Artist's Bio

Laura began her artistry in the mid 70’s creating works in stained glass.

Later she expanded her interests to include water color painting. The larger work is created and fused in her Phoenix home studio while the majority of the jewelry is done in Northern Arizona. Looking out her studio windows into the surrounding inspirational wooded forest is the perfect stetting for her artistic talents.

This studio in the cool forest with the wind whistling in the pine trees, spawned her creativity into large copper art for wall mounting. Using different forms of copper they are textured using metal working tools, cut, bent and bonded together. The copper surface is then treated with colorful patinas and sealed for lasting beauty creating a striking, one of a kind work of art.

She expanded her fascination with the beauty and light of stained glass art into fused glass kiln work.   This medium has touched her deeply as she continues to create strikingly colorful and dramatic glass pieces.  Her large studio glass fusing kiln and smaller jewelry kiln allow her to create full size glass art as well as delicate fused glass dichroic jewelry. Heating the pieces of glass to the melting point, the glass is transformed into a solid multi-colored work of art.  Some are fused with beautiful opaque glass while the dramatic flowing pieces are created with transparent glass. Most pieces have a mirror smooth, high gloss finish while others have ripple or texture finish.  Many unusual pieces have imbedded metals, thin ribbons and fractured pieces of colored glass or high tech metalized micro-faceted dichroic glass.  Each piece is mesmerizing to look at again and again.

Her fused glass art work ranges from the intricate fashionable earrings to functional tableware. The glass used in the creations ranges from colorful opaques to dramatic light enhancing transparents, shimmering iridized glass and dazzling metalized dichrioc glass.

The glass works are heated once to high temperatures (sometimes up to 1,500 degrees) in the kilns fusing the stacked glass pieces flat and some works are heated a second time to a taffy consistancy. In this second firing, the glass is reheated as it rests on unique custom forms of stainless steel and ceramic. These allow the glass to bend into curves, over patterns or slumps it into pre-formed holes. The result ranges from large curved multi-piece wall sparkling wall glass art, to intricate three dimensional, multi-petaled flowers and unusual Ikebana pieces for decorative table plant and candle holders.

With a large variety of opaque and transparent glass art surrounding her on walls and on table display, the changing studio light reflecting and transmitting through the glass gave her inspiration to create large wall panels known as triptychs and polyptychs mounted on single metal backings and separated backings. This glass art mounting method allows the ambient light to shine through the transparent glass and reflect off the bright metal plate forming a dramatic flow of colors. As the light changes with the time of day and the direction of the light, images of sunsets and oceans come to life in transmitted and reflected colors as a result.

Laura's ‘Wall Splendor’ series is a curved arrangement of glass bands which paint the walls with a rainbow of colors, again with both reflected and transmitted light. This multi-piece glass art has unique beauty that also changes with the type of lighting and the direction of the light.

The fused glass has become a passion and obsession for her. She has found that there is no limit to her creations, only the long time it takes cut the glass, arrange it to the desired effect then heat the glass to the melting point in the kilns and finally cool it slowly to anneal it properly. Due to the large kiln’s thick brick walls, heating and cooling the glass is time consuming. This can take a day or more depending upon the thickness and size of the glass piece. Each completed work spawns yet another creation. As a result, each glass piece is unique in style and color.

So dramatic and beautiful is her art that Laura is continually in demand with commissions of wall and table art in water colors, fused glass and copper as a result.

You can contact Laura here.