Lot 424: Josiah McElheny (b. 1966)

History Modernized fifteen glass objects, fifteen photographs and shelves dimensions variable Executed in 1998. PROVENANCE Donald Young Gallery, Chicago EXHIBITION Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Josiah McElheny, January-April 1999, p. 33 (illustrated) NOTES Apprenticed to various Master glassblowers in Europe, Scandinavia and the US over five years, McElheny's preoccupation is a blend of history, both fact and fiction, and glass. Evolving from historical anecdotes about a particular practice or scenario which relate to glass or to its origins, these anecdotes which are sometimes historically accurate and sometimes in whole or in part fictional, form templates for his beautifully blown artworks. "It is the great virtue of Josiah McElheny's art that it dwells within and speculates relentlessly upon the eternal circularity of glass as object and idea - as the very emblem of human civilization in its stubborn hardness, its fictional transparency, and its extreme fragility" (Dave Hickey, "Hearts of Glass," in Josiah McElheny, Boston, 1998). Apprenticed to various Master glassblowers in Europe, Scandinavia and the US over five years, McElheny's preoccupation is a blend of history, both fact and fiction, and glass. Evolving from historical anecdotes about a particular practice or scenario which relate to glass or to its origins, these anecdotes which are sometimes historically accurate and sometimes in whole or in part fictional, form templates for his beautifully blown artworks.