Waterspout 15

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Waterspout 15

Artist Toots Zynsky (American, born 1951)

Place of OriginSeattle, Washington

Date1979/1994

DimensionsH: 13 1/4 in. (33.6);
Diam: 10 1/2 in. (26.6 cm)

MediumGlass; blown, with hot-spun glass thread.

ClassificationGlass

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, and gift of Elliott-Brown Gallery

Object number

1995.2

Not on View

Label TextMary Ann (“Toots”) Zynsky explores the fragility of glass, suggesting both sculptural object and functional vessel. Her experiments with slumping (heating glass so it “slumps” over a form or mold) and fusing (using heat to bond one or more pieces of glass together) led her to invent a new glass art technique using fiber-optic filaments. Waterspout 15 is an early example of this technique, for which she adopted the term filet de verre (French for “glass thread”). She laboriously pulled threadlike fibers from glass rods by hand to create this work, though she later devised a mechanism that allowed her to pull the filaments more easily.Published ReferencesPage, Jutta-Annette, The Art of Glass: Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, Toledo Museum of Art, 2006, p. 203, repr. (col.).Exhibition HistorySeattle, The Norton Buildings, 1994.Comparative ReferencesSee also Paris, Clara Scremini Gallery, Toots Zynsky: Oeuvres, 1987. Cf. Paris, Clara Scremini Gallery, Toots Zynsky, 1990. Cf. Sinz, Dagmar, "Toots Zynsky: Color for Color," NEUES GLAS, no. 4, 1987, pp. 276-79. Cf. Charleston, Robert T. with David B. Whitehouse and Susanne K. Frantz, Masterpieces of Glass, New York, 1990, pp. 236-237.