Fused Glass Art

Since 2010, I have designed and created glass art pieces using various methods. I primarily work with kiln-formed fused glass though I also have experience with stained glass and torch-worked glass beads. Working with glass requires an exciting combination of artistic creativity and material science knowledge.

I use glass art as an exploration of the material properties of glass including light reflection, refraction, and transmission. Glass is a paradoxical material which is fascinating to explore. It has the flexibility for wide range of applications and is workable (and re-workable) into many forms, but is also extremely brittle. The glass artists I learned from and with considered themselves artists and not engineers or scientists, while at the same time carefully matching coefficients of expansion to avoid internal stress upon cooling, drafting intricate geometries, planning controlled chemical reactions to produce visual effects, and calculating durations and temperatures for firing processes requiring eight or more heating and cooling cycles.

My own practice serves as both a space for growing my creativity as a designer and a laboratory for exploring these material properties and behaviors. I approach glass work as both an artist and a engineer, and particular enjoy investigations of:

• Chemical interactions between different glass compositions
• Material flow and deformation when heated
• Surface tension effects in molten glass
• Visual properties of layered compositions
• Embedded “inclusions” (metal and other non-glass elements) with matching coefficients of expansion

Plate incorporating a copper mesh element which has coefficient of expansion nearly matching the glass and which causes a chemical reaction with the sulfur in the glass.

Plate with dark copper sulfide appearing from a chemical reaction between the blue copper-bearing glass and the surrounding sulfur-bearing glass

Glass bowl exploring the deformation of a straight edged pattern from melting and through the refraction of the glass.

Square bowl exploring the use of a thick layer of powdered glass, sprayed with water and allowed to dry, to create a broken pattern.

Plate with trapped air bubbles exploring transparency and heating cycles. Traditionally, glass is heated to a softened state to remove air bubbles before fusing.

These patterns were created through the use of screen printing with powdered glass.

This flowing pattern was created with bookmatched slices of a slab. The slab was made by melting irregularly stacked glass, allowing it to flow, and annealing extremely slowly due to thickness.

This combed pattern was created by opening the kiln-door at a very high temperature and racking a tool through the viscous melted glass before it became too cool.