About the Artist
Linda Kirby
My New World
Defining myself as an artist has an unnatural ring to my ears. As a freelance court reporter my life has been influenced, shaped and bounded by the rigidity of the legal world. It was my studies in American Sign Language that awakened my visual senses, heightened my awareness of the intensity of what the eye sees and how my mind interprets those visions. Manipulating glass in its endless possibilities enables me to translate my newfound visions to the practical and the whimsical. The flexibility of glass - pure, organic to molten fluid back to solid - like life, is always changing. Often it’s the “oops moments” that are the best part, the most instructive.
My glasswork is an ongoing process of exploration. My initial foray into glass was making stained glass windows. I love the way glass draws color from its surroundings. The subtle changes from dawn to dusk, whether cloudy or sunny, the glass takes on a different glow reflecting the ambient light.
I think people who enjoy art often see the world from a different perspective. I now marvel at sunsets that I used to take for granted; clouds that used to be an irritant are now dreamy and marshmallow-like; rivers now wend and wind, sometimes lazily, sometimes violently; forests that used to be dark and cold are wonderful playgrounds whose individual leaves and branches rock and sway in the breezes. Using a variety of glass mediums I am able to transfer the subtleties of nature’s colors to create glass tapestries that revive fond memories of the forests and backcountry where I’ve hiked.
For me, glass art is about the freedom to explore, to create with limitless boundaries.