arts up close
DEB BROWN PA I N T I N G W I T H L I G H T BY DAWN RITCHIE
T Photo by: Violet N Brown, ViB Visuals
he fall Images Studio Tour was fast approaching and glass and metal artist, Deb Brown, frenziedly prepared her newest pieces for the show. Sprinkling crushed glass powder and flakes onto her canvas, she built layer upon layer, before committing her work to a kiln. From a clear glass blank, what slowly emerged was a light-dappled pathway winding through a verdant birch forest. Mounted on a wrought iron stand, the sphere transforms into a delicate sculpture of light and colour, drawing you along a path through the forest to a glowing beam ahead. “There’s a light of the soul within each of us,” says Brown. “My artwork are stories designed to reflect back to people their own light, their own strength. To give people joy
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and hope in this crazy world.” Brown refers to herself as an artist of spirit, and to her artwork as stories of light. “I love the combination of metal with glass,” she says. “They are almost like two opposites. Hard, strong and solid and fragile and ethereal. When I combine the two, the contrast makes the work dynamic.” Growing bored after years of working on a flat plane, Brown wanted to branch out into 3D. She learned how to weld and for the last twelve years has focussed entirely on fused glass created in a kiln. “It blew the boundaries of stained glass wide open,” she says. “I don’t have to solder. There’s no lead involved. No black lines between the pieces. It melts in the kiln. It’s fascinating the things you can do with glass. Really tricky, but endlessly fas-
GoodLife | Barrie Nov - Dec 2019
2019-11-19 1:55 PM
