass, a new gallery due to open in mid-February, says: 'The Hot Glass movement was started in America in the 1950s. Before that, it was produced in large numbers in a factory environment. Many glass artists came to it from ceramics around the 70s or 80s.
'The majority of free-blown studio glass comes out of America and Australia,' says Lambe, a second-generation studio glass collector. She credits museums around the world with legitimising the art form. 'The first big collection was the Corning Museum of Glass in the US, which started in 1951. Much of the collection was destroyed by a major storm in 1972, but rebuilt in 1980. The Glasmuseet Ebeltoft in Denmark opened in 1985, and one in Spain opened in 1987. The National Museum in Canberra also started to collect glass in the late 80s.'
BREAKING THROUGH:
For her first show, Lambe will feature three artists, including Colin Heaney, an American ex-sculptor who moved to Australia in 1964. 'It took him years of experimenting to develop a technique that made him uniquely collectible,' she says. 'He's the only one who mixes bronze and copper powders with glass. He hand blows, then with every layer he adds about five colours, with bronze and copper powders rolled into it. Then he sandblasts to reveal the layers. A piece could take about eight hours of just sandblasting to finish.