Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe Playing Cards

These playing cards feature 18 of the pipes from the 2013 show at Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle.

For the past two decades, a vibrant group of largely underground, torch-wielding glass artists have taken the technical and aesthetic boundaries of the pipe as an art form to new heights, collectively forming one of the few bonafide avant-garde art movements in the country. The show featuring 25 artists from across the U.S., many of whom are featured in the award-winning documentary Degenerate Art: The Art & Culture of Glass Pipes (M. Slinger, 2012), this exhibition blends street and urban art, high brow/low brow, and grass roots spiritualism in a fascinating and dynamic survey of borosilicate flameworking in its emerging golden age. Much of the artwork reveals a strong interest in contemporary culture—from guns, to biomimetic abstraction, to the dominance of corporate logos, to the juxtaposition of cartoon characters with drugs. And aliens.