Artist Medium: Visual Arts: Glass
My work is inspired by happenings in everyday life combined with my interest in texture and color theory, I use both of these factors to create patterns in my decorative glass that not only reveal layers within the glass, but create a surface texture that is unique to my work. To achieve these results I first create different colored cups and stuff them inside one another, once I have finished the color process I create the form, then it is cooled in a kiln. After the piece has cooled I cover the surface with a sand blast resist material and create my designs. Once I have finished the designs I take it to a sandblasting booth where I blast away material to reveal the layers of color and create a texture on the piece. Once the blasting is finished I place the piece in an acid bath to bring back the translucency of the glass.
I also make one of a kind sculpture in glass, which comes from my own fascinations with natural occurrences that control our environment and the way living organisms affect one another in our environment. As artists we have the ability to change the way that people perceive things in our environment, to make the invisible visible, and to visualize the unknown into reality. I use glass to communicate the interconnections that we cannot always see. The material speaks as a metaphor for natural occurrences all of its contradiction and layers of fragility, sharpness, transparency, translucency, opacity and an interior visual surface. It is process-based abstraction.
Glass flows and moves when it is hot but once it is cooled it is frozen in time. This allows me to use natural forces such as gravity to influence my work. Everything is affected by something else, often leaving the unfortunate images the most visible. These images tell the stories of the natural processes of our environment. These unique works have been shown in a number of juried exhibitions at such places as the Cleveland Museum of Art and The Society for Contemporary Craft.
