Alice Benvie Gebhart

Alice Benvie-Gebhart’s subject matter is the everyday scene.  She works at translating and elevating the average, day-to-day into a brilliant celebration.   Being born into an artistic family, her father and grandfather were practicing artists, she continues the family legacy with glass.   She chooses the landscape and nature as my subject. She is captivated when finding appealing combinations of elements in the everyday scene. Driving down a winding road or passing a sun drenched tree with a long cast shadow inspires her to capture the moment in her kiln fired creations. Glass is the media that reveals this natural vibrancy to its utmost.  She enjoys the technique of using glass to create something that is both abstract and literal.

Glass fusing, also called kiln fired glass or warm glass, is the process of using a kiln to join together pieces of glass. If you apply heat to glass, it will soften.  If you continue to apply heat, the glass will become more fluid and flow together.  Two or more pieces of glass will stick (or “fuse”) to each other.  When the right kind of glass is heated and then cooled properly, the resulting fused glass piece will be solid and unbroken.

Working off sketches and photos, She cuts and layers colored glass, specifically made for glass fusing, in a kind of collage.  This is fired in a glass kiln, often 3-4 times to obtain the desired effect.

Specialty glasses such as dichroic glass and iridescent glass are often added as inclusions to give her work its luminescent quality.

The completed pieces are transformed into either wall art or free-standing sculptures.