Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
This ball of metal and glass, held together with copper wire, is among Janett Peace's works of art at Aegis Gallery.
Glass exhibit shines at the Aegis Gallery
By Shari Kaplan
The newest exhibit at Aegis Gallery of Fine Art in downtown Saratoga bears a title that also doubles as a warning: "No Bare Feet." The subtitle sheds more light: "From paperweights to pipe dreams ... it's all glass." The show, which runs through June 30, comprises an array of glass art by Sunnyvale resident Janett Peace.
"The way glass refracts light is incredible. I've always been attracted to it," says Peace, who did not actually begin her artistic career with this medium. Although the Los Angeles native was inspired as a teen by the unusual windows of museums, old homes and churches, she first exhibited her creativity painting signs, banners, posters and window art for restaurants, bars and other businesses.
Some 25 years ago, Peace began studying stained and fused glass and experimented with three-dimensional aspects on traditional stained glass windows. Because she also wanted a job with a more regular income, Peace worked as a marketing director in the software industry. After extricating herself from that about six years ago, she says, she was eager to get back to her glass roots.
Along with her interest in the interplay of glass and light, Peace also is fascinated by its mutable quality on the molecular level. "Glass is always in a liquid state, even when it's in a solid form; doesn't that sound weird? I think that's one of the coolest things about glass," she says. "But a problem with it is that if you try to mix something in there that the glass doesn't like, it can suddenly break."
By this, Peace refers to the unique chemical makeup of various glass types. Colored glass gets its distinctive hues from different metals mixed in, she says, although even clear glass can vary in quality and structure. Each type also has different annealing requirements; annealing is a stabilizing process of letting hot glass--or in some cases, metal--cool at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time to promote hardening and reduce brittleness.
And that's just the beginning of the technicalities Peace knows for her glass blowing and warm-glass work! Unlike the former, which uses molten glass from a furnace, the latter involves placing pieces in a kiln and slowly heating them so they may be fused with other pieces.
Technical talk aside, Peace loves to roll different colors and amounts of hot glass together at the end of her blowing pipe to create her signature special effects. Many can be seen at Aegis Gallery, including clear globes and egg shapes, in which colorful glass "flowers" are suspended, surrounded by tiny silvery bubbles.
Peace also fashions vases, bowls, round and square platters, curved wall sconces and a few complex sculptures resembling those of Dale Chihuly, a glass blower and artist from Washington whose works are exhibited worldwide. Peace says she was inspired by Chihuly's whimsical pieces after installing a recent exhibit of them at the San Jose Museum of Art.
The wildly colorful Pastiche No. 1 is among Peace's pieces that prove imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Indeed, she says she used "pastiche" because it means both a piece of art that openly imitates that of another artist, and also simply a hodgepodge.
Aegis Gallery is at 14531 Big Basin Way; hours are Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Thursday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. For more information, call 408.867.0171, or visit www.aegisgallery.com on the Internet.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
