From the Studio and Other News

In September, Carol Ann was honoured to be the 1st Prize winner of the international competition “Your Bead for Venice”.  This was the inaugural year of the competition. It was sponsored by the Comitato per la Salvaguardia dell ‘ Artte delve Perle do Vetro Veneziane and the International Society of Glass Beads. Criteria for the competition centered around Venetian glass bead making techniques or creations inspired by Venetian techniques and styles. Creating and including murrini in her beads has been an important element of Carol’s work for many years. The three different bead shapes were chosen not only for their challenges,...

In late January I traveled to the Corning Museum of Glass and participated in Jeri Warhaftig’s week long studio class, titled Kiln Casting and Sandblasting. Despite the decidedly frigid weather (-25 Celsius!), my 5 classmates and I kept our minds warm with new ideas involving large kilns and hand crafted pate de verre molds filled with crushed glass. We started with small pendants and progressed to larger, lidded boxes as well as beautiful leaves of different varieties. We chose soft glass from the American company Bullseye, with a co-efficient of 90– a more densely saturated set of colours than my usual 104...

With the start of the year 2022 I find myself contemplating where my glass adventures might take me in the coming months. In the past year of continued isolation, I’ve enjoyed the benefits of social media, Facebook friends, Zoom classes, symposiums and even the 4-day gathering hosted by the International Society of Glass Beadmakers in June. I’ve met people I otherwise might not have met, and have shared and been inspired by many beautiful pieces created by artists from around the world. The pieces in the picture above shows a smattering of different techniques I was drawn to work with in...

December— Changing light, cold winds, crunchy snow, dripping icicles, muted colours, puffed up birds, quiet. One of the great things about living in Toronto is the chance to experience all 4 seasons of the year and with December upon us we come to the start of true winter weather here. In my studio I find my creative urges to be similarly cyclical. This month I’ve gone back to the challenge of the cabochon. In last December’s blog I talked about the joy of dots and lines; the precision in placement combined with the precision of heat control to create clean symmetrical...

November, at least in Canada, seems to be the month where things start to lose their shine. Less brilliant sunlight, more cloudy grey days and the last leaves falling to blanket the backyard in layers and layers of texture.  In the last few weeks I’ve blown hundreds of small beads on the end of a 4mm stainless steel pipe. I’ve worked with a number of different types of glass and enamels to come up with a wide variety of colors and- something I don’t do often- texture. One easy way to do this is to blow a large thin bubble over 20 cm....