In 2010, Bellevue Arts Museum launched the BAM Biennial, a juried exhibition which focuses on the work of established and emerging Northwest artists, craftspeople, and designers, with an emphasis on new work. Every two years, Bellevue Arts Museum has designated a new focus of exploration. The fifth edition in the series, BAM Biennial 2018: BAM! Glasstastic, will be focused on glass.

With Seattle being the undisputed center for the development of glass as an art form in North America, it was natural that this medium should have been selected to culminate the Museum's series of purely media-based biennials. In the future, BAM Biennials will be opened to more general themes or techniques in the fields of art, craft, and design.

The simplicity of its composition, the complexity of its production, the many forms it can take—blown, cast, frit, stained—as well as its many uses, from the stained-glass of a medieval cathedral to the modernist skyscraper, from the Venetian goblet to the IKEA tealight, attest to the fact that glass is a paradoxical material, that has inspired the artists of the Northwest for generations.

The Museum called upon Northwest artists, craftsmen, designers, and makers of all kinds working in the medium of glass to join us for a celebration around this most essential of media. 48 artists were selected to participate.