Jasper Landscape
Handkerchief Pendant Lights
The Cheshire Ceiling Light
Carrie Markings
The Gryphon Ceiling Light
Carrie Markings Detail
The Panthera Platter
The Chrysanthemum Ceiling Light
The Murrini Ceiling Light
The Alice Ceiling Light
Mérida: Aqui!
Merida: Calle 57
The Homestead Table Lamp
Mérida: Window
Mérida: de Solo Cort
Custom Back Splash Tile Project
Custom Glass Tile Backsplash
Allegheny Regional Asset District Office Logo
The N2A Wall Sconce
The N2A Pendant Light
The Aspinwall Bowl
The Bollard Bowl
The Bollard Tray
Homestead Factory Serving Platter
De Solo Cort Wall/Shelf Artwork
Aspinwall Table Lamp
Aqui!
Small Bike Cassette Tray
Cascade 4 Table Lamp
Flight
Aspinwall Wall Piece
N2A Table Lamp
Homestead Table Lamp
Black Lodge Table Lamp
Monorail Serving Platter
Koi Serving Platters
Modernist Rainbow Serving Platters
Bike Racers Serving Platters
Fused Glass Floor Lamp with Concrete Base
Handmade Fused Glass Floor Lamp with Concrete Base
Fused Glass Floor Lamp with Concrete Base
Handmade Fused Glass Chandelier with High Output LED's
used Glass Powder Printed Glass Wall Piece
Loteria Wall Panel Group of Four
Loteria Series, La Rosa
Loteria Series, La Campana
Loteria Series, La Bota
Loteria Series, La Pera
Handmade California Poppy 19in Fused Glass Serving Platter
Handmade Fused Glass Hors D'oeuvres Tray with Poppy Design
Handmade Fused Glass Hors D'oeuvres Tray with Sobra Design
Handmade Fused Glass Hors D'oeuvres Tray with Torronte Design
Handmade Fused Glass Hors D'oeuvres Tray with Alhambra Design
Handmade Fused Glass Hors D'oeuvres Tray with Rachlette Design
Handmade Fused Glass Hors D'oeuvres Tray with Koi Design
Artistic Category | Artist |
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Career Level | Emerging |
Experienced With | Collaboration, Commissions, For-hire services, Leading workshops, Lectures, Performances, Public art, Speaking engagements, Teaching engagements |
Pittsburgh’s manufacturing history and tradition of innovation has reawakened my admiration of the nineteenth century glassmakers such as René Lalique, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Émile Gallé. In living and working here, I have become inspired by the juncture of functionality and elegance in the lighting, housewares, and architectural embellishments that these artists pioneered and is seen throughout the city and its environs. I see my work as emerging from this movement; my pieces are steeped in this tradition but are deeply influenced by technologies of the later 20th and early 21st centuries that incorporate new processes and materials. My Rust Belt Series of designs draws directly from my surroundings and experiences in and around Pittsburgh. The images in this series are mostly created from photographs of industrial and infrastructural spaces I encounter.
My glass work is primarily made with a newly developed process called powder printing. Powder printing with glass uses traditional screen printing methods, but replaces ink and paper with glass and heat. In this technique, images are produced by pressing dry glass powder through a prepared silkscreen directly onto layers of flat sheet glass that are then fused together in the kiln at temperatures over 1400 degrees fahrenheit.
My work in fused glass stems from a deep love of materials and techniques. I am also inspired by the technical processes and aesthetics of Japanese block printmaking and Buddhist and Navajo sand paintings, both of which are deceptively straightforward art forms. These artistic methods all share in common a complex process hidden behind a surface of apparent meditative simplicity. While the end results appear uncomplicated in themselves, the challenge of their mastery is staggering. It is this hidden relationship between composition and execution that I find so satisfying and try to replicate in my own work. I take found photos and reduce an image to its most essential, abstract elements. In so doing, I am able to stretch the limits of the naked eye, using the microscopic lens of digital drawing programs to play with the line between conceptual abstraction and concrete representation.
I have attempted to integrate these nuances between labored construction and perceived ease during my apprenticeships, throughout my creative and intellectual education, and in my current work as an artist. Recently, my emphasis on light has enriched these questions of complexity and simplicity. Although already at work in my smaller sculptures and glass wares, my recent interests in and emphasis on incorporating light has given my work a new dimension. The process of adding a lighting element to the glass has increased the technical complexity that I relish, and light’s ability to emphasize both the glass’s surface elements as well as its interior depth has allowed me to imagine my designs in an entirely new way. In this way, light indicates glass’s inherent complexities; it highlights the medium’s moments of opacity and translucence. In these new pieces, I am eager to emphasize how functionality enhances the artistic nature of interior objects instead of obfuscating it.
From the first time I pulled a gather of molten glass from a furnace in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I fell in love with glass and its potential as an artistic material. I apprenticed with several glass artists in the hot shops of Santa Fe, and eventually moved to the eastern U.S. to pursue an arts education. After earning my BFA in Studio Art at Carnegie Mellon University, I started Studio Glass Company in order to showcase and promote my kiln-formed glass designs.