Gerhard Satz

More than a thousand years before the emergence of blowing glass the ancients of the Eastern Mediterranean arranged shards and rods of colored glass to fuse into single pieces in their wood-fired kilns. These craftsmen explored bright and subtle color and crafted a variety of finishes and shapes with this unique, fragile material. Over time, those civilizations and their craft were covered with dust and sand, awaiting rediscovery in the modern era. In my art I explore the dimensional possibilities unique to fused glass, working with those same saturated colors and subtle tints. I use a broad palette of colored glass sheet and shards. By the forces of heat and gravity my arrangement of cold pieces is captured in a frozen moment of color and form. At the height of the firing, when the hot and pooling glass is rendered whole from many parts, the dynamic is seized and held fast in a tile. Cutting, grinding and shaping, still more re-forming in the kiln, colors contrasting with copper or limestone – each of these techniques allows me to fully realize my vision of a modern object in this ancient glass-forming tradition.