Museum of Glass 2024-25

Nancy Callan: Forces At Play was curated by Katie Buckingham and presented at Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington during 2024-2025. The exhibition surveyed twenty-plus years of Callan's career as an artist. Organized thematically, the show included current and archival examples of Callan's sculptural work, as well as two major wall panel compositions created in the Museum Hotshop for the exhibition. 

The exhibit opened with Pop Art & Graphics, a gallery of works influenced by the artist's early career in graphic design and her love of comic books, vintage pop culture and bold color. Selections included examples of a several early series: witty Medicine Bottles, Tops, striped Bee Buoys and three new Superhero Stingers. Pattern & Textile, the second theme, opened with early Winkles in plaid cane patterns, progressing to more organic and irregular textures that suggest links between fabric and glass (Palomas and Balaclavas). A nineteen-panel wall installation, Comme les Filles(2024), paid homage to avant garde designer Rei Kawakubo, whose dark and deconstructed aesthetic inspired the patterns and open composition. A central island introduced Nature and Wonders, the third theme, with five works highlighting the complexity and beauty of the natural world as interpreted in glass. A multi-panel compostion Shadow Realm (2024) featured metallic silver tones and highly textural surfaces, harnessing the reactive qualites of glass to suggest dark and mysterious dimensions of our world and cosmos. Translucent Droplets, Spires, Orbs and Space Rocks rounded out the works included in this theme. 

A 144-pg hardcover catalog with essays by Gayle Clemans and Kim Harty and introduction by Katie Buckingham is available through Museum of Glass Store.