Artist Biography

Someone once told me I had "The heart of a true artist". It took me about thirteen years working in floral design before I finally realized that I am an artist. I was just working in the wrong medium.
 
I have always had a passion for glass. I am fascinated by the way it is so comfortable in its natural, molten, fluid state. At the same time it looks right at home in its "Super-cooled" solid state. Glass that has been formed using heat processes such as a torch, a furnace, or a kiln seems to retain a quality that makes it appear to be trapped in a state somewhere between fluid and solid.
 
In the summer of 2000 I packed up everything I could fit into my little convertible and left Venice Beach, CA to venture to the Pacific Northwest. I was going to go be a glass blower. I had never been to Oregon or Washington but I heard that this was the place to be if you wanted to work with glass.
 
I stumbled upon a job with a glass company in Portland, Oregon. I had no idea what I was in for. I ended up working for the largest manufacturer of handmade fusible art glass in the world, pioneers in fusible glass, The Bullseye Glass Company. Just one problem…What the heck was fused glass?
 
Bullseye put me through their series of classes on working with "Warm glass." This process was so amazing, so limitless. Who had time to think about blowing glass anymore? Through my constant nagging and interrogation techniques I managed to really get the gears in my head turning. I became a glass geek. I also nearly drove my mentor, Christy Corbett, to strangling me. I don’t blame her. I couldn’t help it. I was hooked and I wanted to try it all.
 

In my attempts to try everything I managed to blow up a few things in the kiln, set the floor of the studio on fire and of course cut myself too many times to even try to remember. I was also getting an education in working with glass that was invaluable. You just have to learn to love those mistakes as much as you love the successes.
 
After two years in Portland I decided to come back home to California. Even though I am far away from the glass Mecca that is The Pacific Northwest I am around other artists and there are many ideas inspired by life in California.
 
As I have created my body of work I often choose names for the pieces based on people and places that have inspired me. So with my artist-heart I continue to discover new ways to share my experiences and memories through my glass artwork. My work is currently available in a variety of galleries throughout the United States and a few other countries.

About Fused Glass

The soda lime glass used to create these pieces is handmade and hand rolled. I hand-cut the glass and hand assemble the pieces into the design. The glass contains silica in the form of sand, and various natural earth elements including gold, copper, erbium and iron. There are air bubbles and slight variations in the glass making each piece of art unique. The sheets of glass are first cut and then arranged into the design. This process is similar to cutting and arranging stained glass. I fit them together like a puzzle and melt them together in a kiln. The glass is fired to temperatures around 1500°F. To give the flat fired pieces a shape, I take the fused piece and I put it back into the kiln, into a mold, for a second firing, at a lower temperature. Once the piece is cooled I sign and date the back.
 
The colorful shiny glass I use is called dichroic glass. Dichroic Glass is a multi layer coating created by melting quartz crystal and metal oxides. These materials are vaporized with an electron beam gun, and the vapor then attaches and condenses onto the surface of the glass, forming a crystal structure comprised of as many as 30 layers of these materials yet the thickness of the total coating is approximately 35 millionths of an inch. The coating that is created is very similar to a gemstone and by careful control in thickness, different colors are obtained - all the coatings are created using the same exact materials.
 
These pieces are food safe but should not be used in a microwave or put in a dishwasher. For cleaning, I recommend hand washing or using glass cleaner.