Community Invited to Add Their Touch to Future House of Glass

NORFOLK, Va. – The Chrysler Museum Glass Studio welcomes two guest artists who have ambitious plans to build a house of glass on grounds of the Chrysler Museum and Glass Studio. John Drury of Brooklyn and Robbie Miller of Vancouver form the glass art team known as CUD. The pair is known for non-traditional glass projects that are infused with humor and in this case personality.

The duo will spend three days at the Chrysler Museum Glass Studio teaching a variety of glass processes in a three-day workshop. The finale is a two-day free project where the public is invited to play a role and prepare materials for a future glass house installation created entirely of recycled glass bottles. Participants of all ages can assist by painting portraits on the bottles that will be used for the structure. Once complete, the house will be lit from the inside so that the portraits become the façade.

“This project will truly reflect the faces in our community,” says Charlotte Potter, Glass Studio manager. “We envision this will be a jewel-like mirror of our identity, and we encourage everyone to take part in this extraordinary 48-hour project. We’ll need more than 20,000 bottles to make the structure so this first step is the most important to gather and embellish the glass.” 

The public is invited to attend from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, June 30 and Sunday, July 1 to participate in this project. Recycled bottle materials will be furnished, (although the public is welcome to bring their own as well) and admission is free.  The project will be the showcase of the daily noon demonstrations at the Glass Studio those two days. The installation of the glass house is being planned during the next year, and the dates will be announced as soon as they are confirmed.

CUD is a collaboration between John Drury (b.1960) and Robbie Miller (b.1955) that has been in the forefront of the contemporary glass scene for more than 20 years.  They taught at the Pilchuck Glass School, UrbanGlass, in Brooklyn, and have served as visiting artists at many universities throughout the United States and abroad. Their work is conceptually based around re-use, recycling and re-purposing of materials.

The Chrysler Museum of Art is one of America’s most distinguished mid-sized art museums with a world-class collection of more than 30,000 objects, including one of the great glass collections in America, and a new Glass Studio. The Museum is located at 245 West Olney Road in Norfolk. The Museum and Glass Studio, across the street, are open Wednesdays, 10 a.m. -9 p.m.; Thursdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sundays, noon-5 p.m. The Chrysler and the Glass Studio are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, as well as major holidays. Admission to the Museum’s collection and Studio glassblowing demonstrations are free. For exhibitions, programming and special events, visit chrysler.org or call 757-664-6200. 
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