Today I started ripping my kitchen apart. I hadn’t planned to. It just sort of happened. I mean, I was going to do it eventually since my oven died, and only two of my burners worked, but yesterday I got a temporary stove for $15, and well, one thing led to another. Now I need an electrician.
Today I started ripping my kitchen apart. I hadn’t planned to. It just sort of happened. I mean, I was going to do it eventually since my oven died, and only two of my burners worked, but yesterday I got a temporary stove for $15, and well, one thing led to another. Now I need an electrician.
Photos by Joan Farnam
Anne Cervenka cuts a piece of glass on her work table in one of her studios in the basement of her house. A painter by training, Cervenka has been experimenting with fused/slumped glass for about four years.
Joan Farnam
Feature editor
One might think that when artists change mediums, it might be a while before wonderful things come out of their studios. But if Anne Cervenka is any indication, that’s not true at all.
On the contrary.
Cervenka, who learned how to paint from Birney Quick at the Grand Marais Art Colony when she was growing up here and studied it at the Minnesota College of Art and Design, isn’t doing much painting these days.
Instead, she’s cutting glass and firing it in a small kiln in her basement as she crafts gorgeous drop-ring vases from the colored sheets, as well as other shapes and forms.
Small stones were placed below the rim before this dorp-ring vase was fired, creating undulating shapes.
“I’m still exploring what glass can do,” Cervenka said, as she illustrated how she made the fused/slumped glass vases that sold like hot cakes at a fundraiser at Betsy Bowen’s Studio recently. “I’m interested in glass as a medium. I like the shininess, the color of it,” she said.
Cervenka, who has exhibited her paintings at the Duluth Art Institute, always thought she was primarily a painter until she just happened to see a piece of glasswork crafted by Dale Chihuly, who is internationally acclaimed for his creative approach to the medium.
He works with hot glass, and Cervenka said she thought that’s the direction she would go until she found out more about it. It’s complex and requires a well-equipped studio to do it all — not something one can easily set up in one’s basement and work at one’s leisure.
Slumped and fused glass intrigued her, too, and she decided to take an intensive two-week class at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina to learn more about it and, one might say, got hooked on the medium.
In short order, she registered for another class in Portland, Ore., using her vacation time from her job as zoning administrator for Cook County Planing and Zoning, and came home to experiment some more.
Working with glass is really different than painting, she said. “Painting is very immediate,” she noted. Slumping glass requires waiting time and one never knows exactly what will come out of the kiln when it has cooled.
But that’s the attraction, too, she said. It’s challenging and infinitely interesting — to everyone.
Photos by Joan Farnam
Anne Cervenka cuts a piece of glass on her work table in one of her studios in the basement of her house. A painter by training, Cervenka has been experimenting with fused/slumped glass for about four years.
Joan Farnam
Feature editor
One might think that when artists change mediums, it might be a while before wonderful things come out of their studios. But if Anne Cervenka is any indication, that’s not true at all.
On the contrary.
Cervenka, who learned how to paint from Birney Quick at the Grand Marais Art Colony when she was growing up here and studied it at the Minnesota College of Art and Design, isn’t doing much painting these days.
Instead, she’s cutting glass and firing it in a small kiln in her basement as she crafts gorgeous drop-ring vases from the colored sheets, as well as other shapes and forms.
Small stones were placed below the rim before this dorp-ring vase was fired, creating undulating shapes.
“I’m still exploring what glass can do,” Cervenka said, as she illustrated how she made the fused/slumped glass vases that sold like hot cakes at a fundraiser at Betsy Bowen’s Studio recently. “I’m interested in glass as a medium. I like the shininess, the color of it,” she said.
Cervenka, who has exhibited her paintings at the Duluth Art Institute, always thought she was primarily a painter until she just happened to see a piece of glasswork crafted by Dale Chihuly, who is internationally acclaimed for his creative approach to the medium.
He works with hot glass, and Cervenka said she thought that’s the direction she would go until she found out more about it. It’s complex and requires a well-equipped studio to do it all — not something one can easily set up in one’s basement and work at one’s leisure.
Slumped and fused glass intrigued her, too, and she decided to take an intensive two-week class at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina to learn more about it and, one might say, got hooked on the medium.
In short order, she registered for another class in Portland, Ore., using her vacation time from her job as zoning administrator for Cook County Planing and Zoning, and came home to experiment some more.
Working with glass is really different than painting, she said. “Painting is very immediate,” she noted. Slumping glass requires waiting time and one never knows exactly what will come out of the kiln when it has cooled.
But that’s the attraction, too, she said. It’s challenging and infinitely interesting — to everyone.
