{"id":441,"date":"2012-12-15T17:53:27","date_gmt":"2012-12-15T17:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glassartguild.com\/wordpress\/?p=441"},"modified":"2014-02-13T02:27:40","modified_gmt":"2014-02-13T02:27:40","slug":"member-spotlight-suzann-larson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glassartguild.org\/?p=441","title":{"rendered":"Member Spotlight – Suzanne Larson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Suz Larson<\/a> – Member Spotlight<\/strong><\/p>\n

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About commissions\u2026<\/strong>We have heard over and over again that when we\u2019ve put glass in a show and even if we don\u2019t get sales, we\u2019ve got our name out there and sooner or later, we hope, someone will remember our name and get back to us. We say, \u201cyeah, yeah, yeah,\u201d and we all know it\u2019s not going to happen!<\/p>\n

Four or five years ago, I had a glass show at Charley Hafen\u2019s Gallery, and a few weeks ago someone came by recently who remembered me from that show. He has commissioned a piece by me. What\u2019s great about it is it\u2019s a very challenging piece, as he\u2019s written a poem for his wife, and he wants me to make a glass picture frame for it. He wanted me to read the poem, be inspired be it, and then be creative. He wants my creativity, not to tell me just what to do. This is uncommon in a commission. Some artists charge extra for a commission, due to the hassle factor<\/em>. Five designs later, you\u2019re still going back and forth. I don\u2019t need to charge him extra for this. I had him come over to see examples of my glass, talk about and show me the colors of the room it\u2019ll go into. However, I will come up with some designs and have him look at them before I flick the switch on the kiln. I insisted on this, in order to ensure that he really loves the work.<\/p>\n

Because I haven\u2019t done art for a long time, this commission was a good kick-start to get me back into the studio and creating glass art again. It\u2019s been hard for me to return to the studio after so long. I was able to put some samples in the kiln and turn the kiln on\u2014but there was a hesitation, because once you flip the switch on the kiln, you\u2019re officially making<\/em> something. Before you turn the kiln on, you\u2019re just playing, fooling around, you haven\u2019t committed. Flipping the switch is a commitment that I was nervous about making, but I reminded<\/span> myself that I was just doing samples, taking the edges off shattered pieces of works (never refuse to re-fuse). I reminded myself that I wasn\u2019t actually making<\/em> something, so it was OK.<\/p>\n

This will be a fascinating piece as I\u2019m stepping out of the box with glass curving into the poem which is about stones and pathways, and so I want the curves go as a path does. I\u2019m challenging myself in a way that I haven\u2019t for a very long time with glass. It\u2019s exciting, and also as an artist, because<\/span> I work in a variety of media: assemblage, clay, and glass and<\/span> I\u2019m now finally comfortable enough with glass to say yes<\/em> to this commission.<\/p>\n

Sales\u2026<\/strong>At the Patrick Moore show, I had several pieces, including several repurposed ones <\/em>and one new one. I priced them way too high, but got a lot of fabulous feedback. I hadn\u2019t been in a show for a while and just took numbers out of my head instead of thinking, do you want to <\/em>sell <\/span><\/em>this? In Utah???<\/em> I believe that if I had priced them reasonably, I would have had a sale or two.<\/p>\n

Getting feedback from the public is important.<\/p>\n

Creativity & Collaboration\u2026<\/strong>Our creativity is by and large solitary in our studios. There are a few of us that have the opportunity to collaborate and certainly when we get together at the meetings, we have our community and there\u2019s verbal\/mental collaboration. For<\/span> those of us who are lucky enough to share studio space, like Dan, there\u2019s a collaborative effort there, even if they\u2019re not working on the same piece. The collaboration process is brilliant! It\u2019s not easy to collaborate. You have to completely drop the possessiveness about your ideas and the power plays and everybody has to be open to suggestion. If someone says, well, why don\u2019t you use vanilla or move it over two inches, you try that or maybe compromise. That\u2019s the flow that comes with two personalities and creativities that can work together, and you can\u2019t do that with everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Mary<\/a>When Mary Young<\/a> isn’t working on glass, she’s making the worlds most delicious chocolates!\u00a0 Mary also serves as the Glass Art Guild Secretary.<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Suz Larson – Member Spotlight   About commissions\u2026We have heard over and over again that when we\u2019ve put glass in a show and even if we don\u2019t get sales, we\u2019ve got our name out there and sooner or later, we hope, someone will remember our name and get back to us. We say, \u201cyeah, yeah, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-member-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glassartguild.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glassartguild.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glassartguild.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glassartguild.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glassartguild.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.glassartguild.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":935,"href":"https:\/\/www.glassartguild.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glassartguild.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glassartguild.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glassartguild.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}