Image courtesy of Tina Yelle.

Karen S. Chambers

Karen S. Chambers (1948– ) received a BFA from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, and an MFA from the University of Cincinnati. She served as editor of New Work magazine, published by the New York Experimental Glass Workshop (later UrbanGlass); was the head of UrbanGlass’s gallery from 1983 to 1986; and contributed to several notable publications including Neues Glas. She was manager of Chihuly Studio beginning in 1986 and marketed Dale Chihuly’s traveling exhibitions in the United States and Europe from 1988 to 1995. In addition, Chambers wrote several full-length art historical texts and worked as a curator independently and for commercial art galleries.

Karen Chambers discusses writing about glass.

Playing00:57 Transcript
Karen Chambers

Karen Chambers discusses writing about glass. Oral history interview with Karen Chambers by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 14, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:57.

Karen Chambers: You know, at first I was interested in the so-called fine arts, but I found that scene really boring in the early eighties. And I can’t pinpoint why I thought that, because I was interested in contemporary art and so I haunted the galleries and I saw what was up, and that’s—I would have liked to have begun writing about that, but I didn’t have an opportunity, so when glass came along it was like, ‘Okay, I can do this.’ As we all know, it’s a fascinating medium, and I have watched a hundred blowing sessions and I still am intrigued by it, and I liked the intersection of so-called craft and so-called fine art, and how they touch one another occasionally.

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Karen Chambers talks about financial uncertainty during NYEGW’s early years.

Playing00:24 Transcript
Karen Chambers

Karen Chambers talks about financial uncertainty during NYEGW’s early years. Oral history interview with Karen Chambers by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 14, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:24.

Karen Chambers: Well, it was very—as I said—kind of loosey-goosey. We didn’t have a lot of money, we weren’t—hadn’t really developed a donor base, and so it was always kind of hand to mouth. We had tiny circulation of New Work, which was a tabloid.

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Karen Chambers discusses Czech glass artists Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova coming to give workshops in America.

Playing0:42 Transcript
Karen Chambers

Karen Chambers discusses Czech glass artists Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova coming to NYEGW. Oral history interview with Karen Chambers by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 14, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:38.

Karen Chambers: And then there were people like the Libenskys [Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova] from the Czech Republic, who used to be—they would—only one would come because the Communist government did not want the possibility of them defecting. And then things opened up and they did come. And so there’s a strong glass tradition in Czechoslovakia—a number of Czech artists came to do workshops. I can’t think of any that came to actually teach on an ongoing basis.

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Karen Chambers talks about international exchange in the studio glass movement.

Playing0:38 Transcript
Karen Chambers

Karen Chambers talks about international exchange in the studio glass movement. Oral history interview with Karen Chambers by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 14, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:38.

Karen Chambers: Well, the international exchanges were incredible, because they brought techniques that—you know, in the American studio glass movement people were stumbling around, trying to just get a bubble centered. And making—every beginning glass class, the shelves are full of these odd conglomerations of stuff, impossible to tell one artist from another—but everybody went through that.

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