Hey there folks! It's been in baby steps I'm sure, but slowly I've been updating my Glass Art portfolio. All the portfolio's are in need of clean-up, re-organization and re-clarification since I hurriedly posted something up two years ago when I first started my blog. I would love for folks to click on the portfolio and check it out!

My Alice glass illustration and block by marisol diaz

I still have more to upload and rearrange. I have made a distinction between glass 'art' and glass 'sketches' as the first is more about pieces I feel are more resolved with clear intention and the latter is about products that emerge out of the process of learning and experimenting.

Wooly Willy magnet toy

Many of you have asked about the techniques. When illustrating, I work with ground glass called frit. It can be ground into different consistencies - coarse to powdery. Much like one would play with a 'Wooly Willy' magnet toy and push around the crushed magnets to draw Willy's hair or mustache, I push around the glass frit to illustrate. After each layer of glass has a frit drawing on it - it then gets fired, usually into one singular block of glass. Such is the case with the 'Alice' above. Often time there is great depth to these illustrations that is almost impossible to capture in a photograph head on. So please check out my glass art gallery!

Well, I hope you have all had a beautiful day!

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Ciao Amarettogirl

While contemplating the word encasement, I explored some new glass powder work this summer.

Unintentionally, my concept was very similar to an assignment that I gave my students last year. The assignment (to paint a distorted self-portrait by basing the composition on a scanned/xeroxed facial print) was a blessing for some students who flourished with the 'chiaroscuro' demands of the project. However, the assignment proved to be challenging for others, who were left feeling disillusioned, which for me as an art educator is never ok.

quick sketch of idea as I saw it in my mind

actual xerox of my face

xerox of my face

11"x 11" layered glass tile made with glass powders entitled ENCASED by marisol diaz

For this piece I combined both picture references of my face to create a new composition that included my hand. After the piece was fired I re-fired it with a layer of clear glass on top. The thickness and depth that created is difficult to see in the above shot. That clear glass layer also really helped 'encase' the piece. In addition, it made more sense why this piece was made out of glass as opposed to a drawing or a painting. I love sharing these explorations with you all!

This is an image of one of the glass pieces I made this summer.

I have been to Pilchuck Glass school twice on scholarship. Pilchuck is in Seattle, WA. I've taken glass classes at Haystack in Deer Isle, Maine, Urban Glass in Brooklyn, NY, Peter's Valley Craft Center in Layton, NJ and Bullseye Glass, in Portland Oregon. I've blown, sand-casted, kiln-casted, lampworked, fused and slumped glass. For the longest, all I could afford to do when I got back home after a class, was strike up a small tank of Mapp gas and make beads. Beads that once upon a time, got annealed only by soaking in a tin of vermiculite. Then there was all my late nights with stained glass a medium that hot glass folks call cold glass connections. Mind you, the majority of the time, I'm a painter and an illustrator. So when I tumbled on the work of artist Catherine Newell, I thought what is this? Is it possible you can draw on glass? No, I don't mean with Pebeo glass paint- but with the glass itself?

I signed up for a class called Painting with Light taught by artist Tom Jacobs at Bullseye Glass. Lets just say, I am forever changed and I found a soul mate. No, not Tom (sorry Tom), but drawing on glass with frit (powdered, crushed and pulverized glass). I found what I could afford to do - and what I was meant to do with glass...finally.