BAM Biennial 2018: BAM! Glasstastic at Bellevue Arts Museum November 9, 2018 – April 14, 2019

Bellevue, WA—Bellevue Arts Museum is excited to announce that 48 artists have been selected to participate in the fifth edition of the Museum’s Biennial. BAM Biennial, established in 2010, is a juried exhibition occurring every two years which focuses on the work of established and emerging Northwest artists, craftspeople, and designers living and working in the Pacific Northwest. For each edition, Bellevue Arts Museum designates a new focus of exploration, be it a specific medium, technique, process, or theme in art, craft, and design. This year’s biennial will be the last materials-based biennial, focusing on the medium of glass. Looking forward to 2020, the museum plans to spotlight the field of architecture. Past biennials have focused on clay, fiber, wood, and metal. This year's exhibition is titled BAM Biennial 2018: BAM! Glasstastic and will be on view from November 9, 2018 – April 14, 2019.

Applications for BAM! Glasstastic were reviewed by a panel of five esteemed jurors comprising Tina Aufiero, Artistic Director, Pilchuck Glass School, WA; Andrew Page, Chief Editor, Glass Quarterly, NY; Susan Warner, Executive Director, Vashon Center for the Arts, WA; Benedict Heywood, Executive Director & Chief Curator, Bellevue Arts Museum, WA; and Lucile Chich, Assistant Curator, Bellevue Arts Museum, WA. The majority of applicants proposed new work pushing the boundaries of the medium and their own artistic practices. From this pool of ambitious proposals, 50 artists were selected to participate:

"With Seattle being the undisputed center for the development of glass as an art form in North America, it was natural that this medium should have been selected to culminate the Museum's series of media-based biennials" says Benedict Heywood, Executive Director & Chief Curator of BAM. "The simplicity of its composition, the complexity of its production, the many forms it can take—blown, cast, frit, stained—as well as its many uses, from the stained-glass of a medieval cathedral to the modernist skyscraper, from the Venetian goblet to the IKEA tealight, attest to the fact that glass is a paradoxical material, that has inspired the artists of the Northwest for generations."

During the run of the biennial, two cash prizes of $5,000 will be awarded, one of which includes the opportunity for the selected artist to hold a future solo exhibition at BAM. Four artists, Dante Marioni, John Kiley, Erich Woll, and Lino Tagliapietra, have elected to remove themselves from the running for these prizes.

BAM Biennial 2018: BAM! Glasstastic is organized by Bellevue Arts Museum and curated by Lucile Chich and Benedict Heywood. The exhibition is made possible with support from Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass.

ABOUT BELLEVUE ARTS MUSEUM

Bellevue Arts Museum provides a public forum for the community to contemplate, appreciate, and discuss visual culture. We work with audiences, artists, makers, and designers to understand our shared experience of the world. bellevuearts.org.

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