Douglas Heller discusses learning about a Czech artist through the Corning ‘79 show, whom he later represented. Oral history interview with Doug Heller by Barb Elam and Jesse Merandy, September 27, 2018, Heller Gallery. Clip length: 01:02.

Doug Heller: When I went to that show at Corning that I called New Glass 1979, the one that was an epiphany for me. There were objects in that show by Czech glassmaker, named Frantisek Vizner, who I later represented—just several of them came up in auction at Rago—that were very physical, bowl-like forms carved out of blocks of glass, that if you went to pick up must have weighed 18, 20 pounds. I mean, they were hefty things, very tangible, and yet he did something with the edges and with the surface treatments that made them seem to dissolve and merge into the space around them. So it—you couldn’t quite decipher where the physical ended and just space began, and they were to me sublime objects, you know, transcendent objects. And yet big and heavy, you know, so I can see wonder in physical things.