By Sue Bergstrom for Valdez City News –
Sharry Miller and her family have lived full-time in Valdez since 2002, but have had a commercial fishing boat here since 1995. Sharry works in Oil Spill Contingency Planning for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. So you may have encountered her when working on a spill drill. She says that many people in town know her through her daughter, saying, “I suspect many people know me as Rowan’s mom – having a teenager broadens one’s social circles.”
She says she has always been interested in a variety of arts and crafts, learning and working in multiple media over the last thirty years, beginning with attempting to teach herself how to crochet at around age ten. She has worked with quilting, weaving, basketry, knitting and spinning over the years. But for the last several years her focus has been on fused, kiln-formed glass because of the creative freedom and sense of adventure it gives her. She says that one of the things she likes about it is the freedom to take her inspiration where she finds it and interpret it however seems appropriate to her with none of the limits some other media set by their very nature. Then there’s what she calls ‘the magic of the kiln’.
“There’s something about layering colorful pieces of cold, hard glass, heating them until they’re molten and stuck together, and then cooling the final product until it’s cold and hard again that seems somehow magical. I never know for sure just what I’ll find when I open the kiln after an eight to ten hour firing cycle.”
No one knows for certain how long ago people started working in fused glass, but there is evidence that the Egyptians were familiar with it as long ago as 2000 BCE and the Romans were experts. It was once the most common method of making small glass items. Unlike most artistic glasswork, which was revived during the Renaissance, fusing did not regain popularity until the 20th century, in 1960s United States. What was originally considered a hobby has become popular as fine art. The process is to heat glass in a kiln at a range of high temperatures depending on the desired effect. Pieces of various colored glasses are then layered and fused to create a picture or pattern with a variety of colors, textures and depths.
Sharry has been selling her work at the annual Christmas bazaar and during Gold Rush Days for many years. She spent a month last spring collaborating with students and teachers to make a huge school of salmon that takes up an area of 35 feet in the school commons for the new George Gilson Middle School. You may also have seen the two items she donated to the KCHU art auction or a piece she did featuring Dr. Silveira’s plane, a window in his dental office.
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Blog/Website or Sharry Miller and Sea Turtle Arts on Facebook for more information.
See more of Sharry’s work below.
