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REFLECTIONS

Artist's Private Collection

Reflections was the first piece I made that was "not just a neat bowl or dish." Reflections was very different than what other artists were doing at the time. I began specializing with dichroic glass that most people only made jewelry and small pieces with due to the high cost of dichroic coated glass sheets.

This piece has won numerous industry awards and won the People's Choice Award in the Annual Glass Expo Gallery of Excellence in Las Vegas, by the largest landslide in the competiton's history.

Reflections has been used by glass manufacturers in their brochures and advertising. It’s cool to open a brochure from one of the worlds largest Glass Manufactures and see they have used one of my pieces in their brochures or get surprised opening an e-mail. La Quinta Art Foundation sponsored a special event at Chico’s on El Paseo Palm Desert, CA. My artwork was on display throughout the store.

This piece remains in my private collection.

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FASCINATION

Commissioned by Bill and Judy Lofton

Fascination was my first commissioned piece and at the time, the largest piece I had ever made. Bill stopped by the studio and we often had “...what if we did this...” and “...this woud really look neat...” moments! Bill got a kick out of how three single pieces in the original design turned into 60 pieces.

By the time we were done, Fascination ended up with well over 300 individual pieces fused together.

Fascination won first place in the International Dichroic Glass Design Competition held by Coatings by Sandberg, the world’s largest manufacturer of dichroic glass. This was a fun piece to make with Bill and Judy.

Fascination is actually two separate pieces, mounted together, since the piece was too large to fit in the kiln as a single piece.

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GIRLS NIGHT OUT

Artist’s Private Collection

This is what happens when you are drawing new designs and watching Project Runway with your wife! Standing at 4’ 6” x 4’3” it is the largest piece that I have made. Each of the seven women are mounted on the wall individually and can be configured in any way you like.

This piece won First Place in the Dichroic Design competition in 2017. While I was working on this piece my wife claimed it for our new home.

The pieces are mounted on the wall with stand-offs that are two different sizes allowing the girls to be overlapped. This allows you to reduce or increase the width of the overall piece. The girls are made independently and can be changed to a different order or position on the wall.

Our friend Carole Stagg loved “The Girls” so much that her husband Del commissioned this piece as a special anniversary present. She is now one of the girls!

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LADY

Artist’s Private Collection

Lady was a piece I made in the “Reflections Era.” I have always loved doing faces but making eyes using glass fusion is quite challenging. I wanted to make the eyes look real but when fusing glass that is over 1/4 inch thick, like Lady, it will expand during the fusing process, making the eyes kind of “buggy.”

I experimented for a few months and tried a few tricks and finally happened on a technique that worked. I have only made a few other pieces with these type of eyes in them.

The blue arc piece of dichroic glass at the top is from a one-of-a-kind glass of which only one sheet made.

Lady won the People’s Choice Award at the Las Vegas Glass Expo Gallery of Excellence Competition the year after Reflections won the same award. This was the first time in the history of the competition that any artist ever won the award in two consecutive years.

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FOREVER BLUE

Commissioned by Del and Carole Stagg

Award winning Forever Blue is another one of my commissioned pieces that “kind of had a mind of its own.” Carole and Del Stagg have quite a few of my pieces including the first all “Dichro” piece I ever made.

At an art show, Del asked if I would do a coffee table insert for their patio table. It started out as the simple design with 39 individual pieces of glass.

There were a few changes as we went along. A few to many “Hey what if we did this” and a few “You know what would look cool” moments and it ended up having over 300 individual pieces of glass fused!

About half way through the build, Carole looked at Del and said “No way this is going on the patio!”

It now resides in their library. Oh, and then they had to buy a new rug for the library because the current one clashed with Forever Blue. Love it!

Pictured below is my favorite moment, when they see the finished work for the first time. It makes all the work well worth while!

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CASCADING COLORS

Commissioned by Ron and Barbara Kastner

Cascading Colors is absolutely the most challenging and complex piece I have ever made. And believe me, this is the only piece like this I will ever make. It took forever, but that’s what happens when you take fusing glass to the limit! It speaks for itself.

The Kastners wanted something different than what I normally make. They wanted a wall piece that would look good with their Murano glass art.

The challenge was to use glass fusion and have it look similar to a blown glass art piece.

Cascading Colors is 4 feet 6 inches by 22 inches. It consists of over 1,000 individual pieces of hand cut glass.

For some of the pieces, I actually created hand made dichroic glass slabs to cut pieces from. A lot of the pieces were made using glass I had horded over the years that can no longer be found anywhere. Glad I saved them for this special piece.

Pictured below are some of the individual glass strands I created to make the piece in the center. They are different thicknesses of glass and were each individually fused for 18 hours. The strands were then assembled and fused together on a black glass base for over 40 hours to create a single piece. This required a lot of experimenting, but was well worth it!

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THE WARRIOR

Artist’s Private Collection

The Warrior is a piece I made for myself. It stands guard in the entry of our home. It took quite a lot of experimenting to make the spear and legs rounded, but it worked. On this piece there is a lot of detail throughout.

The Warrior stands 6 feet tall and 2 feet wide. I tried counting how many pieces of dichroic glass were used in it and just decided to stop with “a whole lot!”

Above is a picture of the first shield I had made. The adhesive for the mounting hardware takes 72 hours to cure. I couldn’t wait so after 24 hours I hung it. Unfortunately, the next day it crashed into pieces on the tile floor. I have never cured the adhesive for less than 72 hours again! Lessons learned. Thankfully, I like the new shield better.

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Aurora Borealis

Commissioned by Randi and Don Rota

Aurora Borealis was one of my favorite pieces to make. Don was gracious enough to step aside and let Randi take the lead on this piece. We brainstormed the design ideas and Randi came to the studio and we finalized the color selection. Fortunately, she was good at it all! Randi would stop by the studio as the piece progressed and we had fun throughout the entire process.

The piece started out as a wall hanging to be seen as you entered thier front door, but as the piece was nearing completion, Don said they would rather hang it over thier fireplace so they could see it all the time. Later, Don said they were so happy they moved it!

The piece is 20" x 30" and is the largest I can put in the kiln as one piece. It consists of a solid black base layer with a design layer of fusible glass combined with Dichroic glass.

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MAKING RAINBOWS

Made for Dr. Eric Stiner

In 1995, doctors discovered that I had a brain tumor. I always try to take things to the limit, so of course my tumor was twice the size of a normal pituitary tumor. On top of that, my opitcal nerve was stretched around it and was ready to snap at any time. If your optical nerve snaps, you will be blind.

My Neurosurgeon Dr. Eric Stiner skillfully removed the tumor. He was not only a great Neurosurgeon, he was a really nice guy.

Thank God nowadays they enter your skull and brain through your sinus cavity in a 6 hour surgery. Dr. Stiner nailed it! I had no bruising, bleeding or pain at all following the surgery. I never even needed to take a single pill for pain.

While I was in the hospital waiting to go home I thought I never even knew this doctor and he went in and perfectly fixed a problem that was pretty much going to destroy my life. I thought, God, shouldn’t I do something for him? He just saved my life!

When I got home I went right to the studio and made this piece for him called “Making Rainbows.” I said, you make Rainbows for people. He certainly turned the greatest storm in my life into a beautiful rainbow. I will forever be grateful. I had never made something like the real looking hands before. When I finished my wife looked at me and said, “how did you make those hands,” and I said, “I don’t know, they just sort of came out. It has been a few years now and I have never made anything like them again!

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BURSTING RAINBOW

Commissioned by Kip and Janice Waterhouse

Kip and Janice let me do one of my favorite things to do... making a free-form piece with no drawing designs or cutting out patterns with tedious design cuts. Just pure fun and creativity let loose.

Bursting Rainbow is 42” by 24” and was too large to fit in the kiln. It is in two halves with a third center piece “nested” a on top to finalize the design.

To make it look like a single, solid piece, the two halves have to mount on the wall perfectly aligned. Each half has four individual mounting stand-offs. The challenge was getting the two halves with a total of eight indiviudal mountings to all line up both horizontally and vertically. We nailed the installation on the first try and we were shocked. Evidentaly, it really liked its new home.

Above are just some of the over 350 individual pieces of Dichroic Glass that were used. Every single piece is hand-cut, diamond bit ground to smooth the edges, and cleaned before being placed on the piece.

This is the fun part, the clients seeing the finished piece for the first time at the Studio.