Molten forces: Harry Allen and Esque combine glass and metal to novel effect
![A photo of five lit sculptures, some hung from the ceiling. Each vase has a different shape connected to it (e.g. a circle or a triangle).](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/fZXry2yafBU27AcuAcpzQN-415-80.jpeg)
When Portland, Oregon-based glassblowers Andi Kovel and Justin Parker met Harry Allen at ICFF in 2005, they were surprised to hear that the New York design stalwart was a fan of their work. They shouldn’t have been. Rooted in functional, concept-based expressions that defy traditional notions of glass art, Kovel and Parker’s craft reflects their history at Brooklyn’s UrbanGlass—where they worked as artists-for-hire for the likes of Maya Lin, Kiki Smith and Matthew Barney before moving West and founding their studio, Esque.
Collaborative by nature, they asked Allen if he’d ever worked with glass. ‘I was doing all these cast objects, and they were making super sick shapes,’ Allen remembers. They joined forces to create the 'Grid Bubble' series, where ivory-coloured glass spills out of metal cages, and presented them at Allen’s then-new showroom in New York’s Lower East Side.
A decade later, their second collection builds on the first with simpler shapes that give way to gloriously strange results. On view at Heller Gallery, 'Harry Allen Esque' comprises some two dozen vases and lit sculptures, some hung from the ceiling with near-invisible wire. Glass was blown directly into circular, square and triangular cutouts of stainless steel, which constricts and supports each vessel to form a unified whole.
‘Metal is the complete opposite of glass: it’s hard, cold, and noisy, while glass is clean and soft,’ Kovel says. ‘We’ve managed to marry them in a way where they are totally interactive and dependent on one another.’
The objects were made two months ago in Esque’s studio. All three pairs of hands are visible in each: Parker, a master gaffer (the main glassblower), was in charge of blowing. Kovel picked glass colours and forms, while Allen chose the metal frame and suggested how it might hang. Glassblowing’s unpredictable nature produced a few hurdles. Instead of staying in place when put onto molten glass, the heavy metal frames kept sliding toward the bottom. The glass kept blowing into spheres, forcing the trio to decipher how to make it do other, more interesting things.
Once complete, the whole thing had to go into the annealer, an oven that cools the glass, which turned the metal a purply orange hue. ‘In glassblowing you start with an idea, but the process designs it,’ Kovel says. They named the pieces using acronyms of each piece’s formal characteristics: 'MSHP' (Medium/Square/Hanging/Peach), 'RSUTWP' (Rectangle/Square/U/Table/White/Persimmon), and so forth.
While people have blown glass into metal before, few have managed to chart new aesthetic territory. ‘The aesthetic almost comes from somewhere else,’ Allen concludes. ‘It has everything to do with us, and nothing to do with us. It’s the sum of all the parts we set up.’
On display at New York's Heller Gallery, the pieces are made by blowing glass directly into circular, square and triangular cutouts of stainless steel, which constricts and supports each vessel to form a unified whole
‘Metal is the complete opposite of glass: it’s hard, cold, and noisy, while glass is clean and soft,’ says Andi Kovel of Esque. ‘We’ve managed to marry them in a way where they are totally interactive and dependent on one another’
All three pairs of hands are visible in each: Parker, a master gaffer (the main glassblower), was in charge of blowing. Kovel picked glass colours and forms, while Allen chose the metal frame and suggested how it might hang
While people have blown glass into metal before, few have managed to chart new aesthetic territory. ‘The aesthetic almost comes from somewhere else,’ Harry Allen says. ‘It has everything to do with us, and nothing to do with us. It’s the sum of all the parts we set up’
INFORMATION
‘Harry Allen Esque’ is on view until 28 May. For more information, visit the Heller Gallery’s website
Photography: Rune Stokmo
ADDRESS
Heller Gallery
303 10th Avenue
New York, NY 10001
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
-
Take off: Mathieu Lehanneur's Olympic Cauldron rises into the Parisian night sky
The Paris 2024 Olympics’ opening ceremony was closed with a soaring cauldron spectacle that will go down in history
By Hugo Macdonald Published
-
Phaidon’s new Graphic Classics is a lavish greatest hits of graphic design
Graphic Classics is a compendium of seven centuries of visual culture, from the everyday and ephemeral to visionary works that reshaped our world
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Birley Chocolate hits the sweet ’n’ chic spot in London’s Chelsea
The new Birley Chocolate shop, a sibling to Birley Bakery, is a confection of colour as delicious as its finely crafted goods
By Melina Keays Published
-
Alexander May, founder of LA studio Sized, on the joys of creative polymathy
Creative director Alexander May tells us of the multidisciplinary approach that drives his LA studio Sized and its offspring, a 5,000 sq ft event space and an exhibition series
By Hannah Silver Published
-
50 of America’s top creatives, photographed by Inez & Vinoodh
Photographed exclusively for Wallpaper* by Inez & Vinoodh, we present a portfolio of 50 creatives driving the current discourse on American culture and its dynamic evolution
By Dan Howarth Published
-
Nona Faustine confronts the past in New York
Artist Nona Faustine reframes New York's colonial past in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self’s colourful ode to the landscape of her childhood
Tschabalala Self’s new show at Finland's Espoo Museum of Modern Art evokes memories of her upbringing, in vibrant multi-dimensional vignettes
By Millen Brown-Ewens Published
-
How the west won: Ivan McClellan is amplifying the intrepid beauty of Black cowboy culture
In his new book, 'Eight Seconds: Black Cowboy Culture', Ivan McClellan draws us into the world of Black rodeo. Wallpaper* meets the photographer ahead of his Juneteenth Rodeo
By Tracy Kawalik Published
-
Casa Bosques’ queer-themed book curation comes to New York’s East Village
In Pride Month 2024, Casa Bosques’ pop-up bookstore in The Standard hotel, East Village, offers a stylish haven for literary mavens
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Wanås Konst sculpture park merges art and nature in Sweden
Wanås Konst’s latest exhibition, 'The Ocean in the Forest', unites land and sea with watery-inspired art in the park’s woodland setting
By Alice Godwin Published
-
Pino Pascali’s brief and brilliant life celebrated at Fondazione Prada
Milan’s Fondazione Prada honours Italian artist Pino Pascali, dedicating four of its expansive main show spaces to an exhibition of his work
By Kasia Maciejowska Published