In the world of art there is a beautiful old word: patron. Without the patrons of the Renaissance, many frescoes would never have been painted, many books never written, and many ideas would have stayed in a single head. Today the word has almost gone out of use, but the thing it named is returning under a newer name: collector.
GlassStories.art was conceived from the beginning as a collection and also as a community of people who value the meeting of literature, art, technology and collecting. Some will simply read the stories. Others will collect them.
Every edition has 199 copies, and each one is numbered. Whoever holds a copy becomes something more than a buyer. A collector, in the old and good sense, keeps something rare, and in doing so makes it possible for me to give time and energy to the next story. Collectors take part in conversations about where the project goes next, and they help build something that may outlast a single season or a trend.
I put it to myself simply. The artist creates the vision. Technology lets it be preserved. The community makes it come alive.
That is why GlassStories.art feels to me like the beginning of something still forming: a circle of people who believe that art, science and technology, joined together, can tell stories of a future that is possible and impossible at once, and still probable. A circle like that needs time to mature and to reach a size at which it begins to change the world for the better. I am in no hurry.