GABRIELE BAUMANN

Fused glass is my passion. The process of fusing glass requires a great deal of planning. Unlike a painting that can evolve and be corrected with each brush stroke, glass, once set in its arrangement and placed into the kiln, will settle as prepared.

My designs are deliberate, and I take pride in their execution, starting with finding patterns and then matching the colors. After the firing, kiln glass requires a lot of secondary work from cutting to grinding and polishing. While a piece’s quality begins with its initial design on paper, it ends with the cold hand-working that will define its final look and feel. I have always enjoyed contemporary design and find glass to be a perfect medium to express my ideas and utilize my skills of precision and attention to detail.

My work is influenced by my European heritage and everything I see in nature, textiles and photography, particularly geometric patterns found in nature as well as re-occurring themes of colors. We are surrounded by organized and chaotic patterns — ice shapes on a frozen lake or stone pebbles in a water stream. I am inspired by these and transform them into my work.

I was born in Germany and moved to Burlington, Vermont, in 1998. Since 2016, I have worked out of my own studio, and my pieces have been on display in various galleries around Vermont. I also participate in Burlington’s annual South End Art Hop.