PHOTO: The works from the symposium are exhibited in Nový Bor, the turn will be Liberec and Prague
The four-day Feast of Glassmakers is held every three years, this year’s event took place at the turn of September and October. 46 artists from the Czech Republic and 13 other countries are involved in the work of glassworks and studios. But not only glassmakers participate in IGS, designers, painters, sculptors, architects, personalities from the field of jewelry and fashion, street art and pop culture are regularly invited, students of art disciplines and their teachers are introduced.
For the first time, the symposium was welcomed, for example, by a professional airbrusher. Among the biggest attractions this year was the participation of the American John Dexter, the art director of a number of Hollywood blockbusters from Big Lebowski to Pirates of the Caribbean, or one of the best art glassmakers today, Martina Janecký.
The Glass Museum in Nový Bor will be exhibiting the works created during the symposium until the end of January 2022. After that, the exhibition will move to the North Bohemian Museum in Liberec and subsequently to the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague.
The tradition of the International Glass Symposium was laid by the Crystalex glassworks in Novoborsk. In 1982, she first invited artists and designers from all over the world to implement their ideas with the assistance of local glassmakers. Czech and foreign top glass artists have been meeting in Nový Bor at three-year intervals until now. Together in front of the professional and lay public, together with glass craftsmen, they demonstrate their art.
Hundreds of artists have visited the symposia over the years, and many of them return repeatedly. The International Glass Symposium has become a world unique, a prestigious affair, a symbol of meetings, creative work and new opportunities to work with glass. Since 2009, the organization has been taken over by the town of Nový Bor. As the main organizer since the meeting of artists from all over the world, it promises to be a signal to the whole world that Nový Bor is a place where glass production and art are still a living, leading and original phenomenon.
M. Černá, Nový Bor