I combine my love of glass and "anything in miniature" to create tiny, individual worlds through the rapidly growing art of glass bead making. I use a technique called "lampworking" to produce hand-crafted glass beads by winding hot glass around thin stainless steel rods. Originally oil lamps were used to heat the glass, resulting in the term "lampworking." I use a propane and oxygen, surface-mixed torch to melt the thin rods of brightly colored glass to a working temperature of more than 1200 degrees. Although the tools have improved, the same basic techniques have been used to produce glass beads for more than two thousand years.
The glass, from Murano, Italy, is the same as that used to produce the renown Venetian glass beads, traded and collected world-wide for more than 1200 years. Murano glass is the chosen media of many of the contemporary glass bead artists, due to it's low melting temperature and vibrant color selection. My most intricate designs depict underwater scenes, complete with tiny fish. Known as "aquarium" beads, each individual bead incorporates more than a dozen colors of glass, with the rods being melted, stretched, twisted and wound to create the design entirely from glass.
