by Drew Martin
If you are reading this post on your phone, it is very likely you are seeing it through Gorilla Glass developed by Corning Incorporated, in Corning, New York.
Corning is the center of glass research and development in the United States and is also a cute little town along a beautiful mountain range and the Chemung River. It is also home to the amazing Corning Museum of Glass, which I have always wanted to go to, and was finally able to visit on the way to Niagara Falls this summer when travel was restricted to only in-state (New York) trips because of the Coronavirus.
The Museum is a fascinating combination of galleries, interactive displays, and a full schedule of glass-making demonstrations, which are not simply tourist gimmicks. The one I saw was run by two young women who were creating artwork for a local installation.
We are so accustomed to glass that we forget how magical it is, and this museum does a great job showing how versatile and ancient but also modern it is as an art form.
Even though I spent several hours at the Museum, I could have easily stayed the whole day exploring "35 centuries of glass galleries".
Here as some of the pictures I took with my phone. The first two images are of the Continuous Mile, explained here from the Museum website.
"Continuous Mile took Liza Lou longer than a year to make with a team of more than 50 beadworkers from several townships in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The monumental sculpture is composed of a coiled and stacked cotton rope, measuring a mile in length, sewn with more than 4.5 million glossy black glass beads. It is a work about work..."
