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Seekers®
Glass Gallery presents the
work of Nicholas Kekic, who creates a series of original designs in handblown
glass vessels and whimsical objects.
In
Nicholas’s words: “Glass is a fascinating and compelling material to work
with. When super hot it can be poured and cast in a fluid state, or blown and
sculpted hot in a semi-molten, plastic state. When solid at room temperature it
can be cut, faceted and polished to a fine brilliance. Tooled for thousands of
years, glass is most precious when worked to capture this unique relationship
with light. Glassblowing for me has become a process of taking this super hot
liquid and freezing to room temperature in a controlled, but sometimes
precarious balancing act of heat, gravity, timing and human intervention in
these processes. I find glass most beautiful when worked in such a way that
captures and expresses this fluidity as a material while maximizing its unique
relationship with light and color. Most of my work is functional as well as
decorative as I’ve often felt most satisfied making things that are both
beautiful and useful.”
Nicholas
blows each piece freely, without the use of molds, using traditional
glassblowing methods that are thousands of years old. He creates each piece at
the end of a five-foot long metal blowpipe, constantly spinning and reheating
the viscous mass as it has been done for millennia.
He uses ancient glassmaking techniques,
along with many of his own invention. He is known for the superb bowls he
creates using the “incalmo” technique. He achieves his distinctive color
combinations through use of concentrated formulations of metallic oxides such as
gold, silver, cobalt and others, which He blends into the molten glass.
He melts the glass in a furnace and works
it at temperatures in excess of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. When He completes the
blowing and shaping process, Nicholas removes the piece from the pipe and places it into an annealing
oven, where it will cool slowly.
Nicholas has studied with some of the
world’s most famous glass artists such as, David Levi, Gianni Toso, Dimitri
Michaelides and Dudley Giberson. He
holds a B.A degree from
Colorado
College
and has worked as a studio assistant to Pino Signoretto, and Karen Willenbrink.
His work has been
exhibited at major museums throughout the
United States
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