PHILADELPHIA, PA.- An international panel of glass experts has awarded the University of the Arts’ fifth annual Irvin Borowsky International Prize in Glass Arts to glass artist and educator, Anjali Srinivasan. The Borowsky Prize is given each year to an artist whose work is conceptually daring, exemplifies technical skill and innovation, and advances the field of contemporary glass. The prize carries with it a $5,000 award and a lecture at the University. Srinivasan will present her lecture at UArts on November 9.

Srinivasan has collaborated with traditional craft artisans in India since 1996 on research and design initiatives aimed at socio-economic empowerment. She studied Accessories’ Design at the National Institute of Fashion Technology in New Delhi and holds a BFA from Alfred University, New York. She completed her graduate studies at Rhode Island School of Design in 2007 with a keen interest in glass and digital media, and founded and directs ChoChoMa Studios in Dubai. Srinivasan currently teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.

Of her work, Srinivasan says, “My studio processes focus on the development of ways to discover, access and restructure fundamental information held in a material, situation, technology or history. Typically, this leads to a transformation of materiality and its phenomena.

"Experiments, usually responsive entities, exhibit unusual behavior or interact with their environments unexpectedly. I make toys, tools, devices and installations, which are incomplete without human presence. They remain unfulfilled without human participation; erode and multiply with time, and implicate the human body in their framework in different ways....

• A large skin of crystal glows with the warmth of the human hand as it is touched....

• A self-supporting arch made of glass filaments is flame-worked entirely by passers-by....

• A dying tradition of glass bangles looks to the human hand to reconstruct its language....

“In ways such as these, my works allow for other moments to be created, their identity best framed by the encounter with the object in social space. I am interested not in what is, but what can be.”

Two finalists, Nate Ricciuto and Anna Mlasowsky, received the Juror’s Award, given to glass artists whose work shows commendable skill and challenges the field of contemporary art.

Ricciuto’s projects merge sculpture, image, glass and performative objects in questioning the expectations we bring to technology. He earned an MFA from Tyler School of Art in 2015 and a BFA from The Ohio State University in 2008. Ricciuto has been a WheatonArts Creative Glass Center of America fellow and an Emerging Artist in Residence at Pilchuck Glass School. He is currently a lecturer in the glass program at Ohio State and was the recipient of a 2017 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council.

Born 1984 in Germany, Anna Mlasowsky received her BA in Glass from the Royal Danish Academy in 2011 and an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Washington in 2016. She has been an artist in residence at The Creative Glass Center of America, The Toyama City Institute of Glass Art in Japan and The Corning Museum of Glass, among others. Her work has been shown in international competitions and has been included in museum collections such as The Corning Museum of Glass, The European Museum of Modern Glass Art and the Glasmuseum Ebeltoft. She won the UK Glass Prize in 2013, the Otto Waldrich Preis and the Emerge Silver Award in 2014.

Mlasowsly recently received an Artist Trust Fellowship, was one of the Emerging Voices in Craft Award recipients and was awarded an Emerging Artist residency at Centrum. She has recently completed the Specialty Glass Residency at the Corning Inc. Science Center.

The Irvin Borowsky International Prize in Glass Arts is made possible by a generous gift from the late University of the Arts Trustee Irvin J. Borowsky and his wife, Laurie Wagman, a current trustee.

The Irvin Borowsky Center for Glass Arts at the University of the Arts was also established through that gift, allowing the University to expand its glass facilities and its capacity to promote the study of the historical and contemporary significance of glass art.

The 2017 Prize was selected by an international panel of artists, educators and collectors. This year’s jurors include Uta Klotz, editor-in-chief of NEUES GLAS – NEW GLASS: art & architecture, in Germany; Susie Silbert, curator of modern and contemporary glass at the Corning Museum of Glass; Rui Sasaki, glass artist and 2016 recipient of the Borowsky Prize; Dan Clayman, glass artist; Dr. Arlene Silvers, curator of the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia; Laurie Wagman, UArts trustee and widow of Irvin Borowsky, for whom the Prize is named; Brian Effron, UArts trustee and glass collector; Sharyn O’Mara; head of the Glass program at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, and Richard Whiteley, head of the Glass Workshop at the School of Art, Australian National University in Canberra.