Alison Ruzsa                                            Her Techniques 
 

Ruzsa's Main Page                                                                                                             November 2004

Starting with images drawn from her experience as a printmaker, Alison Ruzsa initially used black paint and concentrated on the information conveyed by the gestures of the human form in silhouette. Later, she introduced colored paints and surface designs by cold-working the glass.

Each of Alison's pieces begins with a small gather of hot glass from the furnace, which is then shaped with traditional glassblowing tools and cooled down slowly in an annealing oven to relieve the stress in the glass. When the glass has cooled to room temperature, it is ready to be painted.

She uses paints that have been specially formulated to withstand the intense heat of the furnace. Color is applied to the glass in layers in order to present more than one view of the subject. For instance, the facial features are laid first, and after the paint to dries, flesh tones are added, then the hair. One can think of it as a combination of reverse and positive painting techniques. The end result makes it possible to see both the back and the front of a subject as one moves around the sculpture.

Because the glass magnifies every layer , the images in the center are painted much smaller than those on the outer layers. For the tiny details Alison looks through a large magnifying glass while painting with an eyeliner brush.

The glass is applied in layers too. After the first set of images are painted, the glass is returned to the annealing oven and slowly brought back up to a workable temperature. It is then picked up on the end of a blowpipe, and a fresh gather of hot glass is applied and shaped carefully, so as not to distort the images. The piece is once again cooled to room temperature in the annealing oven, painted again… Exactitude is essential. Alison realized early on that the glass had to be exactly the same for each gather, or the illusion is destroyed.

The combined effect of heating and cooling creates tremendous stress on the glass. With each successive layer, more and more time is spent in the reheating, shaping, and cooling processes. The larger it grows, the greater the risk for a loss of several months of work. On average, a piece will have been picked up 6 times for a fresh gather of glass and will have been more than 400 hours in the oven over the course of its creation. After the final phase, at least a third of the glass is cut from the bottom of the piece with a large diamond saw, and the base is ground flat to remove the marks of the process.

Surface design and carving out glass are important elements in some of Alison’s pieces. This is a lengthy final stage in an already very lengthy process. Masking and sandblasting results in intricate details on the surface. Painstaking carving out large amount of glass from the bottom part of the piece results in effects like the rocks in her Central Park Masterpiece.

"I enjoy the idea of creating a painting which can be looked at from more than one point of view. I want to create a world with many perspectives; a painting that can be seen from many angles. With each turn, one discovers a different aspect of the picture. This reminds me that there is always more than one way to look at life."

Alison Ruzsa began working in glass in 1991 at a small glass school in Cincinnati, Ohio, her hometown. She moved to New York shortly thereafter to pursue a career at the New York Experimental Glass Workshop. There she became fascinated with techniques being used by Fred Kahl, who incorporated painted inclusion in glass. During a class at the Pilchuck Glass School with Fred and Pike Powers, Alison attempted the first multi-layered piece. This initial work developed into a more than a decade of exploration of the techniques seen in her work today.

Since 1995, Alison has worked at Pier Glass in Brooklyn, New York, with Kevin Kutch and Mary Ellen Buxton. Working in a small studio, with good friends and very good quality glass, has been critical in the progress of her work. While continuing her association with Pier Glass, Ruzsa has spent part of the summers working, studying and teaching with various artists in Venice, Milano, and Balzano, Italy. This Italian connection started in 1998 when Ruzsa was invited by Centro Studio Vetro to participate in the Murano branch of the prestigious Venetian Aperto Vetro

With Mostly Glass Gallery, Alison participated in several theme and International Exhibits. For the past several years her Work was featured at SOFA, in Chicago and New York, as well is in shows at Palm Beach and Palm Springs.

She teamed with Claudia Lezama in the exhibit Her Glass and with Miriam Di Fiore in
Painting IN the Glass & WITH Glass.

In 2003 Mostly Glass Gallery and L. H. Selman had a simultaneous bicoastal
Solo Exhibit for Alison in New Jersey and California.