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Jamie Burress — Fused Glass

Jamie Burress in studio

Fused glass, 5-inch cupcake dichroic glass

Fused glass, 4 mirrors

Fused glass artwork

Braille plaques

Fused glass project, Reading name in braille

Artist
Reviews

Jamie Burress, a professional glass artist residing in Eugene, has been teaching art workshops in Elementary and High Schools for over ten years as a guest artist, and has worked with glass since 1996. Jamie travels throughout Oregon and California to display and sell her art at festivals and trade shows, and galleries worldwide carry her glass art. She has taught stained glass, fused glass, and mosaic classes at The Art of Glass in downtown Eugene. Custom projects for local businesses include creating the glass piece in the floor of the Ninkasi Brewery tasting room, and her glass art is available at over ten local galleries and shops.
During a glass fusing residency, students will learn about the properties of glass and the types of glass art most commonly made today: stained glass windows, mosaics, blown glass & torch work, and glass fusing and slumping by use of a kiln. Older students will learn how to handle and shape the glass, which comes in small sheets about a square foot by about 1/8" thick. Students will be shown how to use a hand-held glass cutter to score lines on the surface of the glass, then use special pliers to place over the score and squeeze gently to snap the glass apart. They can then experiment with layering different colors of translucent and opaque glass to create tints and shades. The glass pieces will all be fired in a kiln overnight and then returned to the students.
Younger students can work with pre-cut shapes and pre-fused pieces without sharp edges, to be able to focus on design, texture and color blending through layering. Older students will learn the technical terms involved in glass work, be introduced to all the tools used to cut and shape glass, and spend more time on drawing and planning their designs.
In one or two sessions, students can create small fused glass pieces that can be made into pins, ornaments, or magnets to be taken home. A good project that takes just one session, and is great for students of all ages, is making glass name tags with names spelled in Braille. Students will learn about the Braille alphabet and be passed out copies of it. After the pieces are fused, the instructor returns them, and lets the students figure out whose tag belongs to who, using their copies of the alphabet. In three or more sessions, students can work on additional projects, such as collaborating on a group piece where each student designs a square tile that will be incorporated into a mural. The murals can be installed in the school, and can be made in the theme of any subject the school would like.