Nancy Callan: Forces at Play

Celebrates the thoughtfulness, wit, and sense of wonder that are signatures of Callan’s work

Seeing glass through the eyes of Nancy Callan is a delight, and experiencing the material through her work is a master class in the artistic process. Her elegant, playful designs are inspired by a seemingly limitless visual vocabulary and are executed with extraordinary technical expertise.

The book is organized as a series of thematic groupings that explore the sources of inspiration that have fueled Callan’s career: pop art and graphics, pattern and textiles, and nature and the wonders of the universe. Each grouping is represented by a curated sequence of artworks, illustrating Callan’s conceptual development and her exploration of form and pattern. It includes new work, created and documented in the museum’s Hot Shop through a series of residencies.

Nancy Callan: Forces at Play invites viewers to see the medium of glass with the same curiosity and passion that have fueled Callan’s artistic career.

Katie Buckingham is curator at Museum of Glass. Gayle Clemans is an art historian, critic, and writer with frequent contributions of art criticism and journalism to the Seattle Times and Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly. Kim Harty is an artist and scholar whose work investigates the connection between craft and performance through sculpture, installation, video, and performance.