Most of the work you will see here is my Fused Glass work. I also work in metal, wood, stone and other mixed media as the muse demands. (As well as landscape and house remodel projects.)
I find glass to be very sensory and sensual medium. Cold and hard, warm and soft. Fragile or bullet proof. Translucent or opaque. Shimmery, glossy, shiny. Matte, rough. textured. Colors that flow and meld and stretch. Or don't. Like life.
Fused Glass, also known as 'Warm Glass' or 'Kiln-Worked Glass' is made by taking glass - usually an artesian glass of a known 'coeffiecient of expansion' (glass that has been tested to ensure that it expands and contracts at the same rate) - often several layers of it - and heating in a kiln to temperatures between 1300 and 1700 degrees Fahrenheit. At the lower temperatures, the glass becomes just 'warm' enough to stick together. Add a little more heat and the glass melds together (fuses) so that layers stacked together combine to form just one thickness. At the higher temperatures, the glass is quite viscous and one can rake patterns into it or it can be cast in a mold. When different layers of glass are combined they need to have the same expansion and contraction rate, or they will crack as they cool.
Glass can also be worked 'cold' - as in stained glass work, or 'hot' - as in lampworked glass or blown glass. I do 'warm' glass.
In my work you'll find a range of themes;
My abstract pieces are created because I love the play of shapes and colors. I often see landscapes and cities, emotions and stories in my abstracts. Usually I make an abstract after spying a piece of glass among my jumble that brings a picture to my mind.
I do landscapes to attempt to share with you the places that speak to my soul. My soul gains wings from sitting on a sand dune listening to the waves crash against the rocks; and it garners substance while hiking between spires of red rocks, feeling the heat like radiating sound waves of the desert's songs fanning past my skin; it soaks up calm on top of a mountain, with my muscles happily sore from the steady climb, as I survey the whole world from my perch, listening to the wind... My essence needs nature and I find it calming to bring images of the outside into my interior spaces.
Some of my 'landscpaes' are purely imaginary. They may be surrealistic or may evoke other planets, galaxies or realities. These pieces depict some of the other worlds I see in my mind.
I hope you enjoy sharing my world.