The Hsinchu area in northern Taiwan is most commonly known for the Hsinchu Science Park’s crucial role in the economic development of the country. For local gourmands, on the other hand, rice noodles and meatballs are more likely to come to mind when thinking of Hsinchu City. In addition, it is the first place to visit for anyone with a passion for glass artwork.
The 10th Hsinchu City International Glass Art Festival took place from mid-July to the end of August this year. During the event, artists from Taiwan as well as another 17 countries displayed numerous examples of a form of artwork that has been popular for thousands of years. Hsinchu City Government has taken steps to develop the city’s reputation in the art form by promoting the festival. “We hope to strengthen local residents’ identification with their hometown, pass down the skills of glass art and improve the local economy,” says Lin Jung-chou (林榮洲), director of the city’s Cultural Affairs Bureau (CAB), which co-organizes the event.
At one point during the festival this summer, Tai Chiu-mei (戴秋梅) could not help but express admiration for House by American artist Shane Fero. The artwork portrays three multihued birds perched about an egg-bearing nest. “The major challenge in making this piece of art was applying colors that enhance its artistic value,” says Tai, who curated the works of all the foreign artists at the festival.
“It’s also very challenging to create glass art using the technique of hot sculpting,” she says regarding the two human figures made by Martin Janecky from the Czech Republic, Hero and Hero II. “The technique involves working at a furnace for up to seven or eight hours at a stretch. And you have to be very careful when shaping the melted glass with tools, as this must be done as soon as it’s taken out of the kiln,” she explains.
Blossoms, Richness of Fish (42 x 36 x 30 cm), an exhibit at the festival by Lin Yao-nung (Photo courtesy of Cultural Affairs Bureau, Hsinchu City Government)
The biennial festival was first held in 1995. After the 2003 edition, the festival did not take place again until 2006, when it resumed its biennial schedule. The 2014 festival displayed a total of 240 glassworks, including 80 from the overseas guests that Tai worked with. According to the CAB, the 2014 festival displayed more artworks from abroad than any other year.
As in previous years, the main venue was the Glass Museum of Hsinchu City, which is located on the grounds of Hsinchu Park in the downtown area. The event was separated into four pavilions, with the vast majority of the pieces by the overseas artists displayed in the International Glass Art Pavilion. In the Asian Glass Art Pavilion, the work of artists from Taiwan and other countries such as Japan, the Philippines and South Korea was shown. The other two pavilions were the Applied Glass Art Pavilion and Children Glass Experience Pavilion.
Some pieces were also exhibited in an area of the park known as Glass Art Street, which is a collection of stores situated a short stroll from the museum. On each day of the festival, local artists demonstrated various glass art skills such as cutting, glassblowing and grinding.
Hsinchu is closely associated with glass—from glass manufacturing to glass art—with good reason. The soil in the region has high concentrations of quartz, the main raw material used to produce glass, explains Li Kuo-yang (李國陽), director of The Glassman Society, which co-organizes the festival. The natural resource was first tapped during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945). According to information provided by Hsinchu City Government, the glass makers that were run under the auspices of the Japanese government focused on manufacturing specific glass products such as chemistry beakers and vials used in science laboratories. The first factory run by Taiwanese business concerns was founded in 1925 to produce glassware for daily use.
Between the end of the Japanese colonial era and the 1960s, clusters of glass manufacturing factories emerged in Hsinchu City and neighboring areas to produce functional items like containers and windows. This was when Taiwan Glass Industry Corp., which is the largest maker of the material in the country today, opened its first factory. After that, creating glass handicrafts grew in popularity in the region, especially in Xiangshan District of Hsinchu City. The reputation of the area as a center for craftspeople making ornamental glass products was so great that Li, a native of Tainan in southern Taiwan, moved to Hsinchu City in 1973 at the age of 16 to learn the skills as an apprentice. “Glass handicrafts made in Taiwan were very popular abroad,” he recalls. “The vast majority of them were made for export markets at the time.”
Void 2 (58 x 23 x 7 cm) by Andrew Baldwin (Photo courtesy of Cultural Affairs Bureau, Hsinchu City Government)
Government Support
As happened with other handicraft businesses such as ceramics and woodcarving, glass manufacturing factories started moving to mainland China and Southeast Asia in the 1980s to take advantage of the cheaper production costs. This change in the sector motivated the local government to help the artists, who were also able to avail themselves of central government programs designed to boost handicraft industries. “The launch of the Hsinchu City International Glass Art Festival in 1995 was a result of national and local government support for the sector,” says Hsu Ming-tsai (許明財), mayor of Hsinchu City.
In December 1999, the Glass Museum of Hsinchu City was established by the city government. The building that houses the museum was originally constructed in 1936 as a guesthouse for high-ranking Japanese officials visiting Taiwan. The building, which holds smaller glass exhibitions all year round, has been the setting for the glass art festival since it was first held in 1995. Hsinchu City Government has also enacted other initiatives to help the industry. In 1993, the city government held the inaugural Golden Glass Award. The biennial event, which is intended to encourage promising artists, takes place in the lead-up to the international festival. The winning works of the Golden Glass Award this year were exhibited in the Asian Glass Art Pavilion at the festival.
In terms of the foreign artists, it is not just the quantity that was impressive this year but the quality as well. Gerry King, who displayed a total of five works, is renowned both in Australia and in international glass art circles, and has curated glass art shows in a variety of countries including Taiwan’s Hsinchu festival in 2001.
‘And all things nice’ (72 x 36 x 35 cm) by Gerry King (Photo courtesy of Cultural Affairs Bureau, Hsinchu City Government)
Fero, another of the artists with recognition on a global scale, is the former president of the prestigious Glass Art Society, an international organization founded in 1971 in Seattle, Washington in the United States. Along with his House, he also displayed the equally impressive although much more exotic Dragon Goddess during the festival. His work has been collected in museums in the United States as well as Denmark, Germany and Japan.
“The museum management and related government departments are to be congratulated for having the insight to commence and continue this series of exhibitions,” says King of the significance of the Hsinchu glass art show. “Each exhibition adds to the growth and development of contemporary glass in Taiwan. Each exhibition adds to the international profile of contemporary glass from Taiwan.”
“I hope to build Taiwan’s name recognition by inviting major figures in the world of glass art to Hsinchu to show their works,” says Tai. “They could in turn help promote the Hsinchu event abroad. Then international exhibitions might more easily think of Taiwanese artists when inviting participants.” A glass artist with a wealth of experience from abroad as well as international connections in the field, Tai further publicized Taiwan’s glass art scene and the Hsinchu biennial event in the United States in late October at the invitation of the Glass Art Society.
During the first three days of the festival, Fero, King, Janecky and Andrew Baldwin from Australia each gave a one-hour talk on their craft and a two-hour demonstration of their techniques. The works that the four artists exhibited during the festival were all quite different from one another. “Connoisseurs in this field can usually figure out what techniques were used to create a work of glass art just by looking at the finished piece,” says Tai. “Glasswork created in an innovative manner can be very inspirational to viewers.”
The festival serves as a platform for connecting local and foreign artists. (Photo courtesy of Cultural Affairs Bureau, Hsinchu City Government)
The 2014 festival was also a huge success as a platform for local and overseas artists to compare notes on glass art. In fact, one of the exhibitors can justifiably claim to be both a foreign and a local artist. Allan James Michtosh moved from his native Australia to Taiwan 15 years ago and has been living in Hsinchu ever since. Trained by his family as a blacksmith at an early age, Michtosh, now in his early 60s, ran a blacksmith studio in the 1980s and 1990s in New South Wales along the east coast of Australia. It was only after he came to Taiwan to work as a resident blacksmith artist at Leofoo Village Theme Park in Guanxi Township, Hsinchu County that he discovered an interest in glass art and began using both metal and glass in his creations. “I very much admire the rich cultural traditions of Taiwanese art forms, from sculpture in stone, ceramics and wood to painting and calligraphy. These traditional techniques can be and are being adapted for the creation of modern Taiwanese glass art,” says Michtosh.
Youthful Inspiration
In relation to how local and visiting artists inspire viewers as well as one another, Michtosh says, “Sometimes you need to take a look at other artists to be inspired and come up with new ideas. That’s why the festival is significant to me.” He also feels that young, up-and-coming Taiwanese artists are especially creative.
Joy Huang (黃瓊儀), a Taiwanese artist whose work Weaving was displayed in the Asian Glass Art Pavilion, echoes Michtosh’s sentiment about young artists. “They’re more willing to try something new and explore possibilities,” says Huang. The native of Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan spent 10 years studying and working in glass art abroad, mostly in Europe, before settling in Hsinchu City in 2007. She has since helped the museum organize summer glass art courses for beginners, and teaches glass art in the Glass Innovation Center at Ta Hwa University of Science and Technology in Hsinchu County. “I often tell my students to connect with the world and travel overseas so that they can open their minds when creating their works,” she says.
Bird Pilgrims (32 x 50 x 22 cm) by Li Kuo-yang was displayed in the Asian Glass Art Pavilion. (Photo courtesy of Cultural Affairs Bureau, Hsinchu City Government)
Li is one of the Taiwanese artists from the older generation. However, although he is now in his late 50s, he is keen to take up the challenge of creating works that are innovative in terms of style, subject matter and technique. Li says that his Bird Pilgrims, which was exhibited in the Asian Glass Art Pavilion and features a tree that has birds in place of leaves, demonstrates his creative evolution as an artist. He also notes the commercial importance of being inventive. “I always encourage the members of The Glassman Society to try new ideas. Only by doing so can Taiwan’s glass handicrafts compete with low-cost products made elsewhere,” Li explains.
He points out that the creativity and artistic value of Taiwan’s glass artwork only began to improve about 20 years ago when the Hsinchu glass art festival was launched. Meanwhile, Michtosh is of the mind that “although modern glass art is still in its infancy in Taiwan, I’m sure in the near future Taiwanese glass artists will be a contributing force in the world of glass art, and this will spring directly from the ideas that are planted today in such events as the Hsinchu City International Glass Art Festival.” Taiwan may not yet play a major role in the world’s glass art scene, but the Hsinchu event has undoubtedly boosted its chances of moving in that direction.
Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw