Image in article: Blue Dress 18" x 16" x 16"  1998, cast glass

Glass casting is probably closer to traditional sculpture methods than any other glassworking technique. It is commonplace to say that you can do anything with hot glass that you can do with bronze. Well, sort of. The mold making and the investment procedure is the same, but glass is probably more difficult. It certainly is more temperamental. Then there is the question of kiln-casting: bits of glass are melted in a mold inside of a furnace/annealer. Pate de verre writ large. Casting, whether hot or warm, is very different from glass blowing. We will leave aside slumping-or glass made hot enough to slump into or onto a mold-since casting doesn't seem quite the word. Casting glories in the solid as opposed to the hollow. We are in the realm of rock hard ice rather than that of soap bubbles. The techniques may be opposed, but the results are not always what you would expect; delicacy is not automatically excluded. Certain cast-glass sculptures by Howard Ben Tre have negative forms trapped inside. And the floating symbols inside Bertil Vallien's sandcastings can be as poetic as a lampworked bee.
    
     In the middle of our special cast glass issue, we sample a range of works (and techniques). Ben Tre and Vallien are the masters. Daniel Clayman and Mark Ferguson are the intermediate contenders. But we need to cast a wider net.
    
     Karen LaMonte's amazing cast glass dress is the quest that started a deeper look into Czech Glass (see her article in this issue). Alan Glovsky's solid glass houses evolved out of imagery he explored over years while creating multi-media installations; he has suspended his houses in mid-air and now, in his latest series, they are on tall thin bases that end at the ground in rockers. Steve Tobin thinks big: in his earlier blown glass cocoons and in his installations using tons of medical glass. Most recently he has been making bronze castings of termite mounds in Africa. Pictured here is one door from his door series-all cast glass-installed in an underground pool as part of a series of installations in Retritti, Finland in 1993.
    
     Sean Mercer is the new cast glass star, using other materials as well as glass in his forceful wall and floor pieces. Tessa Clegg, in England, casts elegant pieces that present great formal clarity. Finally Rick Beck harkens back to the industrial in bold cast glass pieces that hold their own as sculpture. Just as some are drawn to glass, as opposed to clay or fiber or metal or wood, within glass there is also a range of temperaments that can be satisfied through certain techniques and not others. Glassblowing is quick and flashy. On the other hand working on molds can be as thrilling as watching paint dry.
    
     Cast glass, whether hot or warm, is cool. It's virtues are many: weight, mass and quiet presence. But do not underestimate the temporal dimensions. Cast glass gives time a solid form.