This year’s Madison Chautauqua Festival of Art will offer a new feature to visitors – a demonstration and video on glass art in America. Visitors will be able to see the video and demonstration at the Lanier-Madison Visitors Center, 601 W. First St., Madison, Ind., during the two-day show, scheduled for Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 29-30.
The festival, entering its 42nd year, is produced under the auspices of VisitMadison Inc., the city’s tourism bureau. Dozens of volunteers help produce the annual juried art show, which is planned by a committee headed by festival coordinator Georgie Kelly. It features 250 exhibitor booths around the streets of Madison, from Broadway to Vine streets, and Main Street to Vaughn Drive, including those streets surrounding the Lanier Mansion State Historic Site.
The Madison Chautauqua committee was invited by the Indiana Glass Arts Alliance to participate in the 50th anniversary of Studio Glass in America. “We said ‘yes’ and have been working on this project for over a year to make it work,” Kelly said.
The committee has incorporated three elements for this program. “Fire in the Hole” involves bringing in a furnace for hot-glass demonstrations both days of the show. Glass artist Matt Kenyon will be doing the glass demonstrations. Kenyon is a graduate of Herron Art Institute graduate and Indianapolis Art Center instructor. The furnace will be located in the paved parking lot just below the Visitors Center. A video on the history of hot-glass, “Pioneer of Studio Glass,” will play continuously in the video room of the Visitors Center.

Photo by Emily Ward Glass artist Bruce Lanier of Erlanger, Ky., displays his talent (Booth No. 603).

Also, students from Ball State University and Anderson University are coming to Madison with art glass instructor Brent Cole to demonstrate glass art blowing. Cole is an associate professor of glass and director of the Marilyn K. Glick Center for Glass at Ball State University.
“Blaze and Burn” will feature Hanover College students working with the Chautauqua committee to provide a gallery showing for a month and bringing Cole to Madison to lecture at 5:30 p.m. on the Friday night before the Chautauqua. The reception begins at 5 p.m. and his free lecture will both take place at the Greiner Art Gallery inside the Lynn Center for Fine Arts on the Hanover College campus. Ball State students will have work on display as well.
“Igniting Imaginations” is the third facet of the program. The Chautauqua committee is working with the heads of the art departments in all three local high schools – Madison Consolidated, Southwestern and Shawe Memorial – to take the history of hot-glass into their classrooms.
Meantime, the Madison Chautauqua is gearing for another big year and has commissioned Hanover, Ind., watercolorist Bill Borden to create the 2012 Chautauaua poster, with a focus on glass. The design incorporates Kenyon’s glass artwork.
Borden held a poster signing Sept. 14 at Galatea’s Art Supplies store in Madison. Unsold posters will be available for sale during the Chautauqua at the Information Tent on Broadway Street. The posters are $45, and a limited number of 200 were made.
Chautauqua exhibitor and glass artist Tim Spicknell created the stained glass piece used in the T-shirt design. The committee chose to use gray for the T-shirts because the color best suits the colors in his stained glass. The T-shirt design was painted by Amy Vaughn and graphic is by Amy Fischmer.
T-shirts are priced at $15 for short-sleeved and $20 for long-sleeved. Sweatshirts are $25. They are available for sale at the Visitors Center and at the Information Tent.
In other activities, the Cornerstone Society has asked to display the three riverfront sculpture models during the Madison Chautauqua. Lanier Mansion has given permission to display them in the video room at the Visitors Center. Public voting on the models will help determine a winner, which will eventually be created on the riverfront as the Madison Bicentennial’s Legacy Gift to the city.
Finally, the Doctors Band will make its popular return to entertain the crowd from 7-9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, at the Broadway Fountain. This annual concert is made possible by the Chautauqua in conjunction with the Madison Main Street Program and concludes the latter group’s “Music in the Park” summer concert series. The concert is free and those attending are urged to bring chairs or blankets.

• Don Ward is the editor, publisher and owner of RoundAbout. Call him at (812) 273-2259 or email: Don@RoundAbout.bz.