Welcome to Meltings, a glass art studio located on the banks of scenic Ash Creek in southwest Portland Oregon, featuring kilnformed and cold worked glass.
I offer classes and workshops and in addition to the speculative works I create and sell am available for custom orders.
Artist's statement
I have a lifelong fascination with the interplay between glass, light and color. Beginning with decorative bottles of colored water in windows during my early childhood to a tour of Kusak glass company in Seattle where my mother had her first high school job, glass has always inspired me. My own work in glass began more than 40 years ago when I studied stained glass technique in Los Angeles at a long-since defunct studio.
Important distractions such as a children and a day job kept me away from glass for many years, but over the past 15 years I have re-connected with my glass addiction through warm or kilnformed glass. This medium is, for me the epitome of glass heaven, not only are the light and color opportunities greater than I found in traditional leaded or foiled stained glass, but with these techniques there are also tactile rewards. Kilnformed pieces beg to be touched and held. Some are whispery light, others have heft, and as they are held to different lights the attraction is magnified.
The process of kilnforming glass involves cutting and arranging glass in desired arrangements, then heating the glass in a kiln to temperatures in the neighborhood of 1500-1600 F. Temperatures and times vary depending on the desired effect, but many of my pieces have 3 or more trips to the kiln, for as many as 30 hours or more each time.
Warm or kilnformed glass is the convergance of art and science, it is about color, light, the chemistry and physics of melting glass in the presence of other elements. I am continually excited about the opportunities for exploring new techniques and applications.
