Art in Glass

Glass artists employ a technique called glass art to produce 2-dimensional artwork or sculptures using various approached to accomplish this. Glass development in the United States had its early development in the early 1900s where the use of glass as an artistic medium saw the creation of small-scale furnaces. The latter development has seen design schools offer fine art glass programs with many modern glass artists graduating from these institutions. The largest number of glass artists was originally concentrated in Seattle, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Today, San Francisco, L.A and Corning have also seen a sizable concentration of glass artists come up. The Pilchuk Glass School near Seattle is the most famous and has become a Mecca for glass artists coming from all over the world. Here, established glass artists and college students exchange information and skills on a purely glass level, so to speak.

Several types of decorative glass exist with the blown glass being the most practical in making such things vases, chandeliers and bottles. The flame-work glass is used to create unique textured glass sculptures, shapes, beads and more. Experienced glass artists can develop complex, multi-layered and colorful shapes that can astonish almost anyone. Stain or architectural glass is the most impressive and comes in different shapes, colors, textures and sizes. Glass artists cut it into specific artwork or melt, design patterns or change its overall shape. The slumped glass has a 3-dimensiaonal look and is used in bathrooms, kitchens, showers, sinks, windows among other areas. It hides grease, finger prints and easy to clean. The etched glass has almost unlimited applications. Glass artists use decorative glass to create wonderful, inspiring pieces of art.

Glass artists use many ways to create and decorate glass. One of these is glass blowing where an artist uses metal rods and hand tools to shape the glass to almost any form by blowing. Casting is also undertaken by some artists. Other methods include fusing, etching and flameworking. Etching involves the use of an acid solution to engrave patterns on the glass surface while flameworking uses rods and tubes to shape the glass.

As one famous artist said, artwork is a process that follows its own path, colors being chosen intuitively, every moment unfolding surprises ... I sculpt in color and form, continuously transforming and remolding my image, like working with wet malleable clay. My experience of the process of creation and how my artwork moves others is what is important to me.