Glass Lady

This has been done for quite a while but I couldn't share it on here as it was a Christmas gift for my girlfriend, Hillary. The actual print is in a nice old-style oval frame. The one I gave her parents looks great against their old fashioned stripey wallpaper; I kinda wish I had taken a photo of it hanging there.

At any rate, one of Hillary's passions is Belnko Glass, a company located in Milton, WV, not far from our hometown. Blenko employs amazing craftsmen who make all their glass pieces by hand, and have for many decades. I believe one of the reasons that people who collect Blenko love it so much is that it is one of the few companies of its kind still around, providing a long and rich history.

Hillary does more than just collect the glass, however, as she has done quite a bit to spread awareness of the company as well as promote and help them in any way she can. She writes a blog for the Herald Dispatch, the newspaper of my current town of Huntington WV, that is about everything Blenko. I get quite jealous of her blog from time to time because she somehow manages to update nearly every day despite being a full on resident dentist at OSU, whereas I sit at my computer all day and consider myself lucky to update once a week.

The idea for this piece mainly came from looking at the shapes of Blenko glass pieces and thinking about how when rendered flat they could all interlock together. Then I thought it would be interesting to mirror those curves with the curves of the female form, (namely Hillary) and integrate her into the array of glass. The name of the piece, Glass Lady, is actually what commenters on Hillary's blog call her, which has always been funny to me.