Meet Coldworking Glass Sculpture Artist: Diane Allison

Diane Allison is currently known for her colorful glass pendants and coldworked glass sculpture often incorporating curved surfaces which further enhances an Impressionistic play of light and color. Her journey with glass as a medium began with a course making glass pendants taught by Kent Lauer during the summer of 2019. That class immediately moved Diane’s exploration of light and color through painting and photography to glass work using coldworking techniques and various types of glass. Kent facilitated sourcing equipment and materials, including connecting Diane to a source for old Lighthouse Lenses which she continues to incorporate into her pieces. Kent’s introduction to these sources spread to another level of artists and equipment sources which have continued to be invaluable. A second teaching session with Kent exposed Diane to additional techniques of sawing and laminating thick glass slabs, grinding bevels,  and other lapidary equipment she now uses for her sculpture.

Using that solid base Diane continued creating pendants while launching into larger 3 -Dimensional pieces. Her focus expanded to more diverse glass projects exploring the infinite range of paradoxes: glass is solid and fragile, opaque and transparent, reflective and refractive. As her ideas develop she experiments with new techniques to implement them. While oil paint and canvas afforded the opportunity to rework to push an idea, cutting, grinding and polishing glass with tight tolerances gave Diane a new challenge balancing technical skills with artistry.

For Diane, the love of coldworking comes from the hand processes and the transformation of the layers of various optic and dichroic glass. Coldworking enables Diane time to visualize what the piece could turn into during the process. She prefers to let the glass itself dictate the final experience, stopping during the process to look at the play of light at different stages. Hand grinding allows the glass to create its own set of balances and contrasts, juxtapositions of tone, mood, and form.

In Diane’s first series of Sailing themed pieces, color itself more than subject or theme creates a range of emotions reminiscent of her days sailing in the Straights of San Juan de Fuca: serene yellow, soothing green, warm and enveloping red, cold and remote blue, energetic orange, and restless purple. In her latest Lights theme Diane is further exploring color, form and light and how they interact with each other to serve both the demand for immediate satisfaction and the desire to create continuing changes of reflection.

Diane’s desire is to create hand-made pieces that will have a longer life cycle than things we are surrounded with that become obsolete and are designed to be replaced. Success to Diane occurs when the glass piece captivates the viewer’s imagination and encourages the viewer to discover something new visually and emotionally each time they view it.