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Ventura County Star
September 16, 2005
Glass artist weaves fine designs from recycled shards
By Nicole D'Amore
Glass artist Sol Mesz's studio in Oxnard is like a candy shop. Clear glass sheets share space with smaller, brightly colored pieces she has created using chemical recipes. Some are flat and smooth, others have bubbles and bumps on the surface. Some are vivid, some softly muted.
"Making my own allows me to achieve a unique palette of colors and textures," Mesz said. "I do not use industrially colored glass. My pieces are made with 100 percent recycled glass. I can turn transparent sheets of glass into unique pieces of art which also are environmentally friendly."
Along one wall are sheets of recycled window glass, given to her by the owner of a window shop in Somis.
A shelf contains jars of colored glass pieces. A broken green bottle is sifted into three different size pieces, from pebble to powder, each serving a different purpose.
Strands of silver wire and chains hang from brackets, glittering in the afternoon sun, awaiting the addition of glass pendants, from colorful flowers to woven pieces resembling hard, shiny pieces of fabric.
Mesz fires the pieces in a small kiln at temperatures ranging from 1,450 to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, a 12-hour process.
It was a fascination with welding that indirectly led her to this medium.
Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she holds a degree in advertising and had a job setting up intranet Web sites for companies.
"One day I woke up and decided I wanted to weld," the petite artist said. She found an artist working in glass and metal willing to teach her. "My very first piece was a table made from a thick metallic mesh," she said. "It was so wobbly you couldn't really use it for anything." Her instructor then told her to make a top for the table out of glass.
"Very slowly he made me start working with glass. I just wanted to weld," she said. "But the more things I made, I would want to do more. Sometimes I think it had to do with the transformations that occur with heat," she said.
Now living in the United States for more than two years, Mesz works in her garage studio.
Her pieces include decorative art, games and jewelry.
"I am very practical. I have a down-to-earth mindset," she said. "Up until two years ago I did mostly functional pieces. I didn't want to do things whose only purpose was to gather dust."
She places three glass plates with different designs into a slotted wood base.
The resulting three-dimensional design can be changed by turning the glass plates in different directions. "It's customizable," she said.
Mesz proudly shows off a clear glass backgammon set with red and white accents, tenderly removing it from tissue wrappings. " It is gorgeous, so rough and delicate at the same time," she said.
She also made a Chinese puzzle called a "tangram" that can be changed into figures of animals and people by the way the pieces are put together. "It's a very interesting mathematical game," she said.
Inspiration comes from graphic designs and even from fabrics. "These things trigger ideas in my mind," she said. "I always loved textiles and rugs," she said. "So I got the idea to make fabric out of glass."
She weaves pieces of glass together to form wall-hangings and pieces of jewelry.
She will exhibit her jewelry at the Thousand Oaks Arts Festival this weekend.
It is her second year participating in the juried show.
The festival at 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd. will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Her work can also be seen on her Web site, http://www.sillice.com.
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