ZilberGlass: 2013

Last June I went to visit my sister's family in Denver, during the record-setting heat wave (remember that? 105 F?!). I am a glass artist, interested in plant biology, and volunteer weekly at the Arboretum at UC Santa Cruz. Naturally, I had to see the Denver Botanic Gardens in summer, no matter how hot; fortunately, my sister lives within walking distance. I made two or three trips there with art materials, hat, sunscreen, water bottle, and long-sleeved shirt, making good use of the reciprocal membership benefit with my home Arboretum.

I was seeking inspiration for an ongoing series of tree portraits in fused metal and glass, also hoping to identify some alpine plants we saw on a hike up to Devil's Thumb, and generally admiring the native plant collections. On my last visit, I settled down on a rock in the shade, gazing towards a graceful and multi-trunked specimen of Pinus bungeana (also called Lacebark Pine) from China, in June's Plantasia. Fully absorbed, I was drawing the tree's delicate branches with a brown marker on a sheet of bright copper foil, when one of several summer children's groups visiting the Gardens came walking along the trail.

One girl sat right down next to me and asked what I was doing. I explained I was drawing the tree in front of us on copper foil. Later, I would cut out the "positive" tree shape very carefully with a sharp blade, and place it between two layers of transparent colored glass. This metal and glass sandwich would be fused in my kiln at 1550 F to make a 1/4-inch thick glass panel. The remaining piece of copper foil would also be used to make a panel. A "negative" image would be formed by the space where the metal had been cut out, and light would come through that opening in the shape of the tree.

I said that the positive image of the tree is called the "figure", and the background around the figure is called the "ground". It's not the earth the tree is rooted in; it's a way of seeing the shapes of the spaces surrounding the tree, which we often don't notice. She asked me "is the positive image like Life, and the negative image like Death?" I thought this was a profound connection for a young person to make. As I reflect on it now, presence and absence, substance and spirit, the duality that seems to be a given of human experience; all these concepts are evoked by her remark. By the time we had finished our conversation the whole group was listening and learning - and not just from the artist. This girl had the courage to ask questions of a complete stranger and to put her ideas before an audience. I'm still moved whenever I think about it.