The International Glass Prize is a triennial international glass competition for arts, design and crafts. This first edition focused on “THE OBJECT”.
“The Object is that tangible thing consisting of lifeless matter, limited in size and autonomously standing, lying or hanging in the space. It is the materialization which serves a purpose or transforms a concept, but where – above all – we can find the essence in the intrinsic quality.”
J. MAES (curator IGP / artistic coordinator GH)
SAND AND GLASS
The city of Lommel is marked by it. Our subsoil contains vast masses of sand, piled up in thick layers over millions of years, more than 220 meters deep. Only then starts the thick layer of Boom Clay. It is a more than 50 meters thick layer of white and valuable quartz sand, deposited by rivers, exploited by man. Its discovery brought economic activities and the sand exploitation caused deep pits in the forests and heathlands of Lommel. Today they are wetlands and recreation areas.
Flanders didn’t have a centre for glass art, although the quartz sand is the Flemish raw material that inspires artists all over the world and enables them to create glass artworks. With the construction of the GlazenHuis and the establishment as the Flemish Centre for Contemporary Glass Art in 2007, the city of Lommel promotes glass art and designers and artists get the opportunity to accomplish their own work.
THE PRIVATE FOUNDATION CHARLOTTE VAN DER SEIJS
The foundation aims to promote the activities of the GlazenHuis to enhance the cultural climate in the city of Lommel. The initiative – taken together with the city council and developed by the GlazenHuis – to create an international glass art prize, aroused the interest of numerous artists from a great many countries on all continents. It was a groundbreaking and cross-border initiative: artists, world citizens. Thus this international prize was a confrontation of objects, where art will be a platform for a diversity of views and experiences, a variety of being different and thinking differently, a multicultural experience that will enrich our society with quality and diversity. New horizons were being explored.
