May, 2010
Q: Could you briefly describe the glass casting process?
The process is anything but brief, but I’ll give it a try. I use several variations of what is a basic kiln-casting process using glass frit. I begin with a positive form, i.e. what I wish to turn into glass, made from either wax and/or clay. The clay is modeled and the wax is either direct-carved or cast in a rubber or alginate mold that has been fabricated from another wax or found object. Next, the positive is invested in a plaster/silica-based refractory mold. The clay is dug-out and/or the wax is removed by steaming. The resulting mold cavity is filled with crushed glass, either randomly or by placing the glass particles specifically. Then, the packed mold is heated slowly until the glass melts. More glass is added gradually at the peak temperature until the glass no longer “shrinks.” When the mold is full and the glass is fully melted, the kiln is programmed to cool slowly in a specific manner relative to the glass type, its thickness and other variables.
When the glass is completely cool, the mold is removed and the cold-working begins!
Of course, I have left out quite a few details.
Q: How did you discover your talent for art/ casting? (When did you do your first cast?)
I’m sure you’re not referring to my crayon and Playdoh period, but I did know that I wanted to be an artist by the time I was 5 when I began taking art lessons at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
In terms of casting, I started doing that in graduate school (Tyler School of Art) in the mid-1980s. Before that, I remember being curious about the process when I saw students doing it in the late 70s at RISD, where I was majoring in sculpture.
There was no-one teaching kiln-casting at Tyler when I was there. So, what I learned came from my own crude attempts and from some information I gleaned from a former graduate student whose work partially focused on exploring the techniques.
It’s amazing that as little as 20 years ago, kiln-casting in the US was still in its naissance. Obviously, lots of it had been done earlier in the century, predominately in France under the moniker of the pate de verre movement. But, little had been attempted under the guise of the young studio glass movement, which up until then had its attention directed almost solely on blowing.
Q: Have you attended art school or an art programs or apprenticeship?
As mentioned above, I attended Rhode Island School of Design and received a BFA in Sculpture in 1981. In 1988, I completed my MFA in Crafts/Glass at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia.
Q: What artists inspire you?
Many! Most of the artists who inspire me are not glass artists. Although, the glass work that most interests me is that made by artists who make me think. I certainly admire and respect the prettiness of much glass art, but inspiration, for me, comes from a deeper place. Those glass artists who often inspire, or have inspired, me include Jack Wax, Michael Scheiner, Bonnie Biggs, Michael Rogers, Judith Schaecter, and Susan Holland,….to name just a few. Honestly, sometimes I am most intrigued by the artists themselves, more than by their work.
Among other visual artists who have influenced my work are Remedios Varo, Francesco Clemente, Kiki Smith, Frida Kahlo, and Kathe Kollwitz, not to mention many writers, filmmakers and musicians, etc.!
Q: How has your art evolved since you first began?
This question is hard and the answer too complex for a short answer. But, if I can mark when I began as being when I seriously began making work professionally and showing it in galleries, then I might be able to make a short stab at the answer.
I see the evolution of my work as being both linear and circular. In other words, much of what I think about now does resonate with thoughts and objects I made 20-30 years ago. Now, however, I am more proficient at process and my work perhaps appears more “polished” and well crafted. Nevertheless, my early work had a raw quality that I still enjoy.
In terms of process evolution, my early sculpture was baked. Much of the work was constructed from bread that I had made myself or purchased as ready-made objects. I discovered that there are other uses for foundry burnout kilns! (As a sidebar, I later spent many years making a living as a pastry chef.) Later, because bread tends to disintegrate, I transferred my baking passion to something more permanent.
Relative to my subject matter, the figure has always been, and continues to be important. Currently, I am interested in using segmented portions of the figure as metaphor.
Q: Has being a woman in the industry influenced your work? If so how?
Yes and no. It’s hard to ignore that I’ve grown into a field that has spent many years being dominated by men, in the studio and educational venues. I have watched that dynamic change, however, through a shifting balance of male and female glass artists moving freely across, artificial but clearly perceived, former technical access boundaries.
That said, I think I would’ve pursued what I wanted regardless of this dynamic. In hindsight, perhaps it was just luck that I chose to follow a process that was less popular among male glass artists at the time. So, I never felt thwarted or cast aside by what else was going on in the movement.
I used to make work that critics tended to label as “feminist.” However, from my perspective, I was just expressing myself from an artist-in-a-woman’s-body vantage point, without any overt political reference or intention. What I did notice, though, was that that type of labeling had the effect of being dismissive and, in some venues, felt like it relegated my work to a lesser category.
Q: What motivates/inspires you?
I suppose my answer depends on what day it is. My itinerant moods and general interactions with others motivate what I create as much as what I read, where I travel and my daily activities.
Without meaning to skirt specifics, I describe my work as a response to any of the above aspects of my life. So, for example, if I want to comment on a type of interpersonal interaction, I may create an object that emblemizes how I wish to (better) handle a future such situation.
Q: Did your upbringing influence your work?
Absolutely. Probably what influenced me most were the objects and books with which I was surrounded. By avocation, my father was an armchair scholar of ancient Middle Eastern art and history, specifically that of Egypt. So, I spent lots of time looking at books about Egyptian art as I was growing up. Also, he collected antique American glass bottles and paperweights. His mother had gone to University of the Arts (formerly, Philadelphia College of Art) in the 1920s and her paintings hung on our walls. Her father, my great grandfather, was a talented painter and woodcarver.
My mother, and other women in her immediate family, either by avocation or vocation, were or are great interior designers, cooks and seamstresses.
I’m sure all of these propensities are gene related, so I imagine that I was more or less destined to become a maker.
Q: What’s your favorite piece to date? Why? ~Add pics
My favorite piece is entitled “Growth.” I made it in 1988 while I was still in graduate school. It’s one of the pieces I will never sell. Ironically enough, even though it is 22 years old, Urban Glass recently used it for the cover of their Spring Course Catalogue.
The sculpture presents a composite female-screw form (a metaphor for a self-anchoring device). The figure is cast from highway beads that, when melted, left the form pulled and stretched, as if by gravity. It is attached, as if growing from it, to a large vertically mounted cast rock of the same pale grey-blue color. When installed in the ideal space, the piece gets affixed to a twenty foot wide wall, painted the same hue, and is lit softly. For me, the piece is about serenity. It’s timeless.
Q: What is your favorite or most exciting thing about Casting?
It’s a toss-up between pushing the wax around while I watch old movies, and getting suited-up in silver clothing and ill-fitting gloves to masochistically risk losing my eyelashes while I add glass to small openings in my molds. Yesterday, I fired a kiln with 26 small molds, each of which had to be charged with a different color of glass over about a 5-hour period. I add frit with a small bent (so as to create a spout) mandarin orange can and reach into the kiln each time. Casting can get tedious. You have to love it!
Q: What are you working on now, and what are your plans for the future?
Right now I have a bunch of balls in the air that all add up to trying to make a living in this economy through diversifying my efforts. After deriving my primary income from teaching for 20 years straight, it’s been pretty exciting and humbling trying to make it solely as a freelance artist for the past year.
I parse my time between making several different bodies of work (from decorative one-of-a-kind objects to more complex sculptural forms), doing commissions, teaching short workshops and traveling to do stints as a visiting artist.
Currently, I’m concentrating on making work for a New Mexico exhibit that opens in July.
Q: What is your average day like?
Because my studio is in a barn on the property where I live with my family, my average days are an ebb and flow amalgam of working in the studio and promoting my art or soliciting work through correspondence, etc., coupled with chores, animal attention, tending the gardens and exercising.
Q: Where can your castings pieces be seen?
Presently, my smaller decorative work can be seen at Leo Kaplan, Ltd. (NY), the Corning Museum of Glass (Glass Market), the Toledo Museum of Art (Collectors’ Corner), Kittrell-Riffkind Art Glass (Dallas), the Society for Contemporary Craft (Pittsburgh), the Liberty Museum Shop (Philadelphia), and the Works Gallery (Philadelphia). Currently, my sculpture is being shown privately by Judy Youens in Santa Fe, periodically by the Snyderman Gallery in Philadelphia and in a variety of intermittent group shows.
Q: Has the recession affected your work/process?
The recession has affected the decisions I make about scale (i.e. cost to make) and the type of designs I pursue. In the past year, I have been making smaller pieces that are “prettier” and less concept-driven. Lower ticket-priced work tends to sell more easily! The larger, more challenging pieces tend to remain on the shelf longer. But, that’s always been true.
Q: What advice can you give to beginning casters?
My advice would be simply to cultivate patience and to enjoy the learning that comes with perceived failure.
Gaffer Q: What’s your favorite Gaffer Color?
I have several current favorites: Chardonnay, Pale Copper, and Hyacinth.
Gaffer Q: What is your favorite thing about using gaffer color?
I enjoy the clarity and brilliance of the lead crystal and the ease with which it polishes.
Bonus Q: Tell us one of your favorite quotes?
Two quotes:
- (Posted in my studio) Garrison Keillor: “The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.”
- Yehuda Amichai: “Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding.”
