News
New Installation and Curated Exhibition at the Museum of American Glass until Dec. 2026
August 11, 2026
The Museum of American Glass in Millville, New Jersey presents an exhibition of a new site specific installation by Jocelyne Prince Ghost Optics (April 2, 2026 through December 31, 2026). Concurrently, the Museum presents Portals and Passages a group exhibition curated by Prince. Closing Event: November 7, 2026 from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Ghost Optics is a site-specific intervention integrated in the windows of the Museum’s Bottle Gallery. It addresses early methods of flat glass and bottle glass production. Working with the 120 year old Paul Wissmach Glass Company in West Virginia, Prince hot cast various interchangeable emblems from a historic flask mould for spirits that used an industrial technology known as the “American System”, which allowed one mould to be used to make a multitude of bottle designs. These were then passed through an industrial roller to create a series of flat glass sheets, which ware installed in the windows of the Museum’s Bottle Gallery. The emblems evoke a mix of patriotic, historic and commemorative motifs. They are stretched, crackled, and sometimes even fractured. Their ghost-like watermark characteristic becomes visible at certain angles and invisible at other angles. This material process mirrors how we test our patriotism and democracy, challenging its limits, and sometimes going beyond. (MAG Webpage: PDF / link)
Portals and Passages brings together five artists: Justin Ginsberg, Romina Gonzales, Ashley Raye Harris, Matthew Day Perez and Alexander Wenstrup, who have an acute understanding of how just a few millimeters of glass can shift our perception of the world. Each work in this exhibition catalyzes the optical and sculptural space that exists within a sheet of glass. In some cases, the surface of the glass has been disrupted, or bears the marks of the action of its making, or the glass composition has been specially concocted to refract light, or the tiniest amount of air is trapped and visually manifested. A fascination with surface, the space just beyond the surface, what we see through the glass, the space within the glass, and what we see reflected in the glass preoccupies these artists. (MAG webpage: PDF / link)
The works in this exhibition have been selected in conjunction with, and as a complement to the research and activities that are part of the November 2026 WheatonArts symposium on window glass production methods, “Transparent Thresholds.” (more info)
Transparent Thresholds Symposium, November 2026
November 6-7, 2026, WheatonArts presents the Transparent Thresholds Symposium (click for event webpage).
The interdisiplinary event is led by Jocelyne Prince (Artist & Professor, Glass Department, Rhode Island School of Design) and Anna Riley (Artist & Doctoral student, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University) in conjunction with the Museum of American Glass special exhibitions Portals and Passages and Ghost Optics. (Click here for more information on the organizers and consultants)
Transparent Thresholds will examine the evolution of flat glass manufacturing with the goal of broadening the understanding of material, labor and craft in contemporary art and beyond in relation to our mechanized age. It asks the questions: How can the history of window and flat glass technology reshape contemporary practice with glass across various fields? How can revisiting this history help reframe dominant narratives about the built and technological environment?
The symposium brings together artists, scholars, architects and engineers to explore the embodied intelligence of industrial glassmaking and reclaim this history as a source of creative and educational innovation. By bringing historical and industrial knowledge into the studio, this collaborative event seeks to expand the vocabulary of glassmaking, foster interdisciplinary discussion, and generate new forms of creative and technical engagement.
The symposium features four speakers, researchers and practitioners from glass, archeology and material science (click here for more information on the speakers):
- Lindsy R. Parrott, Executive director and curator of The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass
- Mudit Trivedi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University
- Peter Houk, Artistic director of the MIT Glass Lab and independent artist
- Michael Stern, Professor of Practice, Creative Technology, RIT and Founder/Lead of Evenline
It also will present two “think-and-do” sessions combining discussion and hands-on studio-scale experimentation using these processes: Lubbers draw, Fourcault draw, rolled, cast, and cylinder production methods.
The two day symposium held at WheatonArts in Millville, New Jersey, is limited to 50 attendees. Click here to register.
Evening of films curated by Jocelyne Prince
May 20, 2025
Still from Možná (2010) by Pavla Sceranková. (source Národní filmový archiv)
As part of her Fulbright research at the Národní filmový archiv (national film archives of the Czech Republic), Jocelyne Prince received an invitation to curate a program of films from the archive related to glass, transparency and kinetics. The series of eleven films entitled Sklo, transparence a světelný kinetismus (Glass, transparency and light kinetics) spans the period of 1930 to 2010. It will be screened June 16, 2025 at 6 p.m. at Kino Ponrepo (cinema), Bartolomějská 11, in Prague, Czech Republic.
List of films to be screened
V srdci Posázaví (1943, Stanislav Olmer, ukázka cca 5 min)
Světlo proniká tmou (1930, Otakar Vávra, František Pilát, 4 min)
Bohemian Glass Rhapsody (1964, Kristian Topič, 8 min)
Možná (2010, Pavla Sceranková, 1 min)
Concerto Bohemo (1967, Kristian Topič, 13 min)
Inspirace (1948, Karel Zeman, 11 min)
Moře v zrcadle (1980, Lumír Hladík, 10 min)
Korálková pohádka (1968, Hermína Týrlová, 9 min)
Dialog (1981, Pavel Koutecký, 18 min)
Líčení Fata morgany (1992, Jiří Černický, 3 min)
České sklo a ikebana (1972, Dušan Trančík, 9 min)
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Canadian-American conceptual artist and professor at the Glass Department – Rhode Island School of Design, Jocelyne Prince, is currently researching the tradition of Czech glass as part of her Fulbright scholarship. She has studied documentary, animated, advertising and art films in the collection of the National Film Archive. During the composed evening, she will present films that represent the tradition of industrial, folkloric and art glass, which in their time served as an export product and a tool for building national pride.
However, Jocelyne Prince has also focused on the theme of transparency and reflection, which is also evident in avant-garde films or video art. In this playful and eclectic range, Prince highlights: the intersections of the material and poetic nature of glassmaking disciplines, the cinematic lyricism in the presentation of glassmaking with an emphasis on the use of light, or the contrast between new technologies and craftsmanship.
The program will feature films from the collection of the National Film Archive:
In the Heart of the Posázaví (1943, Stanislav Olmer, preview approx. 5 min)
Light Penetrates the Darkness (1930, Otakar Vávra, František Pilát, 4 min)
Bohemian Glass Rhapsody (1964, Kristian Topič, 8 min)
Maybe (2010, Pavla Sceranková, 1 min)
Concerto Bohemo (1967, Kristian Topič, 13 min)
Inspiration (1948, Karel Zeman, 11 min)
The Sea in the Mirror (1980, Lumír Hladík, 10 min)
Bead Fairy Tale (1968, Hermína Týrlová, 9 min)
Dialogue (1981, Pavel Koutecký, 18 min)
Making Fata Morgana (1992, Jiří Černický, 3 min)
Czech Glass and Ikebana (1972, Dušan Trančík, 9 min)
Jocelyne Prince selected as a 2025 USA Fellow
January 31, 2025
Jocelyne Prince along with 50 other artists working in America from all disciplines who have been chosen this year as USA Fellows. Recipients receive a cash award as well as access to a variety of professional services and field resources allowing them to deepen the impact on their practice and support their essential roles in society.
Jocelyne’s USA Fellowship Artist Profile
Intercalary Art Event Website Online!
January 19, 2022
Jocelyne Prince, Katie Bullock, Sean Salstrom and Robert Horton’s multi venue Intercalary Art Event, opened only to be closed shortly after due to Covid pandemic restrictions. It was decided that an online version of the exhibition would be the best way to have the work seen.
RISD Museum‘s assistant director of graphic design Derek Schusterbauer, and Artist Online Presence and Archiving‘s UI expert, Don Goodes, teamed up to produce the bold and comprehensive website. Participating artist Katie Bullock’s original pencil drawings of maps and the three buildings where the exhibition’s works were hosted add to the site’s unique look and feel.
Video walk-thoughs were produced for two of the locations, the Ladd Observatory and the John Hay Library, and are available on the site pages. An essay by art theorist Tom Zummer entitled How to Do Words (with Things): Inference, Reference, and Difference in Aesthetic and Scientific Practices (a work in progress) rounds out the online exhibition’s offerings. As the title implies, Zummer posits a deep consideration of the exhibiting artists’ works in relation to the connections between scientific and aesthetic practices.
Visit the Intercalary Art Event site.
Exhibition with New Work at Redwood Library, Newport, RI
July 10, 2021
This summer Jocelyne Prince presents two works. Including a new site-specific installation for the historic Abraham Redwood summer house.
Library of Amorphous Matter
July 9-October 10, 2021
Rovensky Delivery Room in the Redwood Library
Open Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday: 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Octadic Beacon
Summer 2021-Spring 2022
Opening July 9, 2021
Abraham Redwood’s summer house on the Redwood Library Grounds
(Grounds always open – best viewing is after sundown)
In Library of Amorphous Matter, Jocelyne Prince considers the material properties of glass, an amorphous or non-crystalline solid that is the central protagonist of a fantastical library of cracks, drips and scars. Slide Library (2002-present), exhibited in the Redwood’s Rovensky Delivery Room on custom “athenaeum-like” bookcases, features hundreds of intimately scaled, hand-blown glass slides, attesting to what Prince calls her longstanding “love affair with libraries.”
Outside on the Library grounds, the artist has installed one hundred and ninety-two glass panes in the windows of Abraham Redwood’s eighteenth-century summer house to create the site specific installation Octadic Beacon (2021). The historic structure, illuminated from within as if lit by a fiery hearth, transforms into a radiant edifice: a shining beacon on a hill. Semi-post-pandemic, the stakes of this Puritan image – and whether it can remain an American ideal – feel very timely.
50 Bellevue Ave.
Newport, Rhode Island
Intercalary Event in Providence RI
February 4, 2020
Jocelyne Prince is joined by artists and fellow faculty from the RISDI Glass Faculty Katie Bullock and Sean Salstrom, as well as artist and Manager of Astronomy Laboratories and Ladd Observatory at Brown University Robert Horton for a cross-discipline, multi venue event.
They “invite” intercalary events/objects into the Chazan Gallery, Hay Library’s Wills Reading Room, (Brown University) and Ladd Observatory.
The process the artists engage is one of letting inquiry guide new paths; by inserting surprising elements into a narrative of objectivity and data. Observation and systems of observation are embraced but give way to a looser idea of “things related to science”. (source: Chazan Gallery)
Runs from January 21, 2020 – December 18, 2020
Exhibition website: intercalaryartevent.com/
DMZ, then and now Live Event at K-Arts, Seoul Korea
April 20, 2019
K-Arts artist in residence Jocelyne Prince will present a performance work on April 24th, 2019. She will be accompanied by musician Jun Jae-ho.
Mystic Lamb Live Event at Gent Glas in Belgium
February 20, 2019
Jocelyne Prince, along with artists Monali Meher and Katarzyna Klich, was selected for the Gent Glas series INSPIR[E](REN) – INSPIRATI(E)[ON], a visiting artist program for artists who use glass as a primary medium or experimentally. This international program brought her to Gent, Belgium to do residency that resulted in a performance titled Mystic Lamb Live Event.
“Sol Obscura” Live Event in Norway Dec. 20, 2018
October 29, 2018
Sol Obscura is a live event performance spanning one of the shortest days of the year, when the Nordic sun is at its most minimal. S12 Galleri og Verksted will be the site where the sun is re-inserted into the day.
Date: December 20, 2018 19:30 – 23:30
Venue: Sol Obscura Live Event at S12, Bergen, Norway.
In honour of endings and new beginnings S12 in Bergen, Norway is hosting Sol Obscura – a live event performance spanning one of the shortest days of the year when the Nordic sun is at its most minimal. Rhode Island based artist Jocelyne Prince will use the S12 workshop to re-solarize the long hours of darkness into bursts of light. Akin to our ancestors’ winter solstice rituals, the play between light and dark suggests the infinite continuum of beginnings and ends that mark our lives.
Percussionist Owen Weaver (Brooklyn, NY) will be accompanying the performance. Weaver is known for his use of recycled objects, homemade instruments and electronic sounds that construct a kaleidoscopic sound world.
Participation in Project Atalanta
October 28, 2018
In spring 2018 I participated in an online collaborative project, Project Atalanta, in honor of the 400th anniversary of Michael Maier’s book Atalanta fugiens (1618).
An ongoing project that is located in the Instagram space projectatalant. Every week artists, poets, scientists and others respond to different emblems in the Maier book. I created 3 Instagram videos in response to “Emblem 18: FIRE LOVES FIERY THINGS” (see image to the left).
The hearth/furnace in this emblem plays a central role echoing the statement “what falls into fire becomes fire”. The Latin word “focus” originally referred to a hearth. Maier seems to note this etymological relationship in his observation that the sun can become fire through the potential of a burning lens (in 1604, Kepler, a contemporary of Maier’s, comes to use the word focus to denote the point of convergence of a lens). The description of the sun rays being multiplied and projected through a lens are connected to ideas of propagation and multiplication as core mechanisms of nature. Mattheus Merian’s etching shows us the alchemist as one who works with Fire; his tools sit near or in the fire. A bowl of coins, perhaps gold coins are birthed or multiplied through the nature of fire. This homey scene with dog and possibly some bread in the background conveys the Fire’s glow despite the absence of color.
Jocelyne Prince Project Atalanta Videos on Instagram
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