About the Artist | Fused Glass | Photography | Contact Sue
About the Artist | Fused Glass | Photography | Contact Sue
My parents gave me my first camera as a gift for my seventh birthday, and I have been taking pictures on and off since then. I took photography classes at the Charles River Creative Arts Program (CRCAP) during two summers learning about black and white photography and processing negatives and printing pictures. In my seventh grade art class at school, we spent part of the year in the photography lab learning more about composition and classical elements as depicted in photography.
On my 29th birthday, I spent part of the day wandering through the Montréal Botanical Garden with a friend pointing out great photograph opportunities to him. After seeing the prints afterward, I realized that I wanted to take pictures and not just scope out potential pictures for someone else. Since then, I have mostly taken pictures during international travel focusing on outdoor photography including macro flower pictures and landscapes. My camera provides me a mechanism to capture artistic images that I see in both nature and everyday life.
A few summers ago, I started going to local juried craft fairs and fell in love with various glass items. I decided to see if I had any aptitude in making any of these types of items myself. I discovered Diablo Glass and Metal studio in Boston and took a 1 day hot glass class making paperweights. For various reasons, hot glass was not appealing to me. Next, I took a 1 day stained glass class (cold glass) where I gained an excellent knowledge of glass cutting but knew that wasn’t for me either. So like Goldilocks, I decided to take a 1 day fused glass class (warm glass) and knew that I had found my niche within the artistic glass world. Since then, I took a 6 week fused glass class which introduced me to fusing, slumping, kiln firing techniques, sand blasting, and other cold work. This class led me to want to have a studio of my own to fuse and slump glass. My parents have been generous in allowing me to set up a glass studio at their house.
In high school, I took two years of architectural and engineering design which taught me how to draw with the assistance of tools. I also started learning fine art theory and art history through my involvement on the Academic Decathlon team. My glass work combines my mechanical drawing skills with my love of classical balance and color palate which leads me to create abstract art that is very geometric and incorporates pleasing compositions. Warm glass work incorporates both artistic vision and creation of objects to put in a kiln as well as physical chemistry properties which affect the outcome of the objects as they are transformed in the kiln. The duality of warm glass appeals to me due to the complexity in creating pieces which involves both artistic vision and scientific hypotheses to bring objects to fruition.