Profiles

Working Glass

By Melanie Chambers

Beaver Valley Glassworks updates 5000 years of craft

Today, glass artists are rare: in Ontario alone, there are only between 35 to 40 glassblowing studios and only three glassmaking schools in Canada.

It's an odd canvas for a painting: a giant glass sculpture that resembles a medieval German beer stein. Next to it, a vase with Picasso-like cubes layered on top of one another. "We have a schizophrenic collection in our studio," says Mark Lewis, one half of Beaver Valley Glassworks.

And while the husband/wife team may use some of the same materials and techniques, they have managed to update an art form with 5000 years of history.

Tanya Zaryski and Mark Lewis use the same glass to make everything from drinking glasses and vases, to non-functional glass art. But, perusing the shelves inside their barn studio, you can tell who made each piece – their styles are decisively different.

“Tanya was born with a paint brush in her hand,” says Lewis. “I'm not what I would call an artist in that sense...I'm more a craftsman and artisan. I'm much more interested in the optical quality of the glass and the layering.”
If Mark is the technician, then Tanya is the storyteller. “Sing me a love song…” Tanya repeats the words over and over as they appear on a vase alongside a painting of a Red Riding Hood figure.

“I love repeating language,” she muses – a leftover from her English literature background. “And I like looking at some of the historical references of fairy tales, and interpretations of them.”

Her work is also a reflection of her own imagination and memories. On the front of what looks like a large glass perfume bottle, decorated with intricate leaves, is a painting of a girl holding a bird; it's a 30-year-old memory that Tanya recalls vividly.

“[The bird] was face down, and the sun shone on the black and iridescent feathers. It was both terrifically beautiful (tiny feet with perfect claws, pointed beak), and frightening as it was starting to not quite decompose, but be very dead with filmy eyes and some interested ants crawling around.”

Today, she's making another bird in the workshop. She steps on a metal depressor and a furnace, called a pontil, opens; at 2000 °F, pellet-sized glass balls have melted into a honey-like mixture. She dips a hollow metal pole in, coating the end.

With the pole, she picks up a pre-painted ball of glass from inside a kiln. She transfers the glass to the glory hole, another furnace about half the temperature of the pontil, to reheat it until it’s malleable. She's only got a minute or two to work before it hardens. Rolling the rod back and forth on a metal rail, she dents the glass with a graphite slab then pulls it like taffy with a giant pair of tweezers. She snips the glass with cutters – it's the beak.

The bird imagery stems from her childhood growing up on a farm in nearby Harriston. When she left the farm, she took a dual major, art history and art, at the University of Toronto, which helped develop her painting and sculpting skills. Studying glassmaking in the Crafts and Design Program at Sheridan College, she loved the hands-on aspect. But by the time she was apprenticing at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, she felt her work was plateauing – until she met Mark Lewis.

“When we started working together in the studio it was a unique experience in that we already had a common language but also had a lot of knowledge to impart to the other.” She taught Mark about paints; Mark revealed his technical tricks.

“In glass works it is all about trying to do something a little different because there's 5000 years of recorded glassmaking techniques,” says Mark. “So when you go to school and train to do things, you want to shake that up a little bit.”

To keep it fresh, he has created his own version of Italian murrine glassmaking, a form that dates back to Roman times. In simple terms, the traditional method involves cutting tiny bits of glass that are rolled out into a cylinder; the finished glass produces a multicoloured effect. This technique is incredibly complicated and takes a team of glassmakers; instead, Mark paints murrines directly on the vessel. “It's my homage to murrine.”

When Mark graduated, crafts and glass works seemed like a viable livelihood, perhaps not to the extent it was in the 1960s when crafts were king, but it was a healthy profession. Today, glass artists are rare: in Ontario alone, there are only between 35 to 40 glassblowing studios and only three glassmaking schools in Canada. Of those graduates, very few have their own studios. Money is the primary reason: one electrical furnace costs about $700 to run every month.

“It's a challenging time and any time we have an implosion in the economy [it affects us]. Glass is viewed as a luxury item, not a staple,” explains Mark. By offering workshops at their studio, Tanya and Mark hope that perception will change. “People realize what goes into making a piece of glass,” says Mark.

Maybe it's just enough incentive to stay out of Ikea.