The Red Carpet
Autumn paints not only the leaves on trees but also the plants that populate the landscape. Ferns, serviceberry, and other plants provide what seems to be a red carpet when autumn colors are at their peak.
Standing Out
This small tree is making a statement about its importance by “standing out” from the artificial frame of the artwork. Many trees in Montana are phototrophic and lean toward their most advantageous position in the sun.
Complicating a Straight Line
I have always seen the intricacies of life forms – patterns that often escape the casual viewer. My mother once told me, “You can complicate a straight line!” This abstract piece does just that – moving pieces of straight lines to and fro to reveal a more interesting pattern.
Edgy
This piece is made from the edges of several sheets of glass. While generally cutting sharp edges for fusing, these fluid edges of the glass are reminiscent of the liquid state of glass when it is heated to fusing temperature.
Bloomin' I
Spring in Montana brings bright wildflowers – whole fields of color. We generally do not stop to examine the single bloom, instead we enjoy the full array. This stylized piece is a single bloom, up close and personal.
Bloomin' II
Spring in Montana brings bright wildflowers – whole fields of color. We generally do not stop to examine the single bloom, instead we enjoy the full array. This stylized piece is a single bloom, up close and personal.
Interstellar
The word means situated or occurring between or among the stars. In Montana’s night skies, the stars seem endlessly scattered. But for those who are observant, the space between the stars is fascinating. That space is vast and mysterious. It holds other worlds.
For The Love of Purple
Purple is between cool blue and hot red on a color chart. It is has a mystic quality and people who prefer it over other colors are said to be creative, sensitive, compassionate, and understanding. It is less common in nature than other colors. People either love it or hate it. I love it.
Big Bang
No one really knows what the “big bang” looked like, but I envision a hot, violent, and single explosion sending bits of matter everywhere. This abstract piece represents an image of this theory of the birth of the universe.
Olivia
We have all had friends who remain in our memories for one reason or another. Olivia brings memories of a poem – “When I Am Old” – “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple with a red hat that doesn’t go…” Although the ‘hat’ in this piece is not red, the sentiment is the same.
Toes in the Water
This tree began on solid ground, but the incessant flow of water has eroded the riverbank so the stately tree now has its toes in the water. Someday, hopefully far from now, this tree will succumb to the fate of many of its predecessors and surrender to the persistent river.
Twilight
Evenings in Montana are beautiful, especially when twilight lingers and stars seem to cascade across the sky. This abstract piece celebrates the beauty of day turning into night.
Aztec I, II, III, IV
The architecture of the Aztecs was well planned, geometric, and often included intricate designs. Their art, also more geometric than organic, often included very bright and distinctive colors. These four companion pieces reflect tightly fitted design elements, vivid color, and the “building up and over” approach the Aztecs used.
Art Deco
The Art Deco period of the 20s and 39s was characterized by rich colors, bold geometric designs and clean lines. It signified glamour and well-to-do places. This piece reflects my association of Art Deco with neon lights, reaching skyward.
Community of Color
A community can be many things. This piece celebrates a community of diversity with different shapes and colors; yet the shapes have a striking similarity to reflect how our humanity permeates and supersedes any differences we may have.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg
This piece contrasts the formality of black judicial robes with the touch of femininity that Justice Ginsberg adds with her white scarves and collars. The Huffington Post dubbed her style “ever-so-eccentric and thoroughly charming.”
Sweet Sixteen
The Crests released the original version of “Sixteen Candles” in 1958. The opening lines – “Sixteen candles make a lovely light, but not as bright as your eyes tonight” – seem to describe the soft glow of candles reflected in the eyes of a girl on her way to becoming a woman.
5th Floor
This abstract piece showing a building with three windows is in honor of what could be a “Twilight Zone” episode where a long elevator passenger finds himself on the fifth floor of three-story building.
Going Green
This abstract piece has two interpretations. On one hand, it is reminiscent of fields of produce seen from above. In addition, for those of us who are concerned about what we re doing with our planet, it is about choosing products (from soap to trash bags) that are recyclable, biodegradable, etc. Going green is the only way to go.
Sheep Gap
Sheep Gap is the location of many conifers – Douglas fir, ponderosa pine, and larch, northwest of Plains, Montana. We frequently pass the dirt road leading up, up, up to the site where at least one sale of timber through the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation generated income for the Montana School for the Deaf and Blind.
Absinthe
Absinthe is an anise-flavored, highly alcoholic, beverage that originated in France; it is typically green in color. Many famous artists imbibed, including Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Van Gogh, and others. Because it was the drink of choice for some famous painters, the touch of red is what undoubtedly would have happened to a glass handled too soon after painting.
Carousel
We all remember, and sometimes still experience, the excitement of going to the carousel. We wanted to hear the melodic music, see the painted animals, and feel the thrill of traveling around and around. These companion pieces reflect the vertical movement, the poles for each animal, and the array of colors a carousel provides.
Black and White and Red All Over
Those in my age category will remember our childhood friends asking – “What is black and white and red all over?” -- a newspaper of course. This makes sense only when you translate the adjective ‘red’ to the verb ‘read.’ This piece uses what we heard when we were asked the question – black, white, and red.
Petit Fours
The small French confections with the exotic name are still a treat for those of us with a sweet tooth. I have always imagined that these little treats should be served on a clear glass platter.
Prom Night
Prom night is a time of transition. The muted colors of this piece are reminiscent of the pastel prom dresses, corsages, and tuxedos of long ago that marked a night of coming-of-age.
Picnic
This piece is reminiscent of an old-fashioned tablecloth spread on the ground for a picnic. The pattern of the border and the matching pattern of the shapes in the center bring back memories of how “critters” could invade a picnic, unseen until their numbers were too great for us to fight.
Rumble Bee
The colors in this piece reflect two things – the colors of a bumblebee and the days when cars were brightly colored. In those days, participating in a “rumble” ranged from street fighting to road racing in those brightly colored cars.
Off Key
Listening to students in the high school practice on their instruments before a concert inspired this piece. Listeners could hear harmony, melody, and the occasional off-key note. Those off-key notes became the most memorable.
Digital Age
Also known as the information age, this period of time ushered in the personal computer and changed the way we experience communication. Through some transparent shapes on a background of deep color, this piece reflects the how what we knew before was forever changed.
Frank Lloyd Wright
So many things have been said about Frank Lloyd Wright. What I like most about his work were the clean vertical and horizontal lines that many of his designs featured. This piece reflects those lines and along with some bright colored transparent glass in honor of his stained glass accents.
Garden Wall
Brick walls surround many gardens. These bricks, when viewed in changing light, often reflect unexpected colors. In the summer, when the moss is heaviest and the light is bright, bricks can appear to take on the colors of the plants they enclose.
Puck Up Sticks
Mother Goose and toy makers were the basis for this piece: One, two, buckle my shoe; three, four, shut the door; five six, pick up sticks; seven, eight, lay them straight; nine, ten, do it again. I always thought the nursery rhyme meant brown sticks from the yard, but toy makers had other ideas.
Straight Laced
This term has been applied to those people who follow the rules, are prim and proper, color within the lines, and may be somewhat prudish. This piece shows the “straight and narrow” lifestyle that those folks represent.
Big Wave
This piece was inspired by watching the rise and fall of the Clark Fork and Flathead Rivers. The water is sometimes so slow that movement is barely perceptible and other times moving at a raging pace that is frightening to see. This study-piece was to see if glass could capture some of the water’s movement.
Brikz
When I was four years old we lived in one of two identical apartment buildings. Because they were on a busy street, I had to play between them in a very narrow, rock-strewn space, so I was surrounded by bricks. I soon learned the softer rocks could be used to decorate the bricks in different colors, making the space more to my liking.
Copper Trimmings
Among Montana’s mines were malleable, heat-conducting copper and rigid, crystalline, non-heat-conducting silica. This three-piece set combines these diverse elements. The copper shows movement, waves of activity; the glass is its static background.
Surprise
This piece is a sister to Mayhem and represents a smaller version of the same theme – the apparent mayhem created by the process of the construction process. The interplay of men, machines, metal, and more surprisingly culminate in something useful.
Louisa Mae
Childhood friends stick in our memories. And those memories include the image of the fences that separated our yards and provided countless sources of imaginary walls, cliffs, and doorways for our games.
The 50s
Each decade has its own decorating themes, recognizable long after the decade has past. The 50s were full of black and turquoise tiled bathrooms, pink and grey carpet, and those famous neon lights of many colors.
8 mm Night
Those days are gone, but the memories remain of trying to thread film through the sprockets of a projector while everyone waited patiently, then dimming the lights to see the magic of motion on a screen.
The Harp
The music of a harp has always been mesmerizing to me. This image was inspired by a television camera showing a close-up of harp strings running from short to long while the music flowed magically from each: the higher notes coming from the shorter strings and the bolder notes from the longer ones.
Mayhem
My grandfather was an iron-worker who helped build bridges and buildings in his day. I still look at buildings under construction and think of him. How can so many men and machines and pieces of metal that seem to be in a situation of perpetual mayhem eventually create a unified structure?
Hot Chocolate
The cold winter landscape dominates many months of Montana’s weather. Enjoying those months sometimes depends on having a warm cup of hot chocolate in your hands. This abstract piece intermingles the cool blue of winter and the warm brown of hot chocolate.
The Forge
As a child in Birmingham, Alabama, I always wanted my parents to take a route that included a bridge that spanned one of the steel plant’s mold pouring facilities. The hot red metal was exiting to see and the blue sparks that flew around the men working there fascinated me.
Hall of Mirrors
A hall of mirrors generally brings laughter to children and adults as they see their distorted images and try to find the way though the maze from beginning to end. I remember those places where the mirrors gave the impression images repeating themselves endlessly.
Saturday Night
In almost any urban landscape, on a Saturday night, red brick walls surround illuminated windows that give a glimpse into crowded rooms of happy people.
Game On
A game board presents a landscape all its own. Whether checkers, chess, Monopoly, or other game, the board is the focus and making moves is the activity. This abstract piece is a generic game board showing the many moves that players have made.
Shallow Water
The shallow water in the Noxon Reservoir on the Clark Fork River shows rounded stones in many colors from the many locations upstream. This piece shows some of the stones and contributing rivulets of water.
Birch Trees
Birch trees are distinctive in any landscape. These trees are especially notable as their white bark and yellow leaves contrast with the distant mountains and the dense red foliage at their bases.
Blue on Blue
As winter begins, the ferns are often the first to show the effect of the cold. When the ground is frosty, the fern fronds often appear to become bluish green as they lay across the blue of frozen ground.
Pink Champagne
A glass of pink champagne can be hypnotic – the delicate color, the bubbles rising, the trails the bubbles make on the glass. This abstract piece highlights the feast of color and movement a simple glass of pink champagne can create.
Quinella
A quinella is a form of wager where the better picks the two horses that will finish first and second in either order. This abstract piece shows an aerial view of the landscape of stalls beside the hypothetical lanes of a racetrack.
Tea Time
A table set for tea can be considered a type of landscape – a white field, flowers, scrumptious treats – all awaiting the focus of the event – the tea.
Forest
This abstract piece incorporates the colors of a deeply wooded forest – the greens of the leaves and pine needles, a glimpse of blue sky obscured by the trees, and the browns of tree trunks interrupting the greens and blues.
Hot Hot Hot
The landscape of northwestern Montana includes many hot springs. These natural uprisings are depicted in this abstract piece showing the red heat deep in the ground and the changing temperatures of the water as it rises in a column to the surface.
Desert Oasis
The deserts of the southwest are also home to some rivers and lakes. These scenes are striking because the dry, barren, earth-toned land stretches from the far-away mountains to touch the blue-green life-giving waters.
Luminaria
The Christmas landscape in New Mexico often includes traditional Hispanic luminaria, paper bags that hold inside a base of sand and a single candle. The effect is most striking when there are many luminaira, each bag illuminated, with a bright spot in the middle where the candle flame burns brightly.
Bluebirds
Bluebirds are blue, rust, and white. They often flutter in flight, making their two triangular wings seem to be a multiplicity. This abstract piece is an homage to this common bird, so much a part of our landscape, and so loved for their beauty and song.
Frost
This abstract work was inspired by a frosty, snow-covered landscape painting done in monochromatic shades of white. The reality of snow is that what we perceive as blanket of “just white” snow or frost is actually comprised of very complex crystals, each with an intricate structure and pattern that we do not see.
In the Middle
We generally see the exterior, the epidermis, of plants in our landscape. We do not see the “life line” that many plants need for survival – the middle of the stem where nutrients are stored and transported throughout the plant. This piece represents those life lines.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The diachronic glass at each corner of this piece, contrasted with the black background, are reminiscent of fine jewelry displayed on black velvet. And, Tiffany’s would be just the place to see something so simple, yet so elegant.
Autumn Wind
The brightly colored leaves steal the show in this abstract interpretation of the autumn landscape. As they move in the autumn wind, they dominate and diminish the upstanding columns of tree trunks that usually define the scene.
Persephone
Persephone is the goddess of the harvest. This piece represents the container for the harvest of fruits and = serving them to friends and family. Although no longer a routine part of our daily lives, growing fruits and harvesting them was once a common part of the landscape.
Basket Case
This “basket weave” pattern is inspired by a landscape painting that uses only vertical and horizontal brush strokes. The pattern made by light and leaves in that scene, the visual interdependence of intertwining trunk, limbs, and leaves, brought to mind the warp and weft of a woven basket.
Sargasso
The Sargasso Sea, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, has a prevalent seaweed, Sargassum. Often criticized as a nuisance by fishermen, young fish and other marine life use the fronds of this plant as a shelter, food, and a place of protection. This piece is just a glimpse of that ocean microclimate.
The Wave
This abstract piece is named for its shape as well as its colors. There was no doubt about its name when it came out of the kiln. The tiny lines in each section of transparent blue glass give a sense of movement.
Slow Water
This piece was inspired by watching the rise and fall of the Clark Fork and Flathead Rivers. The water is sometimes so slow that movement is barely perceptible and other times moving at a raging pace that is frightening to see. This piece was to see if glass could capture some of the river’s low-water movement.
Fast Water
This piece was inspired by watching the rise and fall of the Clark Fork and Flathead Rivers. The water is sometimes so slow that movement is barely perceptible and other times moving at a raging pace that is frightening to see. This piece was to see if glass could capture some of the river’s rising-water movement.
Flood Stage
Watching the rise and fall of the Clark Fork and Flathead Rivers inspired this piece. The water is sometimes so slow that movement is barely perceptible and other times moving at a raging pace that is frightening to see. This piece was to see if glass could capture some of the rives high-water movement.
Tight Squeeze
Outside of Butte, MT stones with eroded, round edges, fit together so tightly that they look artificial. Although the true colors are monochromatic grays, the bright colors in this abstract piece are to highlight each individual stone as unique, playing its own role in the tight squeeze.
City Block
This abstract piece shows the patterns created by a cityscape. A city seen from above is much like a puzzle, with all of the pieces fitted neatly into horizontal and vertical rows. The colors, however, are intended to show the pattern in more vibrant tones than the typical monochromatic grays of a city.
Dad's Tie
Breaking from the traditional natural landscape, I created this piece in honor of the timeless patterned landscape created by Dad’s ties, laying smoothly on his chest. We often think of our dads as the foundation of our families. So what could be more memorable than those red stripes?
Street Racer
While much of Montana is rural, several towns have traffic as part of their landscape. Missoula is one of them. This abstract piece shows an aerial view of tightly spaced cars moving slowly along Reserve Street, surrounded by the parking lots of the big box stores, going nowhere fast.
Southwest
The southwestern part of the US has its own color scheme and ambiance. This abstract interpretation is intended to show the muted colors of the desert contrasted with the hard lines of cactus thorns and stones that populate inhabitable places.
Bourbon Street
Pre-dawn hours on Bourbon Street show a mysterious landscape of walls, windows, sidewalks, signs, and people. This abstract interpretation is intended to show the variety of surfaces, the muted colors caused by the changing light, and the remains of night life “sparkle.”