Jennifer Nauck
I love the way glass blends effortlessly into natural environments. Although blown glass is ultimately human artifice, its evolution is organic. The combination of sand and minerals with fire and human breath—inspiration—forms a fluid work of art that, I hope, reflects the beauty and simplicity of the natural world.
I work with molten soda-lime glass from a 2100 degree furnace, shaping it with heat from the Glory Hole, gravity, and a few simple tools that have changed little in close to 2000 years.
Blown glass is truly an ancient art. While the technology has improved since the Syrians invented the blowpipe, around 50 A.D., glassblowing tools and techniques have changed very little. It gives me the feeling that I’m connected to a tradition that, at first, supplied a very basic human need—the need for containers, for vessels. Glassblowers met that need and then took it further, evolving functional work to the level of art. I’d like to think of myself as a keeper of that tradition.
Gerald Patterson
Ideas for my work originate in my imagination and are heavily influenced by countless hours that I spend submersing myself in nature. I live and spend my time in the high mountains of northern Colorado where light, wind-sculpted snow, vegetation and abundant wild life evoke emotion and feeling. This organic feel is then crystallized in the ever-evolving work that I create.
I blow contemporary glass using traditional tools combined with both traditional and non-traditional techniques in our small, modern studio. Some of my work involves two or more bubbles that are fused together in a process known as incalmo. Most of my artwork is preformed solo in the tradition of the forefathers of the small studio movement which began in the early 70’s. This was the way I was taught and it remains the root of my style of work. I am currently exploring the possibilities that arise when another set of hands, or an assistant, are available to aid in the glass forming process.