Etsuko NISHI
Etsuko NISHI (Japan)
Glass Artist
I would like to express my gratitude to the organizer of the International Exhibition of Glass Kanazawa for giving me the opportunity to join the Preliminary Assessment Panel as a juror and to be able to look at all the submitted works from around the world. I would also like to show respect to the fact that the International Exhibition of Glass Kanazawa has been a fixture of the glass art world for decades. The Secretariat likely had difficulty in receiving the flood of submissions which arrived on the final day of the deadline, due to the possibility of online submission.
This time many works were submitted from Asia while the submissions from Europe have also increased. I suppose the reason for this is that the significance of this exhibition has further expanded.
There are two main points I have noticed in this year’s submissions.
First, unlike in previous exhibitions, figurative works have decreased, from Japan as well as from abroad. Quite a few artists focus on or highlight the characteristics of the material of glass such as singularity, mysteriousness, attraction and beauty. Many works show that artists’ understanding of the material has deepened.
Second, I sense the new future prospects of glass art, considering that both award-winning expert artists and newly graduated artists from art institutes have been awarded here. Therefore I, as a viewer, anticipate discovery, possibility, and expectation for the near future.
Lastly, I regret that some of the submissions were not presented adequately through digital images for the Preliminary Assessment. For preparing the digital images, the artist must consider the best way to present their artwork – what are the most interesting features of the artwork, how to show these two-dimensionally, what kind of lighting to use, what color should be used for the background, etc. By doing so, each artist can get to know their own works better. Without knowing this information, they cannot prepare satisfactory digital images. I hope that from now on, when artists, myself included, are submitting works, they will not receive the comment that Ågthe digital images are not good.”