Fumeless Art

Today I am claiming my place in the world as an artist.

It was a conversation on July 14 with my friend Ellen that impelled me to "come out." When I said I could send her some homegrown photos of my recent work, she said, "Ah, fumeless art!" I asked what she meant, and she said, by seeing art via the Web, people would not have to visit the artist's studio where they might encounter fumes from paint and other materials.

As I don't work with oils, and the chemicals in my work are essentially inert, I think it is safe for friends and family to view my work in person. But more often than not, our house is a creatively chaotic environment with multiple projects in progress. My daughter has her knitting design business and she is into woodworking and interior design. I always have at least two knitting projects in the works and our collection of colorful yarns holds a prominent place in our living room. Of late, my new works are taking over the hutch shelves, the top of the piano, and other surfaces, while the overflow hides in drawers and cupboards.

More people are asking me what I am doing, so I decided to give them a peak via the WEB instead of making them wait until we straighten up the creative chaos. . .

Please bear with me, as I'm just learning how to blog. . . This is my latest work in progress (smile)!

Since the days when my mom had a collection of lovely colored glass dishes and vases in our west-facing living room window near the piano I played while growing up, I have been fascinated with the interplay of light and color. I used to watch the sun pour through the window and its clear glass shelve, piercing the red, turquoise, cobalt blue, amber and green of the candy dish, the dainty tea cup and saucer, a hobnail translucent vessel, and other curious containers made from the same material as sand, to cast colored rays on the walls and floor.

But for most of my life, I did not even think to do anything with this fascination, other than to dabble in pen and ink, water color and admire people I considered to be real artists. For many years I hung out with good friends Martha and Alex Nicoloff who were doing neat things with their prisms and used to have prism light shows in their studio. Occasionally I bought a small piece and hung it in my window. I even invited them to showcase their work at my wedding party because I often felt transfixed by the color, light and movement of their work.

Over several decades I've watched a former high school classmate of my sister, develop his talent as a glass artist, David Ruth started with stained glass, made and sold glass, and taught in France and Japan. As he grew and developed a following, he was commissioned by the likes of Wolfgang Puck to make large counters and huge glass sculptures. When David started working with HUGE kilns to form gigantic fused glass creations for Disney World Tokyo's Under the Sea restaurant, I felt a pull that I couldn't quite identify. Looking at his VERY TALL thick panels, I felt as though I was being transported under the sea, swimming around amidst coral, seaweed, snails and other sea creatures. It drew my heart back to the years I was fascinated with and studied marine biology.

Still I did nothing, except follow his career--

Often in life, events happen to spark new awakenings. In 1995 I was rear-ended 2 times when my car was at a total, legal standstill. Although I didn't suffer broken bones, those events affected me dramatically and left me with nerve damage. The neurologist said I couldn't do fine motor activities anymore and had to give up doing pen and ink, working with tiny paint brushes, even knitting! Gardening, which for many years I had enjoyed, was excruciatingly painful, sending shooting pains from my hands up through my arms to my neck. I had to give up my 4 days of swimming a week. I had knit since I was 8 years old, and having to give up things I had loved was emotionally and spiritually painful. I spent two years feeling very sad.

One day, I told myself, "When one door closes, I have to cut a new door in the wall and walk through it." I starting a personal list of ideas and things I thought I might be interested in that I had never had time to do when I was doing all those other activities. Then I began exploring the ideas and seeing which ones might stick.

I spent a few years overseeing the rehab of our house. I took classes at the Building Education Center, which is a great place.. I thought I wanted to get into rehabbing houses, but as everyone who lives in the Bay Area knows, that is a ridiculously expensive proposition. After a few years of trying to do that, I let that idea go.

I kept working on regaining my health and even joined the gym at the admonition of my doctor. I hated the gym and hardly ever went, so I stopped that after a year and a half. I started gardening a little here and there and found I could work for 30 to 45 minutes without pain. For the last two years we have been blessed with a profusion of poppies. In keeping with my "New Beginnings" mindset, I stopped collecting and bagging the seed pods by color and type, which I had done meticulously for many years. Instead, I now throw all the pods into one large bag, then divvy up the seeds to share with neighbors, family and friends. Nature doesn't collect seeds by color and species, so why should I?

Three years ago, I went to my first Fire Arts Festival at The Crucible, and that was it. I was hooked. Images of metal, glass and wood started dancing around in my dreams.

In 2004 I began doing fused glass art. It's not a hobby for the feint of heart, nor the impoverished pocketbook. Although I had studied jewelry-making in college, I did not choose to join the many fused glass artisans who create earrings and pendants, bracelets and necklaces with the immensely popular dichroic glass.

Instead, I chose to work larger than I'm used to, and allow myself to be freer and less constrained, less tight, than I used to be with other media I have worked with.

Unlike Neil, whose mosaic glass pieces are such a work of mathematical precision, that I cannot hope to emulate, I may start with an image that appeared in my dreams, or in my mind as sat on BART, or while preparing food, or walking around observing how plants are growing.

Organic and evolutionary are the words that whisper at me when I touch and work with the layers of glass and try to imagine how heat will transform the type of glass and the colors and then how light will dance through the pieces when they finally come out of the kilns.