UTA Glass Hosts International GAS Conference

Installation view of Catalysts by Matthew Patterson at The Gallery at UTA during GAS conference exhibition, May 2025. Photo: Calen Barnum.

On May 14-17, 2025 the International Conference of Glass Art Society (GAS), a Seattle-based nonprofit, came to Texas for the first time in the annual conference’s 54-year history. Hosted by the UTA Glass Studio and SiNaCa Studios in Fort Worth, this year’s theme, Trailblazing New Traditions, has set the event to focus on the future of glass art, with particular attention to inclusivity, sustainability, and innovation. Nearly a thousand participants from all over the world attended the four-day event which featured a variety of opportunities across UTA campus and offsite such as lectures, panels, demonstrations, exhibitions, and a film festival. Throughout the run of the conference, the GAS Market featured international vendors selling glass materials and tools at the UTA University Center.

On May 10, SiNaCa Studios hosted a pre-conference panel featuring renowned glass artists Einar and Jamex de la Torre, UTA professor and artist Carlos Donjuan, Fort Worth-based muralist Arnoldo Hurtado Escobar, and our former painting professor, artist and curator Benito Huerta. In a discussion moderated by Dennis Chiessa from the UTA Architecture Program they spoke about the power of art to transform communities.

Black Femme Collab, comprised of Spider Martins, Ashley Harris, Scout Cartagena, Lyncia Berry, and Adeye Jean Baptiste, kicked off the conference on the evening of May 14th presenting a collaborative demonstration and performance at UTA’s Studio Art Center Foundry where our faculty Fernando Johnson and Amy Stephens led the production of the new work. Renowned architects Thomas Pfeiffer and James Carpenter gave keynote lectures focusing on the role glass plays in their architecture studios practice.

At the Arlington Museum of Art, Justin Ginsberg with the help of graduate students and fellow UTAG colleagues, organized two special exhibitions that became another highlight of the conference collateral program, running from May 9 through June 1, 2025. Sub(liminal) by Einar and Jamex de la Torre presented a collection of works that reflect the brothers’ recent practice – staging their whimsical glass sculptures within dazzling custom-designed wallpaper backgrounds and amplified by their spellbinding large-scale lenticular prints that engage everything from the kitsch culture to political references into their visual language and storytelling.

In an immersive light and sound installation, Your Magic is Real by Alicia Eggert (in collaboration with James Akers and music composer Marco Buongiorno Nardelli), upon entering the room visitors encounter a stark space that is devoid of light and color. When two or more people join together to bridge handprint sensors on the installation’s central platform, the electrical current passing through their bodies completes a circuit illuminating the gallery with beautiful colors and sounds that become a telling representation of the beauty of physical connection and shared joy. At the conference Closing Night Party that took place at the Arlington Museum of Art, nearly a hundred people performed a spectacular activation of this space sending the current through their interlocked hands to the artwork.

“Bringing the de la Torre brothers back to Texas following their 2024 retrospective at the McNay Museum in San Antonio offers the DFW community an exceptional opportunity to engage with artists whose innovative work embodies their multivalent identities as Mexican Americans. Paired with Alicia Eggert’s interactive light and sound installation – previously featured in her first museum solo exhibition at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in 2024 – these exhibitions encourage visitors, especially in today’s politically charged climate, to physically connect through touch and shared experiences, symbolizing the vital importance of cooperation and empathy in overcoming systemic alienation,” said the head of UTA Glass Program Justin Ginsberg.

Cristina Burden, president of the UTA Glass student organization Club 2100, shares her team’s perspective on the conference:
“This year’s international Glass Art Society Conference was made all the more special by the fact that it was hosted at our school! Our team at 2100 Club is humbled and inspired by the experience we had at GAS 2025. I watched incredible demos done by renowned artists like Rob Stern, by my peer Phoenix Sanders (“We See Through a Glass Darkly: Reviving 19th Century Photographic Processes on Glass”), and by faculty Carrie Iverson (“Experimental Layers: Toner Lithography on Glass”) and Fernando Johnson, both of whom are very supportive of the activities of our student organization.

When the site committee gave 2100 Club the opportunity to work at the event and fundraise for the club, we were all ecstatic! We decided to run a coffee stand for a few hours each morning of the convention. We had so much fun and felt such overwhelming support by GAS staff and attendees that it became an all-day thing for the rest of the convention and turned into a full-blown concession stand by the end of the weekend! Running the coffee stand was a great way to meet and connect with the artists in attendance by allowing us to have more casual, one-on-one conversations whenever an attendee visited our table. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to the wonderful GAS committee members who went out of their way to support us. We are so proud to be a part of this community.”