Leslie Smith Medium: Glass Leslie fuses opaque, transparent and dichroic glass to create bowls, plates and Jewelry. She creates work in various styles from whimsical brightly colored night lights to minimalist style bowls and plates. Her bowls and plates are slumped using molds which she builds herself, as well as commercially available molds. One of her fascinations is the inclusion of metal into glass. Metal and glass can react with each other to produce color shifts in the glass and/or metal, and in some cases, produce gases which are then trapped in the glass. Air can also be trapped in glass around the metal inclusions by fusing a 3 dimensional metal piece between two sheets of glass. Her dichroic glass jewelry is made by building boxes of glass which are then cut using a diamond ring saw. The resulting glass “gems” are then incorporated into jewelry using standard silver smith and wire wrapping techniques. All work is created by Leslie without the aid of any apprentices or assistants. |
