In April I took a fabulous class called Channeled glass by Tonya Nelson. Here are 2 pictures that she created (also her photos). As you can see she’s incredibly talented.
First I’d like to give a little background. The first time I took a class with this fused glass technique was with Tanya Veit (AAE glass). Tanya made it very clear the “Tapestry” technique was created by David Alcala and that we needed to take a class from him. Here is one of the pieces I made in Tanya’s class, I put a big tree decal on the front. I’ve also made jewelry pieces.
In 2012 I took a class from David. He was an amazing instructor and such a kind person. He made the piece on the left with just black, white, and grey sand, so much talent. The one on the right is another one of David’s artwork. (picture is from his gallery site)
The piece on the right is the piece I made in David’s class. I liked the class and the technique so very much, but for the most part I just used it for jewelry. I also own all of David’s DVDs. David was just memorizing to watch.
Sadly in 2014 David died. Such a sad day for the fused glass art world.
Tonya also took a class from David. She changed the topics of her artwork. David did mostly extraordinary landscapes. Tonya does animals (including birds). She also changed the name of her technique, she calls it channeled and David called it tapestry. One of the things I love about Tonya is she spoke with Claudia (David’s widow) before teaching this class (it was her first one) and asked permission to teach it. To me this is extremely important. Several people teach David’s technique and don’t even acknowledge David. (When I show my art I always give credit to who I learned it from. David, Bob, Tanya, Laurie, etc., even when I modify a technique I always acknowledge the inspiration.) But Tonya does and I respect her so much for doing so. I also want to thank Claudia Alcala for letting Tonya teach her version of David’s technique.
My next blog will be about the class I took with Tonya but I wanted to let you know some background and my experience with this technique. If you look at the related posts below you can see other blogs I’ve written about David. BTW I always bid on something during the Memorial Fund for David Alcala auction and this year was no exception.
If you would like to see more of my fused glass work please refer to my website Elegant Fused Glass by Karen. If you get a chance, check out all my sites, Fused Glass by Karen, My Etsy store, my Art fire Store, my Pinterest, and Elegant Fused Glass by Karen youtube. If you would like to stay abreast of what I’m up-to and learn a little more about jewelry, check out our newsletter. It is published the last day of each month.
Keeping my Kiln warm,
Karen
