Glass Bead Making Demo at Beadazzled

Description

Glass Bead Artists Make Magic Six local and nationally recognized glass artists will show their stunning work and demonstrate the magic of making glass beads throughout the day on Saturday, August 16, 2014, from 11 AM to 5 PM, at Beadazzled in Falls Church, Virginia. Their styles range from realistic depictions of birds and fish of the forest to ethereal creations that evoke intergalactic clouds or supernovas. Their beads may have precise geometric shapes or sinuous free-form lines. And they may choose the subtle colors of borosilicate glass or the vibrant hues of Venetian glass, that link the current American expression of this art form to its long and illustrious history on the island of Murano in the lagoon of Venice. Tom Boylan, a self-taught bead artist, has been practicing his craft since 1980. Entirely on his own, he has developed a style and technique that are unique. He describes his romance with glass as follows, "What fascinates me about glass is that it is made from sand, which is the most common material in the crust of the earth, and then we, as artists, impose upon this common stuff our dreams, visions, and inspirations. We uplift this common material until it has become something that it would not have randomly evolved into throughout the entire duration of the universe." Lisa St. Martin is also a long-time glass bead artist, but, contrary to the loner Tom, she received training in her craft doing a glass-blowing apprenticeship with Jon Meyer in Corning, New York, thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. There she helped build and install equipment, learned the basics of glass chemistry and physics, and developed a high regard for craftsmanship. "Glass, to me," she says, "is as much about science as it is art." And both are magical manifestations of glass. Lisa likes to share her passion for beads, and she does so through another passion, education, in which she earned a degree. Today she offers a lot of bead-making classes in schools and museums. "Teaching glass?two of my great passions!" she says, "How could it get any better?" Kay Bolden has followed an ever-changing path in her creative development. She has experimented with bead-weaving, wire-working, and mixed media. Her work with glass has progressed from stained glass, to fusing, and finally to melting glass at a torch when she took her first beadmaking class in 2002. And now her work as a lampwork bead artist continues to evolve as she incorporates her own beads in her own jewelry, which she finds doubly challenging since jewelry design is constantly changing just as fashion does. Her latest ventures involve incorporating glass chain and glass networking (welding small pieces of glass together) into her jewelry pieces. Deborah S. Gibson has been making glass beads since 1997, when she took her first beadmaking class with Kate Fowle Meleney. In the last 17 years she has been privileged to study with many other glass masters. Benefiting from extensive exposure to the rich and varied talent that characterized the glass bead world around the turn of the millennium, she has developed an eclectic range of expressions in glass. "I love the alchemy of glass," she declares and fondly recalls making her own beads "by melting rods of glass in the flame of a torch, shaping and embellishing however the glass muse directs." Cleo Dunsmore Buchanan makes lampworked glass beads depicting little animals unlike any you have ever seen?trout, raptors, gods and goddesses (in the image of animals or humans, or a bit of both), parrots, frogs, dinosaurs. Most come with a story. Cleo explains, " My zoological characters allow us to interact with animals that seem to have a pearl of wisdom to share with us. I delight in capturing the personality of each creature in its portrait." Over her 10-year career in glass beadmaking, she has striven for ever greater realism, she says, "in order to feel the connection to that animal, to bask in its presence." Her work has been shown across the United States and in Japan. Ann Davis has covered the gamut of bead and jewelry making, and her work has been in constant flux for more than 20 years. Yet one dominant theme prevails in her Artist's Statement: I am a pyrolytic artist who loves to melt things until they look like jewelry. "If it's a torch I own it, if it melts I'm there." I do: Traditional Silversmithing, Wax Carving and Casting, Flamework, Hot Glass, Pate de Verre, Electroforming, Metal Clay, Lapidary, Enameling. I got my first box of matches when I was 5 and never looked back. And I've spent most of my artistic life eluding definition. We don't know what Ann will demonstrate or bring for sale at the Trunk Show on August 16, but we're sure it will be exciting.