"Cleo"
This piece was created as a joint venture with my first "Personal Project" student. I will be offering a few select opportunities for folks to actually have a "hands on" opportunity to create a custom piece of art. In this "adventure", the student wanted to make a roadrunner as a housewarming gift for her best friend. Initially she didn't even know what form that it would take (hanging, sculptural, stepping stone, etc). She was tasked with arriving at the studio with a firm idea (picture or drawing) of what the piece would look like. After looking through the three photos of roadrunners that she brought with her, we decided on the basic form - a drawing was done to scale, and glass colors picked out. This client had absolutely ZERO experience working in glass, and very little with any other artistic medium. I had her perform all of the work that I thought her capable of successfully doing, while I did all of the more advanced things. Although with no prior experience, she was able to do about 40% of the work herself - this included: - cutting out the pattern pieces and transferring them to the glass - rough-cutting the basic glass forms with hand tools - grinding the basic forms - using powder and glass bits to create the white "breast" portion - cutting and assembling ALL of the background glass - cleaning all of the glass before firing - selecting the beads to be used for the eye She also got a beginning class in stained glass, as I created the feather assemblage for the tail. The completed fused glass roadrunner is mounted to a granite base via commercial grade stainless steel hardware and is removable for shipping. (just take out two screws). Dimensions are 18"h x 20"w x 6"d (the glass is 17"h x 19"w x .375"d "Cleo" is more than she had hoped for when she arrived in my studio that first day; I can't wait to hear the response from her friend! If you live in/around Las Vegas, NV and would like the opportunity to create your own custom piece of art, please contact me. I require a short "screening process" before accepting clients, to ensure successful completion of a project.
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The mainstay of my shop is fused glass creations…. this can be a stand alone piece of glass, a mixed media composition (sculptural or wall-hung), or a functional piece of work (light fixtures, plates/trays/bowls,inserts for doors or cabinets, etc).
I most enjoy making custom pieces for folks… Because I am intuitive, after a short conversation I am able to "get that person" and design a piece that is "theirs".
While many glass artists began with stained glass and later transitioned to fused work, I have 20 years experience working in fused glass. I prefer fused glass for the following reasons:
- it is STRONGER than stained glass. Art glass is 1/8" thick; a stained glass pieces consists of a lot of 1/8" pieces of glass soldered together… which means that it is thin and with all of those joints, it has the potential to come apart.
Fused glass, on the other hand, is a SINGLE piece of glass; while an individual composition is comprised of as many (or more) pieces than a stained glass piece, everything is assembled in the kiln and fired into a single, final piece. Additionally, fused glass can be made as thick as you want…so, depending on the application, multiple layers of glass can be fused together (think "glass sink"). Really thick pieces are more expensive to produce because the firing process (bringing the heat up, ramping it down, and annealing) takes far longer - it is not uncommon for a firing process to take 20+ hours with a thick/large piece of glass.
Stained glass pieces have distracting solder lines which can detract from the overall design composition - fused glass has none of these distractions!
With fused glass, you have a larger "palette" to work from. You can "make your own glass" by pre-firing different glass together (to make polka dot glass, for example) and then cut it up for your design.. glass can be fired over and over in most instances.
All of my designs are from my own original drawings; if you have something specific in mind, I would be happy to work with you to create a working drawing for a project.
Technical excellence is evident throughout my pieces; I am a perfectionist when it comes to my work, and am willing to do "whatever it takes" to have a design materialize into the physical.
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