View Larger Image Bead Pod, 4 in. (10 cm) in height, soda-fired stoneware bead, with lampworked, soda-lime glass accents, sterling silver stand, 2004. Lemaire prefers to present some of her beads on stands in order to draw attention to their sculptural qualities.

July 11, 2007

Glass as Glaze: A Profile of Chicago Artist Amy Lemaire

by Elizabeth Reichert | Read Comments (0)

Chicago artist Amy Lemaire wanders weekly through a local flower wholesaler hoping to stumble upon what she calls "oddities of nature"--a spiky pincushion protea, a droopy sandersonia blossom or an unexpectedly angled branch--that may eventually inspire her clay and glass beadwork. Like a scientist questioning natural patterns, Lemaire often wonders why a certain shape doesn't occur, and it is this that she sets out to create.

"I make things that do not appear in nature, but that I wish would," she explains. "I want these things to look like they grew out of the earth, as if a new species of plant pods were being encountered. I want the viewer to think: 'Is that a bead or a pod? What's its use? Was it found on the ground? Was it made in her studio, and if so, out of what?'"

An abstract painter by education, a bead artist by profession and a sometime floral designer by fancy, Lemaire and her work resist categorization. Unlike many of today's beadmakers, who work mostly within the ornamental traditions of the craft, stringing up their creations to adorn others, Lemaire's approach is more diversified. She wants to draw as much attention as possible to her beads (not the wearer) by making them large in a necklace, by mounting them as sculptural objects, or more radically, by using them to anchor submerged blossoms in what might traditionally be called a floral arrangement, but in her case certainly begs of another name. Such departures into the domains of floral design and sculpture embody that category-defying spirit--what many call thinking outside the box--that marks the way Lemaire works.

It is no wonder then that Lemaire began to question not only how a bead could be used, but also how a bead could be made. That was in autumn 2004, months after she had set up shop in Chicago's Lillstreet Art Center, predominantly a clay studio. Surrounded by kilns and clay-covered neighbors, she began to notice that, while precious metal clay was commonly used by contemporary beadmakers, high-fire stoneware was as foreign a material to her colleagues as basket weaving reeds are to the traditional potter. After researching the surface compatibility issues between clay and glass, and the possibilities of constructing clay beads, Lemaire began to conduct experiments. Six months later, she discovered how to fuse clay and glass, a technique that, as far as this writer's research can conclude, is not being practiced by any other artist.

Were it not for the lampworking method Lemaire might not have ever bonded clay and glass. The technique, again, widely practiced by today's beadmakers, involves a stainless steel rod, called a mandrel, around which a pencil-thin stick of glass is wound. The mandrel is covered with a clay slip (otherwise known as the bead release). The glass is heated by a table-mounted torch and does not stick to the steel as it melts because, as the mandrel is heated, this slip turns to powder, allowing the glass to be released from the rod. Lemaire's initial instinct about clay and glass fusion was peaked by that release agent. If the glass would adhere to the slip, she wondered, why wouldn't it stick to clay?

Lemaire began making clay beads then, all extruded and hollow, with the sides pushed in to resemble plant pods. Although she tried using porcelain beads, which were sensitive to thermal shock and separation during half of her attempts, and unglazed low-fire clay beads, which didn't even take to the glass, Lemaire eventually found her most consistent success with beads made from a high-alumina stoneware.

Wanting to eventually make larger, nonfunctional clay and glass sculpture, Lemaire is currently experimenting with sheets of glass and alternate clay bodies, while teaching her fusion technique at Lillstreet. Having trouble with thermal shock and separation when using larger surface quantities of glass, she has tried borosilicate glass, which has a lesser contraction and expansion rate. Likewise, she is building an insulation chamber that will protect the clay bodies, and hopefully lead to greater surface fusion by not allowing the ambient heat to be pulled away from the torch.

Merging techniques and functions is, of course, the precise motivation that has enabled Lemaire to create a body of work unique among that of her bead-making contemporaries. Yet young at 27, it will be interesting to see to what ends she will take her work, technically and aesthetically, in the lapidary or sculptural arts. "There is one thing about the craft world that does not fit with my personality," she explains. "And that is most artists who are working in glass work in glass, and most artists who are working in clay work in clay. There are very few who straddle the borders. And I am excited to finally be making work that is uncontainable in this sense."

Only time will tell, of course, whether her realization of clay and glass fusion will mark a landmark technical achievement in the chronicles of bead, glass and ceramic form. But in the meantime, hopefully other artists--clay, glass and bead practitioners alike--will follow Lemaire's lead, inspired to either dabble in other mediums, or adapt her clay and glass fusion technique to meet their own artistic ends.