A Grateful Pipe Exhibition- Curated by Banjo

Glass is Dead

A Grateful Pipe Exhibition at The Chambers Project 

31st January 2026

Opening reception 5pm

GRASS VALLEY, CA

The Chambers Project is hosting an eye-widening exhibit of glass pipes curated by the master glass-blower artist Banjo, who has gathered masterpieces from the glass ateliers of the corners of the United States, in a collection of fifty years of innovation. 

Grateful Dead connection

Banjo has titled the show ‘Glass is Dead’ as a nod to the origins of modern glass pipes on the Grateful Dead parking lots, where late 20th century hippies enjoyed a flourishing market scene of tie-die, hemp necklaces, crystals, burritos, and batiks as they followed the band around the United States. There, pipes began their evolution when Bob Snodgrass became the first blower to make intricate works within the context of the cannabis subculture, elevating the value of pipes as a collectible art form. 

Snodgrass is held in high esteem by collectors and regarded with deep respect by other blowers because he introduced novel techniques to pipe-making, fuming gold, and silver to get a spectrum of color into the glass, and trapping them beneath new layers to create patterns and fields of blue and color that would change beneath the light. The art has become a family business, Bob’s daughter Virginia Snodgrass and her husband Jonathan Gietl are both talented blowers, too, and Banjo has chosen some of their finest work for the show. 

Innovations in glass blowing

Each of the artists brings their own innovation to the exhibit. Banjo is famous for his pioneering of colored borosilicate lab glass to create vibrant and surprising extravaganzas more like fantastic sculptures than smoking implements. His homage to the great psychedelic poster designer Rick Griffin is the star of the show, with fantastically intricate twists and spirals of bright primary colors forming the wave, the surfing eyes and the radiant sun and fetish of the famed ‘It’s a Beautiful Day’ Hawaiian Aoxomoxoa. 

Early East-coast pipe-maker Jerry Kelly works in Murrine glass – master of the technique of making colorful patterns that stretch and shimmer in beautiful complex surfaces. His important contribution to the art is to bring these sophisticated patterns to the modern cannabis pipe – a surprising new form of fine glass blowing.

Mike Gong is another major Grateful Dead glass blower, and fan of the band. He uses an implosion technique to make his large ‘acid-eater’ marbles by sucking square blotter shaped snips into the glass to appear on the tongues of psychedelically scrambled faces filling the glass.

Hugh Selkin was Snodgrass’ first apprentice, beginning his work in the early 1990s, and becoming a standard-bearer for the modern glass pipe community. Best known for his ‘millefiori’ work, a technique of combining cut sections of cane into fields of patterns, and often including the skull imagery of the Grateful Dead’s ‘Steal Your Face,’ his pipe work has the naïve innocence of outsider art that is an important part of the American tradition of modern art.

Banjo said it was hard to narrow down the artists for the show, but he realized these artists were especially significant to the evolving history of the art of glass pipes. He says, “These artists are doing what I consider the work of keeping the art of glass alive. Keeping the love of glass alive, keeping their fan groups interest alive. It all folds fully into the idea of ‘Glass is Dead,’ because all glass pipes emerge from the Dead – there’s no disagreement there – even people who can’t stand the band agree that the scene would not exist without Snodgrass, who formulated the glass pipe on the Grateful Dead lots.”

Art by: Bob Snodgrass, J. Kelly, Hugh, Mike Gong, Karma Glass, Niko, Lil Bear, ESP, Jenkins, Dan Hoffman, Ginny Snodgrass, Jonathan Gietl, Rose Roads, Justin Carter, WJC

For more information contact The Chambers Project  at 15307770330