The Museum of American Glass at Wheaton Village celebrates 20 years of artistic wonders.

The sprawling "20/20 Vision" exhibition at the Museum of American Glass in Wheaton Village is a splendid sensory overload. Give yourself time to see it twice. It’s not the sheer size of the works, though there are some huge pieces, like John Miller’s Blue Plate Special, an eye-popping still life with french fries the size of Manhattan. It’s not the number of works, though 105 artists is a substantial roster. The real source of such whopping energy is the scope of possibility represented in so many works, all with one common denominator: glass.

Since 1983, the Creative Glass Center of America's international program has sponsored residencies for artists from all over the world. Recipients have access to fully equipped studios with a hot shop for blowing glass and casting facilities, as well as the expert advice and assistance of senior glass artists, like CGCA Studio Program Coordinator Doug Ohm.

At the end of their residencies, Fellows give one work to the Museum of American Glass, home to over 12,000 pieces of historic glass. In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the CGCA, the museum has temporarily warehoused a major chunk of its collection to make way for a special curated exhibition of recent work by some previous Fellows. Former curator of modern glass at the Corning Museum of Glass, Suzanne K. Frantz, who organized this show, did not impose a personal aesthetic. Rather, she aimed for quality in diversity.

Some of the most ambitious works are highlighted in the entrance lobby, a preview of the variety in the inner galleries. Steve Tobin, a Fellow from the very first year of the CGCA, is probably best known as a glass blower, but here he shows a sort of translucent 3-D collage: a peaked-roofed Lantern House, large enough to welcome several visitors. It is entirely constructed of discarded glass-mounted slides obtained from various institutional slide libraries that are like artistic or scientific relics. Scintillating through the faded black-and-white images, the prismatic glitter of the museum's crystal chandelier reminds us of the fragility of time and memory.

Suzanne Reese Horvitz, who, uniquely in this program, often works with manufactured sheet glass, is showing a Black Glass Book. Minimal in form, the fanned-out glass pages are dense with content: painted, etched, silvered, gilded and silk-screened with text and images. Like Tobin's house, this book utilizes transparency to convey mystery. Horvitz is one of several Philadelphia Fellows in the show. Two others, Lucartha Kohler and Celeste Starita, both cast dense masses of glass to maximize light and color. In Blue Spiral, Kohler contrasts a cast spiral with mosaic, while Starita typically works with spherical inclusions embedded in monochromatic cubes.

Glass-caster Karen LaMonte, who splits her time between New York and the Czech Republic (where she casts freestanding figurative clothing works), received two CGCA fellowships (1991, 2002). Her wall-mounted Dress Diptych contrasts a print of a girl's dress (the garment was literally inked and run through a press) and a glass dress, all flounces and bows cast from a real piece of clothing. Charlotte Meyer's cast clothing is also wall-mounted. A small wardrobe, including a folded handkerchief, is edged with tabs like paper-doll outfits and called Disconnected from Myself. A vein of surrealism runs through the show, typified by works like David Leppla's Icarus Dream Series: Bird of Prey, in which the fingers of the bird/man fuse into feathers.

There's no way to round up all the notable work or even all categories of work. The comparatively rare functional pieces are standouts. Eileen Jager's Verde Bench is a leaf-shaped seat of iridescent mosaic on a cedar base. Scott Benefield's Mosaic Vases blends superlative craft and respect for the vessel form.

There are countless astounding feats of craft. Katrina Hude uses murrini technique, in which small multicolored pieces of glass are fused into a larger fabric of glass, to make phallic confectionary Blue Heart Barbells in Wedgwood colors. A blue and green vessel with spiraling parallel channels by Benjamin Edols and Kathy Elliott perfectly melds blown form with wheel-cut surface.

In a contrast of scale and intent, the visceral pain recorded by Walter Zimmerman incorporates improvisational hot-glass assemblage into tableaux of found objects. Nothing in this show matches his power or expressive reach. In another vein, Hank Murta Adams' immense wheel scrolled with a fabric of metal wire and sand-cast medallions is a monument to group process.

Even traditional painting is acknowledged. With concise white glass birds hanging inside an ornate frame, Beth Lipman transforms a rather ordinary Dutch still life into a lyrical meditation. Magan Stevens' manipulation of reverse painting on glass into the image of functional forms like a Coal Bucket is completed with metal fitting.

Don't miss this opportunity to see some world-class glass by artists whose names you will recognize or want to remember.

Through Jan. 4, 2004, Museum of American Glass, Wheaton Village, 1501 Glasstown Rd., Millville, N.J., 856-825-6800.