When Kimberly Smith starts talking about warm glass, I start to wonder whether or not it’s actually hot enough for her to mould and sculpt designs.
Then she tells me it means kiln-fired glass still cooking at 1,400 to 1,700 C. Hot glass is regular blown glass at 2,500 C. She works with both.
“It’s still pretty hot,” she began, emphasizing that neither are as easy as they look.
“Glass is a technically challenging medium. You absolutely have to know when to make it hot and when it to make it cool, how long to keep it. It’s really quite a process.”
She said she got into the unique practise by accident. The former painter and potter was looking to replace a kiln several years ago after her previous one over-fired and was destroyed. The new one had a handy little feature.
“I came home to set it up. I opened it up and it’s a convertible – it’ll fire pottery and it’ll fire glass. It was such a lovely gift.”
And with that, her days of being a potter were numbered. She still did pottery while she was developing her skills as a glass blower but now she works with glass full time and is not looking back.
“I’ve just absolutely switched completely and all I work in now is glass.”
That suits her just fine. Her pottery consisted mostly of a line of dishes she was selling. She doesn’t miss cranking out those products on her assembly line.
“It was basically painting the same thing every day. This is far more creative for me. It has so many possibilities and so many different routes that I can take with it. I just find it fascinating.”
Now, the art teacher is happy to be fulfilling a dream and sharing it with others through the Art Walk. She sees it as a step along the same lines as the St. Albert Farmers’ Market, which she participated in for 16 years.
“I had always wanted to do glass even when I was a kid. I thought it was really cool.”
The Whyte Avenue Art Walk takes place from Friday through to Sunday. The annual event is a great chance for more than 100 local visual artists to branch out and gain public exposure throughout the popular district. They get to set up displays of their own works and even make their art more accessible by painting, sketching, sculpting, glassblowing and otherwise creating in front of the crowd.
“The Art Walk just sounded unique and fun. It generates a lot of conversation with people. People are fascinated by it. You’ve never seen anything like it.”
Local artists Phil Alain, Rick Rogers and Olga Duk are also among the participants in this year’s event.
For more information, call 780-432-0240 or visit www.art-walk.ca.
