Susie Silbert discusses Paul Hollister’s writings and his description of studio glass works as “sculptural.” Oral history interview with Susie Silbert by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:37.

Susie Silbert: One of the biggest takeaways that I have from Paul’s writing that really sticks with me, is the way that he talks about much of the work as being ‘art-like,’ or ‘art-aspirational,’ or ‘sculptural’ but not ‘sculpture.’ And I think he was making very, maybe important, nuanced distinctions about the material and maybe framing it within—he was getting at the essential question of language and how we categorize the work of studio glass: is it art, is it sculpture, is—does it make sense to use those words; should there be a different lexicon when approaching these things? And I think maybe in approaching—in approaching much of that glasswork as sculptural, he was given an opportunity to exist in a different way that maybe got—the nuance of which got lost as the field progressed, and as the desire for glass to be defined only as art without, maybe, a nuanced understanding of what art was, left off. So the idea of glass as sculpture—I think, talking about glass as sculptural, or some of the work that he was talking about, means that for anybody that would have any kind of ideological hangups about terminology could still approach glass, and not feel like they were getting in the way of their Joseph Kosuth, or whatever formed opinions of the field.