In Memory of Two Angels

"In Memory of Two Angels" consists of a pair of winged glass pieces by the influential female glass artist Toots Zynsky. These are rare works created early in her career when she was still earning her BFA under the tutelage of Dale Chihuly. Zynsky states that she blew the pieces at RISD in October of 1971: “I remember it very well because the title [refers to] two very dear friends of mine [who] were tragically killed in a terrible automobile accident in Texas in August 1971, just as the first summer of building Pilchuck was ending.” The artist blew the pieces with the glass available at RISD at the time and then sandblasted them. “We were sneaking down to use the sandblaster in the Metal Department before the Glass Department had its own,” Zynsky recalls, demonstrating the lack of structure around studio glass in the early years of its emergence and the experimentation and combination of methods on the part of its early practitioners. When Bob Pfannebecker visited the Rhode Island School of Design in late spring of 1973, Zynsky sold him the work because she needed funding to travel west to Pilchuck that summer. She was also aware that “after graduation my life would become very migratory. By having them in Bob's collection, they would be stable and well taken care of, which was important to me.” The artist states that these are some of her favorites from her early semesters of glass blowing.