'New Struggling Chaos', 1998

Glassmaker Toots Zynsky (b. 1951) grew up in Massachusetts. One of the most prominent female glassmakers of her era, Zynsky completed her BFA at The Rhode Island School of Design in 1973. As a student of Dale Chihuly, Zynsky learned alongside other artists including Dan Dailey. In the early 1970s, she moved across the country to Stanwood, Washington, alongside Chihuly, to start the Pilchuck Glass School. An artist of various media, Zynsky also produced video and performance works in the mid-1970s. However, she is best known today for her glassmaking, and more specifically, the filet-de-verre technique she created. In this wholly original process, Zynsky pulls glass into threads and then forms her vessels out of numerous threads of varying colors. This allowed her to create works with incredible texture and unmatched color. The threaded nature of the pieces also allows them to self-referentially highlight glass as a substance which is oftentimes a liquid and a solid. The artist’s New Struggling Chaos (1998) demonstrates her filet-de-verre technique; one can see the multicolored, overlapping groups of threads, giving the piece a nearly kinetic appearance resembling woven fabric moving in the wind. From a technical perspective, Zynsky became even more prolific after meeting Mathijs Van Manen in the early 1980s. The dutchman helped her develop machines which automated the threadmaking process she’d been previously doing by hand. Shortly thereafter, in the 1980s and 1990s, Zynsky travelled the globe spending time at Venini glassworks in Murano as well as in Ghana and Paris. Given her immense popularity among scholars and collectors, it is only natural that Zynsky’s works are held in over 75 public collections including the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art.