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Welcome to my website!
I have worked and been enchanted by hot glass since 1989 when I took my first class. I then apprenticied in a furnace glass studio for over a year. My initial experience with flame working or lamp working on a bench torch was a two week class at Penland School in North Carolina.
Since that time Hot Glass has been my passion and career. I have studied with several artists at Penland and with the Italian Masters at the prestigious Corning Studio. I have also been a teaching assistant for two separate courses at Corning where I taught and demonstrated.
In August of 2001 and 2002, I was honored to be a part of the first two week workshops given by El Vetro in Venice, Italy. I studied there with Lucio Bubacco and Vittorio Constantini. I have also studied with, and count as friends, Shane Fero, Cesare Toffolo, Emelilo Santini and Robin Michels.
I have had my own Studio and Gallery since 1992, on the small Island of Saba in the Dutch West Indies near St. Maarten. I give glass workshops in my studio with up to five students at a time. I usually give 20 to 30 of these workshops a year. I also have groups of students fly to the island to do more intensive study with me. The classes include beginning flame working, bead making, surface design, production and the use of fancy cane and Murrines, small sculptures and fusing. Students are given all the skill and information they need to set up their own studios. Several of my apprentices that usually stay a year with with me, have set up their own successful studios and businesses in the United States. Others have set up their studios as a passion and hobby.
Most of my production work is glass jewelry for which I design and form the beads. The jewelry is then made with silver and gold wire and chain sometimes incorporating crystals, pearls and semi-precious stones. I also do glass sculptural work on the torch. I was hugely honored to have Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands presented. by the University of Sint Eustatius, with one of my sculptural goblets on the occasion of her visit to the island of Sint Eustatius.
My work is represented in art galleries in the United States and the Caribbean, including the Corning Museum Shop. Cruise lines have also carried my work.
My goal is to teach more flame working classes off and on my Island. I am also interested in doing larger commission pieces using flame working and glass casting techniques together. I am constatnly enchanted by the rain forest and ocean reefs around my island. Much of my work reflects their light and magic. I am thrilled to share my art and vision with any one with a passion for light and color and the mysteries of glass. |
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