Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Fusing molten glass is a complicated art

Kenn Rodriguez News-Bulletin Staff Writer; krodriguez@news-bulletin.com

Rio Communities Artist Janice Montaño came to her art the way many creative people do - she fell in love with it.

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Sitting in the classroom in the back of the Belen Art League, Montaño described how it happened.

"About 12 years ago, I took a stained glass class," she said. "I did that for two or three years, then I took a fusing class, fusing glass. Once I did that, stained glass was a thing of the past. I'd found my true love."

Montaño, who moved to Rio Communities with her husband, Jorge, four years ago, said she'd tried for years before that to find an artistic outlet and was intrigued by stained glass but found fusing glass was a step beyond.

"I just loved it from the very beginning. So I've been going in different directions from that," she said. "Just the satisfaction - the self-satisfaction. I thought it was beautiful. I started out doing the jewelry. The colors are so bright and attractive. Then I got into doing the dishes, bowls and vases."

Montaño said after being introduced to art by her mother — who was a good artist in her own right — she began taking classes in her early adult years.

"I took classes in clay, drawing, painting, beading," she said. "And I was OK at them, but they didn't capture my heart. When I took my first stained-glass class, I really liked it. I was amazed by the variation of colors and textures in the glass. Then when I started fusing, that was it."

Montaño has been making and selling kiln-fired glass art for 11 years, she said. Living in Albuquerque, she and Jorge - who's a metal worker - began the process of learning to work with glass.

The first step was buying her own glass kiln.

"I had made a deal with my husband — I'd rented the kiln space at the school where I took the classes and do small shows until I'd saved up the money to buy a big kiln," she said. "That took about four months because I was working full-time at the time and doing this on the side. I was just a glass fanatic."

Describing her art, you can use many words, but intricate and colorful come to mind. Whether it's the small pieces of jewelry or the larger bowls and vases, there's vibrancy to the colors and uniqueness to each piece.

Getting that uniqueness to hold in the heat of the kiln is a feat unto itself, Montaño said.

"Glass is very temperamental. There may be some flaws in the glass, and you won't be able to see it, it's not visible to the human eye. And when you put it in the kiln, if the stars aren't in alignment, it can be bad. You end up with either a complete disaster or something so quirky that you don't know if you can sell it."

Montaño said she "learned over a period of years what kind of glass to use.

"I learned the characteristics of it, what things it was good for, what glass I didn't want to deal with," she said. "The jump-off point was the jewelry and experimenting with other kinds of glass. And using formers, slumping, fusing."

Fusing, she explained, is when you take two pieces of glass and take them to the molten state. The two pieces of glass have to have the same chemical composition, she said. "Otherwise you have something that looks great in the kiln, but when the temperature comes down they'll either shatter or splinter or turn very brittle," Montaño said. "When you pick them up, they turn to dust."

Montaño said she works mostly with "bull's-eye glass" when she's doing "full fusing," as she did with a platter that features a kokopelli design.

Making the kokopelli platter required slumping as well and a bit of molding, she said.

"What I did was cut out pieces and lay them on a piece of glass to make the kokopelli. And all that is compatible. I fused it first," she said. "Then I slumped it. Then you take that and put it on top of a mold and baby-sit it until it slumps into the right shape."

The other technique Montaño uses a lot is "tack fusing," where she takes two different kinds of glass that aren't compatible chemically and takes them to near the molten state, unlike regular fusing.

At that point, the glass pieces will "adhere to each other, but they won't break," she said. But working with glass is largely a matter of "trial and error.

"It's one of those things where you can be taught so much but then your kiln is going to be a little different from everyone else's kiln. It's kind of a joy because you never know what you're going to get. It could be amazing beyond belief or a disaster.

"If I've got something in the kiln, I carry around a timer. In my early days, I'd be going and sometimes you forget you have something in there," she said. "And you go back and you have this pile of glass at the bottom of the kiln and a big mess to clean up. It happens. It's part of the learning curve."

Since moving to Rio Communities, she said she and Jorge are largely semi-retired and they've also stepped back from doing a lot of big shows in Albuquerque. She said she still shows her artwork there, particularly around Christmas. But getting into that grind of making literally hundreds of pieces of glass art began taking some of the joy out of it, she said.

"We've kind of slowed down on the big production, but we still do plenty," she said.

She said having her husband working as a metal artist helps a lot too.

"I'm lucky. I can say 'I want to make a frog,' and he can make it custom for me three-dimensional," she said. The couple have several pieces at the Belen Art League Gallery that are collaborations, with her glass work embedded in his metal work, like a large metal gecko embedded with green glass and a series of crosses.

Montaño said she recently began dabbling in other art as well for her own amusement and satisfaction.

"I've started doing oil painting and painting furniture," she said. "But I'm still focusing on the glass. I like to dabble in a lot of different things. That's where I'm happiest."

Even with her scaled back production, she said she still puts in "a good 30 to 50 hours a month" especially in the months leading up to Christmas.

"I start in August and stockpile," Montaño said. "I learned the hard way more inexpensive things sell. Now I'll do two to four shows a year. I've got stuff here in the gallery and used to have stuff in Albuquerque. Whatever opportunity presents itself."

But mostly, she said she continued to work on kiln-fired glass art because of the challenge.

"I guess it's a feeling of accomplishment because glass is such a temperamental medium that, on the days when you have a success, it's like a feeling of triumph," she said. "Knowing all these years I've gained knowledge the hard way."

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