Weaving Rainbows into Glass

Someone emailed me with a question about art glass and I am sorry, I have missplaced your email. I don't know where it went. So feel free to email me again if you'd like. But while I’m here maybe I’ll write some about my work in art glass.
I work in reclaimed glass. The glass has already been shaped and served its usefulness once. I make the rounds of local stores such as Goodwill and friends keep a look out for glass for me. I apply glaze on a potter’s wheel, the glazes and textures are spun on. This way I can create fields of color without much in the way of brush strokes, which can be very distracting to a design. The glazes are an amazing blend of smart chemistry and beautiful colors. After they are painted and fully dried, I thermo-harden them and they become dishwasher resistant. The whole process can take a number of days to finish from the first wash to the final firing. The firing process can be a delicate dance because of the various ways glass interacts with heat, so I’ve learned to take the heat very slowly and cool down very carefully. The colors may be matte or glossy, may have an iridescent sheen and metallic or pearl details. They are non-toxic and food safe though I don’t do much in the way of food serving dishes. Most of the shapes I work with are best on their own, but flowers and candles can be a nice addition. Most of my work is in vivid colors, rarely less than three colors per item, and most of the time more. I’ve done some commissioned pieces in special request colors but that is quite rare.
I have a nice collection of some of my favorite pieces around the house. My favorite display is in the two street facing windows of my family room to be enjoyed from inside and out. I consider this a revolving display and I add something and remove something each time I produce new work. I often work in series, creating groupings of vases of similar shapes and color scheme. This makes decorating especially fun if the client wants to display them in a grouping or use them throughout rooms to unify and balance the colors of a space.

I have art glass all over the US and in Japan, Germany, France, UAE, and a bunch of other countries that escape my memory at the moment. Believe it or not, glass tends to ship pretty well. I do corporate gifts and have shipped glass around the world for some exceptional folks at GE.

During the busy season of October through the Holidays it is all I can do to produce enough work for the demand, that is why I’ve never put art glass for sale online. All pieces are unique and it is hard to get it all photographed and listed before it’s gone. That doesn’t bother me at all.

Here are some links to a few posts loaded up with lots of photos to look through. I don’t have a photography set up in place yet so I’ve been using the back porch for some of these photos. Natural light is best anyway. So check this out, and this, and O! and this…

I spent some time with a reporter years ago and when the article came back she had called me a “Master of Color” which struck me as really strange at the time. I understand that it is a very nice compliment and I do appreciate the sentiment. I think I am more a servant of color than a master of it. I have had a lifelong love affair with color, I think that is why making art glass is so right for me. I had a vision once where I danced within a rainbow, it encircled me like ribbons of fabric but more elusive and transparent and iridescent, and unfettered by gravity. That’s heaven for me, being wrapped in rainbows.

Oh, and while in the archives looking for the old posts about glass, I came across this self portrait.