Pajaritos en la Cabeza (Little birds in the head) and Cabellos de Angel (Angel hair)

Title: 
Pajaritos en la Cabeza (Little birds in the head) and Cabellos de Angel (Angel hair)

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Object Name: 
2 Sculptural Vessels
Title: 
Pajaritos en la Cabeza (Little birds in the head) and Cabellos de Angel (Angel hair)
Accession Number: 
88.3.45
Dimensions: 
(A) Sculptural Vessel H: 16.6 cm, W: 34.7 cm, Diam (max): 21.2 cm; (B) Sculptural Vessel H: 16.4 cm, W: 35.8 cm, Diam (max): 22 cm
Location: 
Not on Display
Date: 
1988
Credit Line: 
3rd Rakow Commission, purchased with funds from the Juliette K. and Leonard S. Rakow Endowment Fund
Web Description: 
With alternately subtle and bold strips and swatches of wire-thin lines of layered color, Toots Zynsky builds amorphous, three-dimensional canvases that defy categorization, her vessels inhabiting a region where painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts meet. For Zynsky, color reflects and defines emotion, mood, and experience. Her choices are subjective, instinctual, inspired by her travels, and grounded in the colors of the natural world. Zynsky developed her unique technique of "painting" with colored glass threads in the early 1980s. First, the thousands of multicolored threads that make up her vessels are layered onto a round metal plate. This mass of glass threads is fused inside a kiln and cooled. The fused threads are then turned over, and the outer surface of the vessel is exposed. If Zynsky likes the composition, she will complete the piece through two or more kiln firings in which the stiff mass of fused threads is heated and allowed to slowly sag over a cone-shaped mold. When the glass has softened, Zynsky reaches into the kiln, wearing asbestos gloves, and she pinches and squeezes the glass into its final form.
Provenance: 
Zynsky, Toots (American, b. 1951), Source
1988
Technique: 
Material: 
Primary Description: 
Opaque black, orange, yellow, shades of green non-lead glasses; fused and thermo-formed glass threads (filet de verre). Two deep, ovoid bowls with irregular, turned in rims, pleated edges; walls constructed of layers of uneven parallel filaments of opaque glass in bright colors(orange, greens, black; orange black, yellow); rounded base; unsigned.
Venue(s)
Corning Museum of Glass 2011-04-02 through 2011-12-04
A pioneer of the studio glass movement, Toots Zynsky draws from the traditions of painting, sculpture and the decorative arts to inspire her innovative, intricate vessels. Masters of Studio Glass: Toots Zynsky, featured 12 works representing the varied techniques and inspirations from throughout Zynsky’s career. Zynsky attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where she was one of acclaimed artist Dale Chihuly’s first students. In 1971, she was part of a group of Chihuly’s friends and RISD students who founded the influential Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State. There, she made installations of slumped plate glass, and later experimented with video and performance work with artist Buster Simpson, incorporating hot and cold glass. This experimental work was critical to the development of using glass as a material to explore issues in contemporary art.
Contemporary Glass Vessels: Selections from the Corning Museum of Glass (2015) illustrated, p. 33, 118-119 (fig. 62, plate 36); BIB# 149403
Past and Present (2012) illustrated, p. 33, right; BIB# 135030
Masters of Studio Glass: Toots Zynsky (2011) illustrated, p. 9; BIB# AI88809
The Corning Museum of Glass and the Finger Lakes Region (1993) illustrated, p. 37, #55; BIB# 35681
Hikari no shouchu: sekai no garasu = The glass (1992) p. 151, #255; BIB# 58995
The Art of Glass: Masterpieces from the Corning Museum of Glass (1990-01-19) illustrated, p. 62 (top); BIB# AI23824
The Art of Glass: Masterpieces from the Corning Museum (1990-01) illustrated, p. 26 (top); BIB# AI24626
A Short History of Glass (1990 edition) (1990) illustrated, p. 109, #96; BIB# 33211
Masterpieces of Glass: A World History From The Corning Museum of Glass (1990) illustrated, pp. 236-237, pl. 110; BIB# 33819
The Corning Museum of Glass Annual Report 1988 (1989) illustrated, pp. 3-4, 7; BIB# AI96381
Recent Important Acquisitions, 31 (1989) illustrated, p. 117, #49; BIB# AI23357