Exhale With Vigor: Artist Talk with Karen Donnellan and Suzanne Peck

On Wednesday, March 2, 2022, the Smithsonian American Art Museum hosted a virtual conversation with Karen Donnellan and Suzanne Peck, featured artists in New Glass Now, on view at SAAM’s Renwick Gallery from October 22, 2021, to March 6, 2022. This program looked at how the artists use humor and a slightly subversive approach to rewrite the language of glass art. Their poster series Exhale with Vigor rejects the outdated slang used in hot glass studios and replaces chauvinistic terms with technical, fun, and feminist phrases. By examining how language, gender, and sexuality play a role in the contemporary glass field, Donnellan and Peck are working to create a more inclusive and representative hot shop.
 
Mary Savig, the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft at SAAM, joined the artists for this engaging conversation on the language of contemporary glass making.