I Am Artist...?

For about a year I have been taking glass blowing lessons with local glass artist, Tom Stanton, based out of Holy City, CA. (This link goes to Wikipedia---damn, they have everything in there--and Tom is mentioned in the last line. The top photo also shows a side view of his studio. BTW--I didn't know all that weird stuff about Holy City and it's founder. Yikes!)

Tom does some absolutely amazing work. He makes blown glass objects as well as stained glass. His most recent stained glass piece is phenomenal!! Not sure if you can tell from the photo but the redwood tree is 3 dimensional. He made 'bark' molds from plaster and put various shards of different colored glass in the molds and then heated them until everything fused together into a single piece.

Artist: Tom Stanton, Holy City Art Glass

I have always loved art, especially glass work, and happened to meet Tom while taking a class he was teaching. We became friends and he offered to give me lessons working with hot glass after a discussion we had about a glass bracelet I bought in Kauai and my glass 'paperweight' collection. My 'paperweight' sculptures have various fluid shapes and random colors. Amazingly, I really love it and am starting to get pretty good (after creating some pretty horrible stuff). Here is a picture of my most recent work:

Artist: Kristen Mealiffe (that was really cool to write!)

Unfortunately the camera doesn't do any of the work justice as you can't see all of the vibrant colors and the sparkling dichroic glass intertwined through the pieces. But they still look pretty freaking cool if I do say so myself especially considering the pictures were taken with my beloved iPhone.