Spare 9

This object is one of a group of sculptures made by the American studio glass pioneer Andre Billeci for “A Glass Environment,” his 1972 exhibition at the Corning Museum. The exhibition opened on June 7. On June 23, the Museum was devastated by a flood, and all of Billeci’s sculptures were destroyed. Billeci had chosen 10 sculptures for his show, but this one, from the same series, was left behind at his studio and survived the flood. The sculpture came to the Museum on loan for the exhibition “The Flood of ’72: Community, Collections, and Conservation” (May 24, 2012–January 3, 2014), and it was donated after the exhibition closed. Located near Corning, Alfred University offers specialized study in ceramics and glass research and technology. Throughout the 1950s, the glass technology department offered students occasional opportunities to blow glass. In 1962, Billeci, a ceramics professor, requested permission to operate a glass furnace at the university during the summer, and with the help of two retired Corning Glass Works glassblowers, he began to experiment with glass. An independent-study course that Billeci introduced in 1963 led to the establishment of the first glass curriculum at Alfred in 1966. Billeci used molten glass to explore sculptural form rather than to make functional objects. Spare 9 is characteristic of the free-form sculpture made during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It preserves an important moment in early American studio glass, before the introduction of European techniques, when blowing glass was still relatively unskilled and experimental. Billeci’s work is published in Martha Drexler Lynn, American Studio Glass, 1960–1990: An Interpretive Study, New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2004, pp. 59 and 78; and Susanne K. Frantz, Contemporary Glass: A World Survey from The Corning Museum of Glass, New York: H. N. Abrams, 1989, pp. 7 and 58–59. For more information, see www.urbanglass.org/glass/detail/in-memoriam-remembering-andy-billeci-1933-2011.