Gini Garcia is a local glass artist. Her work can be found at Garcia Art Glass, which is a gallery, shop, and working studio that offers glass-blowing demonstrations.

This piece ws originally published in the San Antonio Report. The photo is by Al Rendon, the words are by Gini Garcia.

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Light is either absorbed, reflected or refracted off of my colored glass. I find that the warm colors – oranges, yellows, reds, lime green – reflect light, so you see them in a very vivid way. We use a lot of those colors to show positive energy, welcoming to all, bringing happiness to the viewer. Then the opposite is true with cool colors that absorb light – blues, purples, black – those colors are really, really soft colors that absorb light. Light in my world is fire. Light in the way of fire is absorbed into the blues and purples, the color becomes soft and it is perceived in a more introspective way, a little melancholy. So the warm colors are extroverted, the blue and purple cool colors are more introverted.

Play has multiple meanings. You can play music, but when I use that word, I mean play like a child. My expression, as I make furniture out of bronze and glass, goes back to using my hands. It’s my soul work, so the inspiration goes back to personal illnesses, biological things. But in those projects I get to play with clay, working with my hands. You can’t touch molten glass, so this new project – the furniture – uses clay that is shaped and textured, then the molds are cast into bronze. As I shape the clay that will become bronze, I can get lost in the smallest details, focus on one place for two or three hours, and I find my passion again. And from there I can move on to another part. There’s no time constraint – glass blowing is spontaneous, you have to get it done, there’s no going back to fix it and change it. Clay and bronze are treated differently.  The patterns I am putting in these tables are etched into the clay. Sometimes I use a nail to draw, or I use things I get from different travels, such as a shell, imprint their patterns, and the memories that go with it, into the clay. It brings an escapist mentality to my play time.