AMILTON D E S I G N G L A S S The artwork of Jeffrey Hamilton

Dr Donghai Guan's Sydney Visit

XX Mon. YYYY

The States of Illumination Ausglass Conference was held in Adelaide Feb 12th - 15th, with over 190 delegates. Dr Dongahi Guan, Head of Glass at Beijing University, was one of 5x Chinese delegates to present papers on contemporary glass practice in China. Following the Conference, Donghai travelled first to Canberra to visit the Canberra Glass Works and other locations, then on to Sydney before flying home.

As a Director of the Board of Ausglass I took on the role of organising Donghai's Sydney itinerary, making sure the schedule worked and that he got the most out of his visit. Our first port of call from Sydney Airport was Marc Grunseit's studio in Alexandria, followed by the Glass Artists' Gallery at Glebe. Ellen Harris, an Australian stained glass artist living in Norway, happened to be at the Gallery at the time and so we all enjoyed a delightful lunch at Blackwattle Cafe on Glebe Point. Ellen very generously shouted us all, commenting that "it's so cheap, compared to eating out in Norway!"

After lunch on the Thursday I dropped Donghai off at Sydney College of the Arts where Andrew Lavery, Head of the Glass School, took over. Ben Edols and Kathy Elliott graciously offered to host Donghai for the two nights of his Sydney sojourn, so that presented the opportunity of visiting firstly, Rob Wynne of Denizen Glass, Manly and then Emma Varga's studio in Brookvale on Friday morning.

Friday afternoon I met Dr Guan at Circular Quay and together we walked through the City, over Pyrmont Bridge, to the Power House Museum where Eva Czernis-Ryl, Senior Curator, took us on a tour of the glass collection in the basement.

From Ultimo we walked across town to my studio at Central, taking in the new Frank Ghery building on the way. This building has attracted much praise and criticism in equal measure. Donghai was most intrigued with Hibernian House, asking "are all buildings like this?" He also enjoyed my studio space and was highly complimentary of my work, both glass and on paper.

It was my good fortune to have a private showing of Dr Guan's slide presentation for the Adelaide Conference. Donghai's work is very powerful; deliberately so, as he has based much of his work on research of historical artifacts representing power and authority. We finished off the Sydney leg of his trip with a visit to Sabbia Gallery in Paddington, followed by Martin Browne Contemporary, Australia Galleries, Sarah Cottier, a group of galleries clustered around Royalston Street in Paddington. Sabbia was showing a spectacular exhibition, their annual Masters in Glass.