By KEVIN NANCE

Every property of glass as an art medium&mdash;its translucence, its luminosity, its malleability, its ability to reflect, refract and distort&mdash;will be on full display in Chicago this week as the Glass Art Society holds its annual conference in the Windy City for the first time.

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Ignite Glass courtyard" data-rich-file-id="201" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/201/original/ignite-courtyard-2.jpg" />The 52-year-old Seattle-based group, which claims 2,100 members from 54 countries (including artists, collectors, curators and dealers), kicks off three days of workshops, seminars, demonstrations, exhibits and other events on Thursday through Saturday, March 20-22, at the Palmer House Hilton and other venues. About 1,200 people are scheduled to attend the conference, whose on-site registration fees range from $250 (for full-time students) to $395, plus membership fees of $40-$70.

Of particular interest to non-members of the Glass Art Society is a free pre-conference event on Wednesday, March 19, featuring glass-sculpting demonstrations, studio tours, exhibitions and other events at various conference venues (including Ignite Glass Studios and West Supply, both in the West Loop). &ldquo;It will be a day to introduce Chicagoans to glass art,&rdquo; says Glass Art Society executive director Pamela Koss.

That evening, a pre-conference fundraising event at Ignite ($200-$225) will feature special hors d&rsquo;oeuvres and drinks by Chef Thai Dang and Danielle Pizzutillo of Embeya and a dinner created by Chef Matthias Merges of Yusho, Billy Sunday and A10.

The conference will also offer live and silent auctions of glass art pieces by artists from around the world, most with a value of between $800 and $12,000. One piece will be a rare collaboration between leading glass artists in honor of this year&rsquo;s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Dan Dailey. The ceremony honoring Dailey, at the Palmer House on Thursday, will also feature a keynote address by Chicago artist Theaster Gates.

Several of the conference seminars will focus on entrepreneurship. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re working as a glass artist, you are your own business&mdash;or, rather, your skills are your business,&rdquo; Koss explains. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s part of the draw of being a glass artist: the fact that you are working on your own. In 2012, we celebrated 50 years of American studio glass, a movement started by people breaking out of corporate glass jobs, building their own studios in their garages and so on. The entrepreneurial aspect has always been important to this very independent group of artists, which is why we emphasize it in our conferences: business skills, marketing, everything you need to make sure you can sustain yourself in that way. The idea is to give people more operational tools to help them stay artists in uncertain economic times.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="right" data-caption="Ignite Glass hotshop studio" data-rich-file-id="202" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/202/original/ignite-hotshop-team-working.jpg" />

Why Chicago, and why now? &ldquo;Chicago was always a perfect fit for us with its design, art, food&mdash;a popular city for artists to come to&mdash;but what we didn&rsquo;t really have for our conference was enough infrastructure, especially for our lecture-demonstrations,&rdquo; Koss says. &ldquo;We needed a pretty large glass studio with enough space for our attendees to view the demonstrations. Now we have that at Ignite, which is fantastic.&rdquo;

Ignite, a complex with a glass-art gallery, a 3,000-square-foot glassblowing studio and a 6,000-square-foot event space at 401 N. Armour, opened in November 2012, just before that year&rsquo;s edition of SOFA Chicago, the annual sculpture, objects, functional art and design show at Navy Pier. Among the SOFA attendees that year were Koss and other members of the Glass Art Society, which led to a partnership that ultimately brought the GAS conference to Chicago.

&ldquo;Many of the artists coming into Chicago for SOFA, domestically and internationally, were glass artists, so it seemed like a natural for us to have a reception for them that year,&rdquo; recalls Trish Tullman, who co-owns Ignite with her husband, Glen. (Glen&rsquo;s brother, Howard Tullman, is a noted Chicago art collector.) &ldquo;Pam was there, and afterwards the Glass Art Society approached us about them coming to Chicago in 2014. It&rsquo;s all worked out according to plan, which is great.&rdquo;

For more information about Ignite Glass Studios, visit www.igniteglass.com. To learn more about the Glass Art Society and its Chicago conference, visit <a href="http://www.glassart.org">www.glassart.org</a>

&nbsp;

Kevin Nance is a Chicago-based freelance writer and photographer. Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/KevinNance1">@KevinNance1</a>

Glass Art Society holds its annual conference in the Windy City

September = art. That sums up this month in Chicago's creative community. Beginning tonight things go full steam in galleries and art spaces around the city. Dozens of gallery receptions take place and you can plan whatever kind of arty evening strikes your fancy. Grab a copy of&nbsp;CGN&nbsp;to guide you on your artistic search, or just go where the crowds take you. Many galleries save their strongest shows of the year for this big opening season, while others take advantage of the chance to introduce their new stars to an engaged audience. Check out&nbsp;our list of who's opening&nbsp;where tonight - you'll be able to visit dozens of spaces in River North, West Loop, the suburbs and on the North Side. &nbsp;Join our&nbsp;Flickr group&nbsp;to post your opening night photos, or be sure to Tweet us&nbsp;@ChiGalleryNews&nbsp;and keep up with the crowds.If you can't make it out tonight, then go on a free Saturday tour of the galleries tomorrow - details here.- Happy gallery hopping!

The Fall Gallery Season is Here!

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721418551/lsnfholubflo2n5ys0gx.jpg"></figure>By GINNY VAN ALYEAFor most Chicagoans, Picasso first "arrived" in Chicago in 1967 in a major, public way that still resonates with our city's citizens today. Now 46 years later, his influence may be seen as the beginning of this city's modern artistic identity.&nbsp;Picasso of course never actually set foot in Chicago, or in this country for that matter. He was very, very close - it is rumored that a plane ticket to Chicago for the sculpture's unveling had been purchased by Skidmore, Owings &amp; Merrill, the firm that commissioned the sculpture that today&nbsp;is&nbsp;the star of Daley Plaza downtown. While Picasso is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated, admired and prolific artists in the history of art, Chicago has a few of its own personal ties to the artist and his work. The new exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, the first major Picasso exhibition organized by the museum in nearly three decades, makes the case that long before his famous sculpture mystified and delighted Chicagoans in 1967, Picasso's artistic style and influence was key to launching local enthusiasm for embracing modern art.&nbsp;A lot of Chicago/Picasso 'firsts' are covered in the show: in 1913 the Art Institute of Chicago became the first American museum to show Picasso's work, after being a part of the innaugural Armory Show in New York that same year. Inspired by the Armory Show, the Arts Club was founded in 1916. In 1923 it presented Picasso's first US solo showing outside of a commercial gallery. One of AIC's most well-known collection anchors is the Old Guitarist, which was purchased by Frederic Clay Bartlett in memory of his wife Helen Birch Bartlett and given to AIC in 1926. It was the first painting by Picasso acquired by a US museum.&nbsp;The exhibition is vast, including 250 works done in a range of mediums and time periods. The works come primarily from AIC's own collection, and mostly they are not blockbusters (3 major paintings on loan from other museums are separated from the main exhibition and are hanging in the Modern Wing - something I found logistically awkward) but the many pieces in the show add up to an illuminating picture of how Chicago came to see itself in an artistic light as well as be known in the world as a progressive city committed to the arts. &nbsp;It is worth spending time with as many of the pieces as possible, while also seeking out new favorites.&nbsp;A highlight is the opening of the show, where a recording of Studs Terkel interiewing Chicagoans in the Federal plaza (now Daley Plaza) on the day the Picasso Woman was unveiled. It's delightful to hear the candid respones. One spectator was there for a baton contest. &nbsp;Someone else thought a statue in honor of someone who'd 'done something for humanity' would have been more fitting. &nbsp;One gentleman thought it resembled the 'pelvic structure of a prehistoric monster.' Others were worried it would rust and hoped it 'worked out.' &nbsp;Most seemed to gaze in awe that their city had put this project together and made such a show of being progressive. After I saw the exhibition, I learned another secret from SAIC's former president, Tony Jones. He recalled recently leading Paloma Picasso on a tour of the show before it opened. While they were examining the Picasso Woman macquette, she leaned her head into the sculpture and pointed out that her father wrote inside many pieces. For the Woman he had apparently been concerned that the piece would hold up because of the weight of the steel and the strong welding that would be required. Just to make sure the piece would stand the test of time and that the heavy head would not tumble down on visitors, he wrote some simple instructions for the welders in Gary, IN - basically, he said, make sure it's on there tight!&nbsp;Picasso never accepted payment for the commission, instead giving it to the city as a gift. That generous spirit is certainly still present here today.&nbsp;</body></html>

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