I work with glass because it is one of the most amazing products on this planet. Light might be the most interesting substances, or topics that I have come across and try to address in my work as a painter, sculptor, an artist just a human experiencing all this crazy stuff life throws at me. Glass is a medium that can hold onto light, in many ways, trapping it, reflecting it, subduing it. Water is also a wonderful substance but needs to be real cold to deal with in a solid state. Plastic can be transparent and its a solid material most of the time, but is toxic to work with and it freaks me out. Mainly when I am making work with glass, before I walk into a hot shop (where glass blowing takes place), or roll out some clay to make a mould or a shape I want in glass, I am thinking about how I want this piece of glass to hold light. Glass for me is a way that I can hold the substance that we in part are made of. This light energy stuff and it is a romance that has kinda perplexed and pissed me off since I have been working with glass. The first thing you learn when working with glass is that it is always moving and changing. This glass stuff is wonderful but it does come with a price. It breaks, it doesn't want to flow into your mold, it needs to be scientificley cooled, and grinding it and polishing it is a slow arduous process. There are positive sides to working with glass is the community of artists I have been able to meet and work with through out my career. This is the price I am paying to manifest my dreams in glass. Glass as a sculptural medium has many different was it can be worked with. There are many processes that I have created to procure a specific end result that I am imagining I want to see or manifest. I mainly work with glass in three ways. I use soft glass where I employ centuries of technique in the art of glass blowing. I have learned not to try to reinvent the wheel here. I use tools that have been used in hot shops around the world for longer than I will ever walk the earth. Second, I make molds, and I either will pour or laddle glass directly into sand, metal or graphite, this is done in the hot shop, factory or casting studio. Another process with moulded glass happens in more of a ceramics setting. I make moulds out of different plaster silica composites in a lost wax process similar to the way metal is poured except that unlike metal which can just be poured in one go, the glass must be melted into the mould in a kiln and then after the glass has filled the mould it must be annealed. This can take some time depending on how thick the glass is. The third way I work with glass is in the cold shop, the glass is solid at this point I am not dealing with putting air into it or trying to melt it, cold work for me on some pieces is really where the magic happens. I feel like the light is inside of the piece and I am letting the volumes find themselves as I remove and expose volume from the piece. There are many ways to cut, grind and polish glass and I use many different types. Sometimes I will make a piece of glass, blowing it or just gathering it solid with the intention of carving it. Living in Seattle on a cold and rainy day there really is no place I would rather be than in a hot shop making glass. well....?