Glass Firenze ~ The Blossoming Potential of Glass

Life and Art

2011-03-27T05:57:00.001-08:00

I think most of us understand how challenging it is to balance your creative life. There are always other than creative life responsibilities, there's time to create, and there is time to do things like write about your creative life. I'll be totally honest in saying that creating and writing about it are big challenges for me as a Studio owner. Managing Glass Firenze often takes priority over creating and Family trumps all, as it should.

Dorene and her Sadie

By now, most who know me know that my sister, Dorene, has been in the fight for her life with Breast Cancer. I kept this a quiet for awhile but it became time to make others aware of what was happening in my life. Dorene is an amazing woman and she is one of my hero's (as we should all have more than one hero). She was first diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer when she was 31 years old. She kept it at bay for 15 years but the last two years cancer has come at her with everything it has and Dorene has met it with just as much force. Even still, it has taken a huge toll on her life. Because I want to be available and hopefully helpful to Dorene in any way possible I've cancelled the classes at the studio for this year. I've also spent 5 weeks out of the last 5 months with her (we live in different States so time together is away from my home/studio). I can not begin to express how grateful I am that I am able to break away from my little glass world to spend time with her, to be any kind of assistance to her. I think it helps me more than it helps her.

Anyway... I find myself pondering how my Art Life is allowing me to be more present for my Family Life... I love that!

As far as my Art Life, I am very excited because my artistic friend, Laurie Cleary is coming to spend a few days and we are going to play with Metal Clay! There are now Bronze, Steel, and Copper metal clays out and we are looking forward to learning how to create with them. Actually we consider it a bit of a "learning to tame" them as Laurie has worked with these metal clay versions and found it challenging.

There are several cool things about these new Metal Clay mediums. One is cost. With silver prices continuing to rise having lower cost artistic metal options is essential in today's economy. Another is that the Bronze, Copper and Steel metal clays come in a powdered form so you can mix them up as you need them and don't have to worry about the shelf life as you do with Silver Clay.

Let's see if I can manage to take photos during our metal clay play time and post again. That may be as challenging as taming metal clay. ;-) lol

Until Next Time,
Deb

The Meaning of Glass Firenze...

2010-12-02T09:12:00.000-09:00

Now that I've opened a Facebook Page to promote my personal body of work and help me to stay on my creative journey I thought I should write a new post to the blog since the only other post is sadly old. lol

As many of you will know, deciding on a "name" for your studio or art business, if you choose not to use your personal name, is quite the journey... it has to be personal and meaningful and will hopefully be relatable to others. Choosing Glass Firenze took me quite some time. It is easy to see the connection to Italy in the name and how that connects to glass. It is even easy to assume that Firenze is a play on Frenzy which glass puts us all into. What you might not know is what Firenze means. This was the deciding factor in my choosing Glass Firenze for my studio and art business name.

Firenze, as we know is the Italian city we know as Florence. Florence is an amazing city overflowing with art and color and history. Florence is also an English, Italian or French given name for girls. It is derived from the Latin verb floreo, meaning "I flower", in the sense of a blossom.

Since I feel I didn't truly "blossom" until I discovered flameworking I knew this was the only name for my art business... Glass Firenze, the Blossoming Potential of Glass! :-)

Totem Series: Totem Woodpecker

2010-01-08T05:07:00.001-09:00

I've been working on a "Totem Series" and the Totem Woodpecker is the first "Ready to Share" item from this series. This particular fella is created from Effetre and CIM glass, is strung using hand dyed silk cording and has Sterling Silver findings.

The symbolic meanings of the Woodpecker are many, one of my favorites is:

"Woodpeckers teach us to honour our personal truth and move through life with perseverance and inner strength. By staying grounded in our pursuits our goals can be obtained."