About the Art...
It was going to be garbage until I found my technique to repurpose broken & scrap pieces of window glass, turning it into timeless & unique pieces of art.
Why window glass?
Windows are designed to be durable so they can protect us from weather, but this also makes them more difficult and more expensive to recycle than other types of glass. About 30% of glass bottles and jars are recycled, but less than 1% of window glass is recycled
When it first arrives, it is unloaded and sorted by size. Then the process truly begins!
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Each piece is trimmed to the desired size for the piece I plan to create with it. Then, the corners and edges are ground smooth. Before really getting to work with it, the glass must be spotlessly clean, so it gets a meticulous scrubbing.
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Once the prep work is finished, it's time to make it come to life!
Using clay, I aim to capture the exquisite beauty surrounding me in the PNW and create the perfect mold for the glass. The simplest, small sculptures may take me a day, but the more ornate pieces may take months to complete. Not only do I want to capture as much detail as possible, but I also have to consider how the glass will form around the mold later in the process.
The hours spent perfecting each sculpture results in gorgeously detailed glass.
Once the sculpture has been perfected and the clay is cured, it's time for glass! Each piece of glass is cut specifically for the sculpture I wish to capture and carefully balanced on top of the clay inside the kiln. Using my energy efficient techniques and equipment means that firing takes at least 9 hours for the glass to properly set into the finer aspects of my sculptures . Needless to say, my studio is toasty year round!
The final touches are made once they leave the kiln. That often includes drilling holes in the glass, a VERY carefully crafted skill which sometimes still results in a broken piece! Since larger pieces can be heavy, they require handmade frames to safely hang and display them in all their glory, which we also make right here in the studio.
