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[Tina Oldknow]: This sculpture by Jay Musler was made from an industrial Pyrex flask that
the artist cut in half to create a half-sphere. He then cut the edges of this bowl into ragged
shapes, and painted them black so that they are reminiscent of a skyline. He airbrushed
the bowl with orange-red paint, giving it the appearance of a cityscape at sunset, hence
the name “Cityscape Bowl”. Jay Musler is one of a large group of American artists
who, in the 1970’s and 1980’s, were making studio glass in their studios, using glass
as a medium for artistic expression. Although the form of this piece is a bowl, we understand
it as a non-functional bowl; we would not use it for anything. In this way, Jay Musler
takes the functional form of the bowl and changes it into something else; he changes
it into what we understand as sculpture. The bowl is made out of borisilicate glass, a
very hard glass that is used in industrial applications, and in fact, this piece started
its life as an industrial glass flask. The artist used this found object, which means
an object that has already been made, as the basis of his sculpture.