About ntaglass

updated 5/30/09

Jeanne Kent

I bet you expected a picture. Well, finally, here's the bio I kept meaning to put up on my WebSite but stalled on due to the lack of a picture. I guess it says something about me that the best (and almost only) pic of me in the last 15 years is on my drivers license. I found, to my dismay, that those holographic overlays really do keep you from scanning a drivers license picture.Meanwhile I am still looking for something I am willing to publish, when I find it, it will be here.

I don't remember a time when some form of Art didn't fascinate me. Born and raised in California, I currently live in the country north of San Francisco, with my extended family of friends, children, pets and livestock. I work from my studio, which is located in a barn behind the house.

I have always loved color and texture, and my search for the perfect medium has led me down many paths - sewing, knitting, weaving, spinning, jewelry-making, beadwork, and from there into making lampwork beads. In 1994 I sort of tripped and fell into trying fused glass, falling in love with the process to the extent that I now do almost nothing else. I took one class from someone who didn't know a lot more than I and since then have learned by the trial and error method. Some errors being fascinating, some strange, and all of them informative. When asked about teaching, the response is that I really could only teach "Art by Experimentation."

Fused glass is the process of taking flat sheet glass, cutting it and layering it, then placing it into a kiln until it softens and flows into a single piece. I create my pieces in layers and fire them, assess the result and add further layers of glass as needed. Growing up with a mother who was fascinated by lapidary I tend to treat the fired glass as if it were stone, shaping it with an array of lapidary tools. Once cut and shaped with these diamond tools, they are returned to the kiln until the surface is again smooth and glossy. This is called fire-polishing.

My glass work includes dichroic glass, a high-tech spin-off of the space industry. Thin layers of metallic oxides, such as titanium, silicon and magnesium, are deposited upon the surface of the glass in a high temperature vacuum furnace adding the metallic sparkle and glitter. My real love is the glass, the dichroic sparkle is fun, but the transparency, depth, color and glow of glass is what fascinates me.

My customer base spreads through the USA, England, Europe, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. My ambition for the future is to continue to play with glass, and to expand my work to include larger things such as desk sculptures, plates, bowls -- wherever the glass leads me.

4-19-07 - Hey - WOW - My friend Cyndi Lavin has profiled me on her Bead Arts Blog!!! You can see it at http://www.bead-arts.com/artist-profile-jeanne-kent . I'm so excited! And did you happen to see the article by her using one of my Vpendants and including a bio of me in the April 2007 issue of Jewelry Crafts magazine? I have to admit to serious excitement at seeing my name in "print".

For information on my work write me at jeanne@ntaglass.com or click here to return to the New Terra Artifacts Home Page