Heller Gallery is pleased to present Endangered Species, our second solo exhibition of new work by American artist Toots Zynsky. Endangered Species runs June 8 – July 13, 2018. Eleven new pieces taking inspiration from the colors of critically endangered birds will be included in the exhibition.

With a studio glass practice spanning four decades, Zynsky has established an international reputation for making exquisite richly colored vessels that appear to have grown organically. Zynsky’s sensually undulating vessels made of fused glass threads acknowledge the hybrid nature of her work, which blurs the border between glass and fiber, solids & liquids.

Zynsky received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1973. During this time she was one of the only women of a group of pioneering artists studying with Dale Chihuly, who made studio glass a worldwide phenomenon. In conjunction with Chihuly, she participated in the founding and early development of Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State. She later became assistant director and head of the hot shop at the New York Experimental Glass Workshop in New York City, now Brooklyn-based UrbanGlass. Curator and art historian Tina Oldknow said that ‘Zynsky has made a life’s work of studying and manipulating colored glass through the vehicle of her distinctive, undulating forms. Continually evolving, her work is a formal exploration in color and composition that has no end.’

Zynsky’s work is included in more than 75 international museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cooper-Hewitt in New York City; the Musée des Arts Décoratifs du Louvre in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Australia’s National Gallery of Victoria. She is the recipient of numerous prestigious honors and awards including the 2015 Smithsonian Visionary Award, the Women’s Center of Rhode Island Annual Women of Excellence Award in 2013 and the Rhode Island Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2006.