I shall introduce the origins of fused glass art, detailing where and when Toots Zynsky and Klaus Moje appear in relation to the movement. I shall also introduce their contemporaries and discover how the artists have influenced (and been influenced by) their peers. Towards the end of the dissertation I intend to see what the future holds for the artists, their work and the artistic movement as a whole. My conclusions shall be based on what I have learned from this dissertation and how the artists have affected me on my journey.

Fused Glass Origins

There is some debate as to the true origins of fused glass art. According to the ancient-Roman historian Pliny in his book Historia Naturalis the process was invented accidentally around 5000 BC by Phoenician (Syrian) sailors: Once a ship belonging to some traders in natural soda put in here and... scattered along the shore to prepare a meal. Since, however, no stones suitable for supporting their cauldrons were forthcoming, they rested them on lumps of soda from their cargo. When these became heated and were completely mingled with the sand on the beach a strange translucent liquid flowed forth in the streams; and this, it is said, was the origin of glass. However, my belief is that although this a trustworthy recorded source, it was plainly an accident and not a contrived attempt to make art. With this in mind I would suggest that the true origins of producing glass as an art form began not with the Syrians but with the Egyptians around 3500 BC. This has been discovered by excavations at the Third Century BC Red Sea port of Berenike, as described in the Encyclopaedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt: West and northwest of town [Berenike] was the main industrial area (for brick-making, metal and glass production). This was still a very basic glassmaking process that bears little resemblance to the hollow glass vases and sculptures from the beginning of the Egyptian New Kingdom (1550-1295 BC). A prime example of the detailed glassmaking of this time was published in 1934 by H.C. Beck in Glass Before 1500 B.C. in Ancient Egypt; it was a blue glass object that was discovered in an excavated tomb in Naqarda. Around this time it is known that Egyptian craftsmen developed a process of producing glass pots by dipping a core mold of compacted sand into molten glass and then turning the mold so that molten glass adhered to it. These new skills were taught to new artists along the trading routes used by the Egyptians, Syrians (Phoenicians) and Romans. It has been proposed that: "Glassmakers were often wanderers by temperament, especially the Syrians and, as a result of this, glasshouses were set up further and further afield, spreading gradually northwards over Europe."

Fused Glass Art

The arrival of glassmaking to ancient Rome allowed its artisans to increase the degree of glassmaking to new levels. The discovery of glassblowing, which was probably invented in the Syrio-Palestinian area turned glass into a cheap commodity, which could be mass produced; and no doubt provided the stimulus for the proliferation of glasshouses throughout the Roman Empire" The Romans were adept at many things and the production and distribution of glassware was one of them. This process was advanced when the Romans then began blowing glass inside molds, greatly increasing the variety of shapes possible for hollow glass items. Considering the size and power of the Roman Empire it is straightforward to see how the skills that originated from Egypt and Syria were soon spread throughout all of Europe: "At its height, the Roman Empire included the countries which are now the United kingdom (except Northern Ireland), France, Spain, Portugal, parts of the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Eastern Europe, Greece, Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa. With its political, economic and artistic arms stretching across Europe, Asia and Africa, Rome dominated glassmaking for around 1,000 years. It established glassmaking centers throughout its empire, utilising local minerals to develop the glass. However, there was not a great deal of departure from the original Roman designs in these new lands: the glass production remained essentially Roman, with only minor regional variations until the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West soon after 400 AD".

The Romans integrated their artistic glassmaking skills into their architecture with the discovery of clear glass through the introduction of manganese oxide. The process of coloring, and de-coloring, glass was by trial and error. This is best explained by one of the leading experts on the subject; Deputy Keeper of the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities in the British Museum, Hugh Tait: Coloured glass was made by the addition of specific metal oxides and by varying the furnace conditions. For example, in antiquity copper produced turquoise or pale blue, dark green, ruby red or opaque dark red, while the addition of cobalt resulted in a deep blue; manganese was required for yellowish or purple glass, antimony for opaque yellow (or pale orange) and opaque white, and iron for pale blue, bottle green, amber or a dark color [sic] appearing black... Almost colorless glass could be achieved by the careful selection of fine silver free sand, but manganese and, it seems, above all antimony, the most effective agent, were used as decolorants. This introduction of clear glass allowed the most important buildings in Rome, Herculaneum and Pompeii to be constructed with windows. This meant that the production of glass was now to become a major industry, not just manufacturing small objects of art or vessels to carry liquid. The Romans had brought glass to the masses. This is not to say that the Romans stopped production on fused glass, in fact the Romans still saw the artistic value of the ancient technique. Their painstaking, yet beautiful, mosaics demonstrate their value of glass in art and this is reciprocated by artists working today using small electric kilns to produce the same results.

It is interesting that, historically, there is not a great deal of technical progression from the period when glassblowing became the accepted process of glassmaking. This in turn meant that artists tended to use the glassblowing technique rather than the fused glass method. This was not solely due to personal taste but because of the financial and logistical implications of setting up a kiln that was powerful enough to melt the glass in a controlled manner. However, advances in the 1960s in small furnace technology allowed artistic creation in glass to move from industrial setting to artist's studio. International glass expert Dan Klein explains that this: triggered an explosion of form, style and technique in glass making, boosted by a shared global drive toward freedom of artistic expression in glass unparalleled in its 4000-year history." He cites that this manufacturing breakthrough sparked the revolution of such famous artists as Dale Chihuly, Giles Bettison, Toots Zynsky and Klaus Moje.

Mary Ann 'Toots' Zynsky - the Artist

Mary Ann Zynsky was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1951. Her nickname 'Toots' was given to her almost from birth and it has remained with her to this day, in fact this is how she is most commonly known. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design were she received her BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) before moving to Seattle to study at the Pilchuck Glass School. The Pilchuck Glass School was founded in 1971 by glass artist Dale Chihuly and patrons Anne Gould Hauberg and John H. Hauberg. Chihuly's aim for the school was to: advance the use of glass as a medium for sculpture and to extend its expressive design potential. The school left a lasting impression on Zynsky as she has frequently returned to teach new students the same techniques that she learned off Chihuly. Her first exhibition was opened in Providence, Rhode Island in 1973 at the Woods-Gerry Gallery. The joint exhibition with artist Mary Schaffer demonstrated her skill with glasswork to the public with her sculpture Slumped Plate 2.

In 1977 she moved to New York where she helped to set up the UrbanGlass project with artists Richard Yelle and Erik Erikson (as the New York Experimental Glass Workshop). UrbanGlass was the first artist-access glass center in the United States and is now the largest. At UrbanGlass, Zynsky explored the process of hand-pulling glass threads, fusing them separately and combining them with blown forms. In 1982 she collaborated with jeweller Mathijs Tenuissen Van Manen to develop the technique that has typified her work ever since; filet-de-verre (literally meaning 'net of glass'). The process involved fusing thermo-formed glass threads into works of art. Her experimentation in this field presented her the opportunity to stage her first solo art exhibition in 1982 at the Theo Portnoy Gallery in New York. Two years later she was to open her first international exhibition in Germany at the Galerie L in Hamburg. Within five years of her discovery of the filet-de-verre process her work was being exhibited in France, the former Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands and Japan.

Zynsky sought inspiration for her work from around the world. In 1985 a visit to Ghana inspired her to use bolder interpretations of color and form. She spent six months soaking in the rich West African culture of music, dance and color. Her post-1985 work exudes a rich use of color that has been described as: shapes that undulate as though they are being blown by the wind. The process allows Zynsky to work like a sculptor and a painter, with colors [sic] often compared to tropical birds or Renaissance paintings. Since 1985 Zynsky has exhibited her solo work across the globe every single year. She is critically acclaimed as one of the most important artists to have delighted the public with the expressive potential of glass in the past three decades, an era during which she, Dale Chihuly, Marvin Lipofsky, Paul Marioni, Steven Weinberg and others transformed their passion for glass into an international phenomenon.

As an artist Zynsky believes that she is lucky to have been able to continually produce work that can be enjoyed, both by her audience and by herself during production. She has an affinity with the medium and when asked about her work with glass answered: It's really amazing. You can do everything with glass. You can pour it and cast it like metal. You can stretch it, carve it, saw it, you can stick it together. It's the only material that you can melt and blow. It's such a strange and plastic thing. I think that's what keeps drawing me back to it. By her own admission, Zynsky's work now uses modern techniques that were not possible when she first started her art in the 1970's. She uses a combination of almost every technology used for glassmaking including fiber optic technology as well as the development of new refractory materials and non-asbestos insulator.

Mary Ann 'Toots' Zynsky - the Work

I have chosen two works of art from Zynsky's career to analyze. These are the 2003 sculpture Imperterrito II (translated as 'unabashed') on exhibition at the Elliot Brown Gallery and Waterspout #2 exhibited at the Bellevue Arts Museum.

The exquisite creation entitled Imperterrito II measures 25.5cm x 40cm x 27cm and is currently exhibited at the Elliot Brown Gallery in Washington State, USA. It is described in the gallery's catalog as being: Fused and slumped colored glass threads (filet du verre) [sic]. The literal translation from the Italian imperterrito is 'unperturbed'; and this describes Zynsky's piece perfectly. The sheer beauty of the form and the extravagance of the fused colored glass demands that the piece can be placed almost anywhere and never be overshadowed by it surroundings. This is a sculpted piece of art that is unashamedly style-driven. As such it could be viewed as being almost untouchable; there is no threat that this is going to be confused as an object to hold fragrant petals of potpourri. I envisage this work as the focal point of whatever room it is in. It should be lit from below to show off the intricate, almost brush-like wisps of color. Dan Klein wrote that: Zynsky's colors do not absorb light, they bounce it back at you. She creates the illusion of having applied colors with brush strokes. She uses colors to stir the senses, so vivid that the eye alone cannot absorb their intensity and brightness. They vibrate and so evoke a response that is more than simply visual. This illusion of applied colors that Klein speaks of is testament to the perfection of Zynsky's filet-de-verre technique in fusing colors together in glass.

The sweeping motif of colors that stretch to the top of the piece remind me of the motion of a bird of prey in flight, finely balancing its weight on an invisible current of air, looking down upon the fields below targeting its next meal. Imperterrito II catches the instant of serenity before an act of violence is about to happen. It is the beauty of a moment frozen in time; whatever happened before or after this is not of any consequence because it is all about the present. I agree wholeheartedly with Klein when he said that: [Zynsky] reawakens our sensitivity to color with her exotic palette. Before becoming aware of the cleverness of the technique she uses to make her work, it is a burst of color that stops one in one's tracks. Toot Zynsky's colors are a tonic that lifts the spirits.

The second work of art that I am looking at is Waterspout #2. It measures 49cm x 22.5cm x 22.5cm and is currently being exhibited at the Bellevue Arts Museum, Washington State, USA. It is hard to actually date this work as different accounts vary; the nearest I have to a definitive date is 1979. This particular work of art takes the form of a complex, interwoven glass vase that looks somewhat like a hornet's nest made out of barbed wire. This would concur with her some of early work where she experimented with different materials other than glass: slumped glass was only one of the materials that she used, in combination with bricks, barbed wire, or cheesecloth, in her early 'performance installations'. Another reason for the 'nest' motif in this work could hint toward the protective, mothering instincts of the artist. If the work was produced in the late 1970s or early 1980s this would have been a time when Zynsky was pregnant with her daughter. The maternal instincts for a mother to protect her child can be seen in Waterspout #2 if we are to imagine that the vase is indeed some kind of nest; a home for her young child to be born in, a sanctuary for her to grow up in. The rough exterior, with its woven strands, offers a physical protective barrier to the center of the vase (the womb).

Unlike the previous work, Imperterrito II, this vase offers no colorful glass threads to bedazzle the viewer. However, the stark beauty of the clear glass does not need any color to exemplify its splendour. It is as timeless and enchanting as an icicle hanging from a branch on a crisp winter's morning. Zynsky has created a work of art that exudes a magnificence characteristically found in nature itself. She explains that an artist must look for inspiration from everywhere. I look at everything. This inspiration therefore comes from the natural world: Toots Zynsky's work stands out from all other contemporary glass because of the way it is formed from colored threads of glass to build a vessel, a technique that must surely have been inspired by nest-building.

Klaus Moje - the Artist

Klaus Moje was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1936. He learned his skills in glassmaking working in his family's workshop before studying at the glass schools of Rheinbach and Hadamar. At the age of 46 he left Germany for Australia where he became the Founding Head of the Glass Workshop at the Canberra School of Art of the Australian National University. His role at the university was to establish a glass program that rapidly gained an international reputation as a center of excellence in the visual arts. Many critics regard Moje as the key innovator who promoted kiln-formed glass to the status of a major art form.

Moje's technique of making a kiln-formed sheet of glass was a testament to his knowledge of glassmaking. Narrow strips of glass were laid out next to each other in two to three layers (three layers usually being the maximom number). Fibre paper was then cut into strips about an inch wide and long enough to totally enclose each side of the glass. The strips were stacked as high as the glass so that when the glass softened and fused. There was a tendency for the heated glass to flow and thin out if the fiber dam was not in place; this was a problem that has confounded artists trying to replicate the technique. However, with practice Moje found that the fiber would remain in place throughout the firing procedure; resulting in the unique color and form of his work. This technique has been continued by his protégé Giles Bettison at the Bullseye Glass Company in Portland, USA.

The kiln-formed mosaic technique with which he has experimented for more than three decades has introduced a contemporary sophistication and fluidity unparalleled in the earlier traditions of glasswork that Moje has inherited. His technique of bringing an almost antiquated glassmaking method into the present by means of developing and nurturing modern technology can be related with Zynsky's acceptance of fiber optic technology. Both artists have bridged the gap between old and new to produce works of art that intermingle the timelessness of an ancient tradition with the sophistication of the modern world. Moje's work has been categorised within Abstract Expressionism, Op Art and Minimalism. However, the fact that he has developed his own techniques in glassmaking mean that his work can be seen to have established a new movement of modern glass art; perhaps Mojism. His combination of old and new was described in his retrospective exhibition in Melbourne in 1995: The striated, agate-like glass produced in Germany and Austria in the 19th century and the influence of European Constructivism of the early 20th century echo through Moje's geometry.

Moje's work has been on public display since the 1969 Triennial of European Decorative Art exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany. His first solo exhibition was in 1973 in London at The British Crafts Centre exhibition. Since then his work has travelled the world and last year a retrospective of his art was on display in A Private Collection in New York at the Urban Gallery, New York. Talking about his role as an artist he once said that: We artists have always been communicators of a different kind. We are the eyewitnesses of our time and our experience is reflected in works of the different media, using form and color as the means of letting you into the waves of our emotions.

Moje restricts his work to a limited range of forms. These manifestations are usually made up of three defining objects: the shallow bowl; the flat wall panel; and the cylindrical vessel. His arrival in Australia in the early 1980s saw his work transformed to accommodate the Australian sky and landscape. Last year David Revere McFadden, Chief Curator of the Museum of Arts & Design in New York, described Moje's work as something that immediately engages the eye through his masterful use of color [sic] and pattern. Moje shares intimate glimpses of his world, his memories and his visions as tangible poetry.

Klaus Moje - the Work

I shall focus on two of Klaus Moje's sculptures that I feel best demonstrate his work as an artist. These are his 1998 Untitled bowl that is exhibited in the Heller Gallery and his 1999 kiln formed glass vase Niijima #10 exhibited in the Bullseye Connection Gallery.

The Untitled bowl measures 53cm x 53cm x 7.5cm and is currently exhibited at the Heller Gallery in New York. Moje produced it in 1998. The colors he uses for the work are bold and powerful. The predominant colors are black, orange and white; supported with blues, yellows and grays. The first thing that strikes me about this particular piece of work is the way in which the colors, although abstract in principle, connote images of Aboriginal artwork and the Australian outback. I found a correspondence between Moje's piece and a description of the Australian outback: In Australia's center, the red-sanded, rocky plains, broken by rolling outcrops of rounded or craggy hills, stretch into the blue-hazed distance. Within this vast scale, subtleties abound. Colours change with the progress of the day: from the early morning's clear light which so sharply defines shapes; to the silent, bleached flatness of the midday hours; to the soft purple-reds and sage greens of dusk. At night, temperatures plummet and the star-filled sky of the inky nights overwhelms with its sheer magnitude. When studying the bowl I can see the dark, inky night sky overpowering the red and orange sandy desert. The greens, blues and yellows hint at the vegetation that struggles to grow in the harsh conditions.

The form of this work is similar to Moje's other bowl pieces. This style of artifact heralds back to the ancient European aesthetic traditions of glassware being functional as well as artistic. This is evident in the size of the piece, and invariably, the weight of it. The beauty of this particular work is in the intricate layers of mosaic glass. The way in which the colored glass lines both distract and entice the viewer into the center of the bowl is very powerful. It is as if we are looking directly into the sun instead of studying the orbiting planets around it. This again embodies the culture of the outback, and throws particular reference to the Aboriginal belief in 'the Dreaming'. Art historian Andrew Sayers refers to this concept as: a time in which the great ancestor figures created the land, the patterns of the environment, and the laws which structure Aboriginal society. In the course of their earliest existence the Dreaming ancestors travelled through the world and created the landscape. Through acts of transformation they made themselves into the features of the present landscape - rivers, waterholes, mountain ranges, planets and constellations. In my personal opinion this translates into the artistic language that Moje has interpreted in this work. He has travelled the landscape (heralding from Europe to Australia) creating art from the landscape (producing glass from the sand) and presenting the idea of the sky, the sand, the outback into his own work.

Moje's glass vase entitled Niijima #10 measures 15.9cm x 12.1cm x 12.1cm and is exhibited in the Bullseye Connection Gallery, Portland, USA. Moje named this piece of work after the Japanese island of Niijima that lies 160km south of Tokyo. The island is perhaps best known as a destination for surfers across the world, but it is the island's indigenous silica-based sandstone, kogaseki, that is used for making glass that is the reason behind Moje's naming of the vase. The island is also home to the Niijima Glass Art Centre and the Niijima International Glass Art Festival.

Although this work falls into Moje's classic 'vase' category it looks and feels more like a drinking vessel than a decorative vase to keep flowers in. This harks back to the tradition of a sculpted work of art having a use in an everyday situation; yet like the bowl described above it would be an expensive cup with its $6,000 price tag! The brilliant blues that Moje has used in this particular piece really bring out the vivid yellows and oranges around the center of the vase. This clash of warm and cold colors strikes a juxtaposition of a cool containment of a fiery liquid; leading me to think of a potent alcohol being held in the vase, waiting to warm up the pourer of the drink when the cup is put to his lips. The vase appears to have an instant tactility; there is something about the size and shape that insists that I should pick it up. I can see that this is the exact type of object that Bernard Berenson might have referred to when he announced I must have the illusion of being able to touch a figure. I must have the illusion of varying muscular sensations inside my palm and fingers corresponding to the various projections of this figure, before I shall take it for granted as real, and let if affect me lastingly in his essay on the Florentine painters of the Renaissance, published in 1896. Berenson was describing the great artists of Florence who were also architects, poets, sculptors and even scientists. Berenson believed that works of art must arouse the tactile sense. I have not seen Niijima #10 in the flesh, but the feeling I get from two-dimensional images of the piece evoke the same response that Berenson had from the Renaissance artists' paintings. I find that Berenson's depiction of the Renaissance artists also describes Moje; an artist, a sculptor and, in his ability to create glass, a scientist.

Contemporaries

Perhaps the most important figure in the development of glass art was Dale Chihuly. Chihuly founded the Pilchuck Glass School where Toots Zynsky studied and taught. He is regarded as being the person who revolutionised the Studio Glass Movement by introducing the concept of a group of artists collaborating to produce their works rather than the trend at the time of the solitary artist working alone. It is not only his artistic skills that propelled him to the forefront of the movement, his organizational skills were akin to those of Andy Warhol's Factory. This decision to allocate working procedures was before a car accident left him blind in one eye (he is now most identifiable by his iconic eye patch). Ever since this accident he has lacked the necessary depth perception to continue solo glassblowing and now oversees a team of glassblowers who perform the principal construction of his works. It was once written that: Chihuly's blown-glass sculptures defy the everyday experience of glass: infused with lush color [sic], sensual textures and a physicality that is at once massive and delicate, these pieces extend the very notion of 'glassness' into new realms of recognition. Chihuly has been heralded as an artistic master who created an art form out of traditional crafts: He broke with conventional wisdom and defied the limitations of this medium to create glass worlds that range from delicate vessels to huge installations, exhibited in major museums throughout the world.

Chihuly was born in Tacoma, USA in 1947. He was a student of interior design and architecture in the early 1960s and by 1965 he had become captivated by the process of glassblowing. He enrolllled in the University of Wisconsin's hot glass program, the first of its kind in the United States, established by Studio Glass movement founder Harvey K. Littleton. After his education in design and fine arts, Chihuly won a Fulbright scholarship to study the art of glassmaking on the island of Murano, the renowned glassmaking center near Venice. His links with Venice were still strong thirty years later when he embarked on the multifaceted international project, Chihuly over Venice, which involved collaborative glass blowing at factories in Finland, Ireland and Mexico. The sculptures that were produced were then mounted over the canals of Venice to celebrate their first glass biennial. It is interesting to note that this project was featured in a television documentary which was in fact the first HD-TV broadcast by PBS. This cements Chihuly as an artist who is always seeking to explore different media to allow people to access his art.

Another important figure to emerge in the glass art movement is Giles Bettison. Bettison was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1966. Bettison did not start out on his professional life intending to make glass. From 1981 to 1991 he worked in the South Australian metal trades. He first encountered glass in his home town of Adelaide at a crafts center called the Jam Factory, where he worked as technical design consultant and fabricator for a company making neon. During the 1990s he enrolllled at the Canberra School of Art where he began a working relationship with Klaus Moje. Bettison enjoyed the newfound energy among his fellow students and teachers and graduated in 1996. He followed the path of the glass artists before him by studying at the Pilchuck Glass School that same year; therefore becoming the human link between Moje, Zynsky and Chihuly.

Bettison's work draws parallel's with Moje's. His inspiration comes from the early Venetian glass and the light and color in rural and outback Australia, and in particular the work of Aboriginal art forms. He described his work as an exploration of his movement through life, expressed in colors, patterns and forms. He creates intricate handmade glass tiles using the Venetian murrini technique which he assembles to make unique, blown vessels.

Future of Glass Art

Considering the fact that the glass art movement that captures the work of Toots Zynsky and Klaus Moje is, comparatively, in its infancy (the origins being the late 1960s and early 1970s) the future looks bright. The intimacy of a medium that appears to be crafted by hand will always be appreciated by the public and the bold use of shape, color and form will demand critical review.

In today's society, as in previous years, art is a commodity that affords its owner a level of esteem that would previously have been the luxury of the higher classes. Fashion and design have now become an integral part of Western society and the everyday person has access to art in a way that could not be feasible only thirty years previously. Art collections and catalogs are now used by high street shops to influence their own design principles; a trip to a Marks and Spencer or Debenhams beholds a collection of truly universally accessible gifts that can be added to the family home. This, however, is not to say that the value of work by Zynsky and Moje has been devalued by the popular culture of home improvement. It is the sincerest form of flattery that people who may not have seen an original piece of work by the artist can identify that the shape and form of a spherical glass vase is pure art.

Design has once again stepped to the forefront of popular art. There are always going to be fads of shocking high art, minimalism and sensationalism but the public will always demand a combination of simplicity and expression. Toots Zynsky and Klaus Moje fall happily into this category. As I have described, their work touches on an ancient tradition of glassmaking interweaved with the modern miracle of technology. It could be argued that both these artists' work could not really be labelled as anything else but high art; after all it would be a flamboyant individual who purchased a Moje plate for $15,000 just to enjoy eating his dinner from it!

I believe that the current movement of glassmaking will progress with further technological advances, just as it did with Zynsky's filet-de-verre and Moje's kiln-formed mosaic technique. The fact that the centers of excellence in Seattle and Canberra have carried the baton passed on to them by ancient Syria, Egypt and Rome means that a new generation of glass artists will continue to produce works that require critical analysis and a worldwide audience.

Conclusion

I am not entirely sure what led me to look at the works of Toots Zynsky and Klaus Moje. There are far more popular artists working with glass today; the iconic image of the eye patch wearing Dale Chihuly certainly springs to mind. However, both Zynsky and Moje have added more than their fair share to the glass art movement. Both artists have consistently produced works of art that are at the same time simple, complex, beautiful and functional. Their exuberance and dedication to promoting new technological ideas into their art have allowed new artists, such as Giles Bettison, to progress further into this field of art.

Above all else, both these artists have delivered breathtaking works of art by fusing ancient, traditional methods with new technology to a worldwide audience. This in turn has allowed a greater number of people to benefit from the process of glass art design than would have had Zynsky only focused on her love of music, and Moje continued to work at his family's glassworks. Both artists broke free to create new art that is perhaps some of the greatest work ever produced.