|
Seekers® Glass Gallery presents flameworked,
handblown glass by Suellen Fowler, who creates a series of extraordinary,
original works with exceptional color and detail.
Fowler uses the ancient flamework technique of
glassblowing, a name dating back thousands of years to the time when glass was
worked over an oil burning flame. Her works include stoppered scent bottles and
elaborately detailed dragons, rabbits, squirrels, and other creatures.
Working alone in her Northern California
studio, Fowler creates each piece by melting and manipulating borosilicate glass
over a gas-oxygen flame.
Working the glass at 2800 degrees F, she begins
each vial with a tube of clear or opaque glass. She then selects a thin rod of
contrasting colored glass from among hundreds she has made and heats it to the
melting point.
Using the rod like a tiny paintbrush, she
applies dots and swirls of luminous color. After decorating the exterior of the
tube, she shapes and blows it into a bottle over the flame. Her sculptures are
solid rather than blown, and require more extensive working and shaping.
An expert colorist, Fowler achieves intense,
often iridescent colors rarely achieved in borosilicate glass. She makes her own
colored glass by blending various metallic oxides (silver, cobalt, copper, tin,
gold and others) with the glass.
Fowler began studying art at age nine, when she
was accepted for a children’s art program at Chouinard Art Institute in Los
Angeles.
At age 13, she began studying flamework
glassblowing at Pepperdine University, Los Angeles, where she studied for three
years with glass artist Margaret Youd. Suellen also had the opportunity to work
with John burton, acknowledged at the time to be America’s leading lampworker.
In 1971, at age 16, she began selling her work
through galleries and today she is represented in public and private collections
throughout the United States. Her work was shown at the De Young Museum, San
Francisco, in conjunction with the 1981 Tiffany Exhibition. In recent years
Suellen has conducted classes at The Corning Glass works home of Stueben Glass
and her work was selected for the permanent "20th Century Collection by the
Corning Museum of Glass.
|
