［Harcuba］ Glass art today is part of fine art. The piece created by Takashi Ishizeki is such an example. It could be a piece for any major museum of art. To me it is also a WABI-SABI sculpture. According to the ancient wisdom it has all the qualities like: 1) organic form, 2) perfection in the imperfect, 3) unfinished, 4) the temporary ephemera.
It is tender and fragile as life. The simplicity, the reduction and restriction only to the essential.
It evolves a living organism even in such an abstract shape. It is a symbol of human destiny. The partly broken of one end makes it even more symbolic. It is that sense of a zen piece.
This piece goes even beyond the most we can see in contemporary art. It touches the essence of our being. Today not only mankind and all living creatures are in danger, but also our whole planet earth is. This piece is another memento going to the core of our problem, our crisis. It leads us to think about our destiny. Human beings are approaching the possible end at an accelerating speed, if nothing can stop the merciless activities of our civilization.

［Takeda］ As Professor Harcuba mentioned WABI-SABI, I would like to explain its meaning just briefly. It represents a delicate sense of beauty coming out of WABISHISA, rustic and SABISHISA, lonely which has been handed down till today since the medieval era of Japan. WABI-SABI is applied to something simple but deep. This esthetic sense has been a legacy.
We would like to move to the Gold Prize winning piece by a Hungarian artist, Laszlo Lukacsi. The title is “FAN.” We would like Professor Carlson to make some comments.

［Carlson］ First of all, this is my first time to jury the exhibition. It is certainly a pleasure to be here and be a part of this international exhibition and to share some of the thoughts of the jurors and share the experiences with the attending participants. So thank you for that.
The second award, the Gold Prize, it is given to a piece that really is quite a bit different in cerebral emphasis of the first prize. It takes more familiar interpretation of glass and it gives us some new information.
This piece uses familiar process of lamination and glass carving. As the piece is sculpted, it gives us a sense of visual kinetic movement. So we are left and enjoyed illusional movement. A piece is physically solid, but as we moved around that piece, the contexts and the visuals change rather drastically. So we are left believing that visual kinetic quality is something that gives us new information about the raw materials that have been changed and interpreted.
If we think of glass as a language and we talked about this as a committee that the language has many different dialects. There is the dialect which is very ephemeral that is with the first piece. There is a dialect much more explicit with the second piece. Both vary solid ways of working with glass as we look for the opportunity of discovery and invention.

［Takeda］ Professor William Carlson received the first Grand Prize at the first “WORLD GLASS NOW ’82” held in Hokkaido in 1982. He teaches at the University of Miami. Professor Harcuba is the world’s foremost engraver. Professor Christensen has been involved in the world of glass for some museums in Denmark. He has held many exhibitions in Scandinavian countries. Professor Yokoyama is an expert glass artist.
We would like to move onto the Silver Prizes. We would like Professor Carlson to talk about “IMPERFECT FOR YOU” by Carol Milne from the US.

［Carlson］ I’m back. Again the committee deliberated and tried hard to explore the other ways of that language that we call glass, the material that we both love and sometimes hate. For this piece, we see a quite charming familiar object. I think that most of us have socks on today. So we all have reference to this. It’s not so much about WABI-SABI you already talked about. It’s not about a kind of formalism which has been seen in the second piece, but it really is a kind of simple, common place interpretation of how glass will change an object we all are depended upon each day in pairs.
As we look at the work, we are impressed by the concepts, the techniques, the sense of invention and with this piece we thought that there was just something quite new and in its simplicity quite successful.
For me the first three pieces represent drastically different conceptual focuses and skill abilities. I think that as a glass artist we are well-informed by their selection, and as the committee we felt strongly that we had done a very responsible job in selecting that diversity of types of work.

［Takeda］ This work looks quite big on the screen, but actually the work is not so big. Next, we would like Professor Christensen to make comments on another Silver Prize winning piece “TSUMUGI” by Hisao Nabeta from Japan.