Although Peggy King is a full-time energy analyst by day, her attention to detail carries over into something magical after-hours. In the basement of her house is a studio she has formatted to suit her passion, taking it over from her husband, Bob, a clockmaker. Now it is her haven for glassmaking. The Best of Missouri Hands juried artist — she is also a past president of the organization — has created and sold her glass artworks for several years at Bluestem Missouri Crafts, the Columbia Art League and Art in the Park along with exhibiting at shows in St. Louis. Most recently, she was given the opportunity to create for this year's installment of the Missouri Arts Awards, given by the Missouri Arts Council. King created vividly colored platters with two types of colored glass — iridized glass and dichroic glass, which has to fuse at a certain rate of cooling so it does not eventually pull apart and break days, months or even years later.
In her studio, King turned on the flame of a dual fuel torch, powered by a propane tank and a refurbished oxygen concentrator similar to those used in hospitals. She began melting a thin rod of glass over a separate stainless steel rod called a mandrel, waving the glass rod through the flame until it began to soften. The glass eventually wrapped itself around the mandrel as she turned it, a taffylike curling that eventually settled into a more spherical shape.
"I started by taking a bead-making class, and I was immediately drawn to the flame," King recalled.Get information on airpurifier from the unbiased, independent experts.Welcome to projectorlamp. After that adult-education class through Village Glass Works, she bought the torch and began practicing straightaway.
Although the bead-making — lampwork, as it is known — was initially satisfying, "I didn't feel like I had the control over the work that I wanted," she said. "So I went right back, and I took my fusing class and bought my kiln the same day."
Now King works primarily with fusing glass. Her University of Missouri Tiger Paw stylized glass coasters sell out consistently at Bluestem, and she is working on bookends and gift boxes with the same fat-striped gold-and-black design.Grey Pneumatic is a world supplier of impactsockets for the heavy duty,Broken chinamosaic Table. She also makes glass jewelry — earrings,Choose from our large selection of cableties, bracelets, pendants — smooth entities enclosing a spectrum of textures and colors. She recently began experimenting with dichroic glass that has detailed patterns overlaid on the sheets; she cuts strips of glass and fuses them together on thicker frames.
Her work is often bright and colorful while still containing a kind of pleasing order in her mind, she said. "I'm very linear. I'm an analyst by day," she reiterated. "So when I look at something like this," pointing to a plate containing crazily colored squiggles that she had created as an experiment, it reminds her of a crazy-looking "ugly amoeba." Typically, she said, "I want things more linear, lined, straight, organized."
King has worked with several types of glass — her studio is abundant in rods and materials for beads, molds for plates and other dishware, cut glass for fusing work and gritty ground glass called "frit" for adding texture and color to already molten glass.
The current glass movement explosion in the United States traces its roots to the late 1950s, King said, when enterprising artists began to experiment with heating, forming and shaping. "Glass has always been the provenance of Italy, and they have always been very jealous of their methods," King explained. "So for years and years and years, they were the only ones who knew how to make glass."
So it was American hippies and their slightly earlier predecessors, King said, who had to start over from scratch and learn everything themselves. They built small furnaces and learned how to mix artistic glass instead of using machine-manufactured glass used at that time for cookware and bottles. Now, in the United States, methods and materials and instructions are shared freely. King is a direct beneficiary of those who experimented with glass over the past half-century because now it is a cinch to order the types of glass she wants to work with. When she receives dichroic glass in the mail, for instance, it already has different colors and patterns applied to it in a high-tech process using vacuum chambers and ion guns. For the Arts Awards, she used voltage-pattern dichroic glass, which takes on the appearance of colored lightning bolts careening from the corner of a glass quarter sheet. King is glad of the vibrant range of colors and glass materials at her disposal. "I don't want to make glass. I want to melt it," she said. Instead of creating it herself, she wants to re-create it in her art.
In her studio, King turned on the flame of a dual fuel torch, powered by a propane tank and a refurbished oxygen concentrator similar to those used in hospitals. She began melting a thin rod of glass over a separate stainless steel rod called a mandrel, waving the glass rod through the flame until it began to soften. The glass eventually wrapped itself around the mandrel as she turned it, a taffylike curling that eventually settled into a more spherical shape.
"I started by taking a bead-making class, and I was immediately drawn to the flame," King recalled.Get information on airpurifier from the unbiased, independent experts.Welcome to projectorlamp. After that adult-education class through Village Glass Works, she bought the torch and began practicing straightaway.
Although the bead-making — lampwork, as it is known — was initially satisfying, "I didn't feel like I had the control over the work that I wanted," she said. "So I went right back, and I took my fusing class and bought my kiln the same day."
Now King works primarily with fusing glass. Her University of Missouri Tiger Paw stylized glass coasters sell out consistently at Bluestem, and she is working on bookends and gift boxes with the same fat-striped gold-and-black design.Grey Pneumatic is a world supplier of impactsockets for the heavy duty,Broken chinamosaic Table. She also makes glass jewelry — earrings,Choose from our large selection of cableties, bracelets, pendants — smooth entities enclosing a spectrum of textures and colors. She recently began experimenting with dichroic glass that has detailed patterns overlaid on the sheets; she cuts strips of glass and fuses them together on thicker frames.
Her work is often bright and colorful while still containing a kind of pleasing order in her mind, she said. "I'm very linear. I'm an analyst by day," she reiterated. "So when I look at something like this," pointing to a plate containing crazily colored squiggles that she had created as an experiment, it reminds her of a crazy-looking "ugly amoeba." Typically, she said, "I want things more linear, lined, straight, organized."
King has worked with several types of glass — her studio is abundant in rods and materials for beads, molds for plates and other dishware, cut glass for fusing work and gritty ground glass called "frit" for adding texture and color to already molten glass.
The current glass movement explosion in the United States traces its roots to the late 1950s, King said, when enterprising artists began to experiment with heating, forming and shaping. "Glass has always been the provenance of Italy, and they have always been very jealous of their methods," King explained. "So for years and years and years, they were the only ones who knew how to make glass."
So it was American hippies and their slightly earlier predecessors, King said, who had to start over from scratch and learn everything themselves. They built small furnaces and learned how to mix artistic glass instead of using machine-manufactured glass used at that time for cookware and bottles. Now, in the United States, methods and materials and instructions are shared freely. King is a direct beneficiary of those who experimented with glass over the past half-century because now it is a cinch to order the types of glass she wants to work with. When she receives dichroic glass in the mail, for instance, it already has different colors and patterns applied to it in a high-tech process using vacuum chambers and ion guns. For the Arts Awards, she used voltage-pattern dichroic glass, which takes on the appearance of colored lightning bolts careening from the corner of a glass quarter sheet. King is glad of the vibrant range of colors and glass materials at her disposal. "I don't want to make glass. I want to melt it," she said. Instead of creating it herself, she wants to re-create it in her art.
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