Art & Function

With the warm weather comes patio season.  My focus over the past few weeks has been to create some functional art suitable for the patio.  These two stained glass mosaic tables are my latest creation. 

The first, the "Tree of Life" was inspired by a friend of mine who is really into trees and suggested a piece incorporating a tree of life.  I find that to capture the shape of a tree image properly in stained glass can often produce blocky-looking results.  I know it has been done well by some, but I wanted to try a different approach.  Also, I had a beautiful piece of gradient glass which spanned the red to yellow spectrum for which I had yet to find a use.  It occurred to me that the best way to handle the necessary detail for the tree was to created the shape in the negative space, using the gradient glass as a sunset backdrop.  The table base is finished in mat black to provide contrast and the finished size is 7.75" x 7.75" x 21".

The second table is a simple, but striking, pattern based on a traditional Celtic knot. Here I've used a combination of opaque, semi-opaque and transparent water glass.  The semi-transparent and transparent pieces are backed with silver to provide an additional reflective quality.  Again, the table base has been finished in mat black for contrast.  The finished size is 8.5" x 8.5" x 21".