The Glass Art Technique Perfected By An Italian Master Gives Rise To A New Universe Of Creation. By Margaret Regan GLASS ART WILL glisten all over town next spring, as some 18 local venues put on exhibitions to celebrate the international conference of the Glass Art Society, scheduled to meet in Tucson in April. The Tucson Convention Center will showcase the work of glass artists from 14 countries. Etherton will do a show of Italian masters. The University of Arizona Museum of Art will exhibit cutting-edge mixed-media glass and photography pieces. Tohono Chul will display functional glass by Arizona artists. The Tucson Museum of Art will exhibit one-of-a kind sculptural work. Even galleries in Tubac, Scottsdale, Prescott and Sedona will get in on the glass act long distance. These shows and the accompanying workshops will demonstrate just how complicated glass art can be. It's made via a myriad of techniques ranging from kiln-casting, fusing and slumping to porte-de-verre and blowing. Art lovers who don't have a glimmer about glass can cram ahead of time at a show right now at Tucson's own bastion of glass, Philabaum Contemporary Art Glass. The exhibition, Massicio, is a primer on a specific glass technique perfected by the late Loredano Rosin of Murano, Italy. The show's title is the Italian name for the process, which translates as "in the mass." Rosin was a traditionally trained craftsman who, until his death in 1992, worked on the Venice lagoon island where glassmaking has been concentrated since the 13th century. Venetian glassmakers had long used the massicio technique--shaping hot, solid masses of glass with sculpture tools--but until Rosin came along, the pieces they made this way were tiny. So tiny, in fact, that they were generally used only as decorative trim for hollow glass vases or lamps or chandeliers. Spurred on by technical breakthroughs in glass furnaces and ovens, Rosin figured out a way to take massicio to a much larger scale. In his hands, the sensuous twists of solid massicio glass became not just ornaments, but large sculptures in their own right. Philabaum has managed to round up four of Rosin's pieces for the current show, which is not only a tribute to the maestro but a dissection of his profound influence on American glass artists. (Rosin taught occasionally at the prestigious Pilchuk Glass School outside Seattle.) In these works, you can see immediately both the innovations of Rosin and his adherence to tradition. In his capable hands, the difficult, dangerous glass medium seems as yielding as clay. Human torsos, especially female ones, are a sort of benchmark for glass artists, and Rosin's "Trunk of a Woman" is a fine one. It's made all the more beautiful by the wavy patterns in copper and green at the figure's back, glimpsed through the clear glass of the front of the figure. And yet Rosin's "Young Lovers," a clear glass sculpture of a pair of nude teens about to kiss, is a piece of kitsch, a wonderfully executed glasswork compromised by its clichéd subject. There's the same dichotomy in many of the works of Rosin's students and colleagues (including his brother Dino) that make up the rest of this show of 45 pieces. Most of these artists have consummate control over the hot glass of massicio, but they don't always have a compelling aesthetic vision to go along with their skills. For example, one artist crafted two glass bishops' heads, complete with pointed miter hats. The hats are made of beautifully colored mottled glass, but they beg the question: why bishops? and why hats? Then there are glass swords, glass snakes and even a titillating glass mermaid, her pointed nipples tilted seductively into the air. Luckily, though, there are some artists who bring both artistic skill and inspiration to their hot, sensuous material. Karen Naylor is a fine figurative sculptor who crafts her fleshy torsos, male and female, with an Italianate attention to muscularity, and a painterly interest in brilliant, jewel-like colors. "Cobalt Male Torso" is a sumptuous blue, "Reclined Orange Nude" glows mustardly. William Morris, one of the foremost American glass artists, has made "Hanging Artifact," a mysterious piece that looks a bit like an archaeological find. From a metal bar dangle opaque colored glass shapes--hornlike or bonelike--that don't even look like glass. While not making use of the transparent beauty of more conventional glassware, Morris has nonetheless made art that's haunting and original. One artist doesn't take his material as seriously as everybody else seems to. Richard Eckerd's series of "Dysfunctional Teapots" are at once gorgeously gleaming, transparently colorful and playful. Pulled into fantastical lids and handles, these comical pieces score a joke on glass art's origins in functional tableware and make a play on words over the overused word dysfunctional. The skillful Eckerd nevertheless makes exacting use of his difficult medium. Eckerd praised the innovations of Maestro Rosin by noting that the process he perfected "allows more freedom...along with complete control...." Those two principles, seemingly in opposition, have engendered works that are correspondingly twofold among Rosin's massicio followers: The disciples are making glass art that's both terrific and terrible. It will be interesting to see whether a similar bipolarity prevails during the glass extravaganza to come. Massicio: A Tribute to Loredano Rosin continues through November 9 at Philabaum Contemporary Art Glass, 711 S. Sixth Ave. Call 884-7404 for regular gallery hours. The Global Glass festival will run April 10 through 13, 1997, with exhibitions at various times in March and April. For more information on the conference, call Cate Bradley at 622-1933.

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