Syed Ahmad
Glass

My method is improvisational. The glass sheets I have at hand and the image in my mind will do their dance back and forth. The medium imposes its will as much as the artist does. Immersed in paradox, I allow for intentional accidents and planned surprises. While the creative work is done at room temperature, the final outcome is not apparent until after the technical process of kiln-firing. The improvised collage of glass is placed in a kiln and fired to around 1400 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature, the pieces of glass begin to flow and fuse, blending shapes and colors. The intense, highly saturated colors I use are from a specially coated dichroic glass. The dichroic’s interesting properties allow me to stack the glass in many layers to achieve significant visual depth in an essentially two dimensional piece. The work compels you to look deeply into the piece while observing the changing hues as you move across it, engaging with glass as a living medium.

Much of my work is mounted on etched and patinated metals, integrating the disparate materials by extending the design lines initiated within the glass, creating larger format "paintings" for both commercial and residential application. Other work is dynamic colors fired onto large pieces of clear and textured glass and floated on the wall whereby the shadows created with lighting become part of the conceptual design.