Bring this to your venue!
Bring this to your venue!
High Style:
The Art of Glass Pipes
Since emerging as an art form in the underground scene of Grateful Dead concerts in the 1980s and 1990s, glass cannabis pipes have grown into an enduring—and surprisingly ubiquitous—feature of the contemporary landscape. Operating largely under the radar of mainstream culture, contemporary pipemaking has an incredibly large following. Its practitioners are considered folk heroes and art stars to legions of online and in-person followers. Pipe exhibitions and festivals occur across the country with regularity, attended by a highly dedicated fandom.
Despite this popularity and the fact that many first-generation pipe makers have been working for more than a quarter century, there has been no major survey of their work outside of the pipe and cannabis world and no attempt to place the work in a larger historical context. As legalization of cannabis spreads across the country, the time is right for an appraisal of this innovative field of cultural production.
High Style: The Art of Cannabis Pipes is a community-responsive survey of the contemporary pipe art movement since its emergence in the 1990s to the present day.
Developed in conversation with key members of the pipe community by a curator who has long developed relationships to this under-the-radar field, the exhibition features approximately 130 works by nearly 100 of the movement’s leading artists.
Ryan Jenkins, Strange Configuration at the Moment of Separation, flameworked borosilicate glass, 2022. Photo: Steve Hubbard, courtesy of the artist
El New Glass, Jupiter Jazz, flameworked borosilicate glass, 2023. Photograph by Carrie Strong, courtesy of the artist.
Pedro Smiley, Disc Flip Bubbler, about 2000, flameworked borosilicate glass. Photo: Jeff DiMarco
A museum exhibition dedicated to the incredible art, craft, and culture of glass cannabis pipes.
Exhibition Specs
Number of Objects
130, primarily from private lenders
Availability
Starting 2027
Interpretation
Exhibition didactics, including section texts and extended labels provided by curator
Publication
Full-color, 192 page publication available. Published by Marquand, designed by Studio LHOOQ.
Venue Period
12 - 15 weeks
Required Space
Flexible, envisioned at 3700 - 4000
“High Style is about cannabis pipes to be sure, but it is also about the perseverance and dedication it takes to sustain a creative practice in the face of adversity. The steady drumbeat throughout the show is the imperative to keep making work against all odds, to believe in what you are doing even when the chips are stacked against you.
It is also about community, about what can happen when people band together, when they build each other up, and construct their own systems of validation outside the mainstream. The pipemakers teach us the value of collective power.”
—Susie J. Silbert
