Art Chowder September | October, Issue 23 | Page 24

T
here was also a technique of fusing
gold fume onto carnival glass (the stuff
you buy at the fair) or what we call
“loop stitch glass,” that transposed into
fuming the gold over the silver for even
more complex color combinations.
We developed the color even more by
adding clear glass over the result of our
“fuming,” as it’s called.  
So, what you are seeing when you
look at fumed borosilicate glass, are
millions of tiny platelets forming layered
sheets of color. That’s what I did to
make everything in the beginning. We
used layers of metals because the solid
colors weren’t available to us. Through
experimentation, I found there were cool
effects you could get by adding a dark
color underneath it, as a dark surface
absorbs light differently than transparency.
I was so curious and hungry for colored
borosilicate glass research, and to learn
how to use it, we went to the color
companies that were beginning at the
time. They had all started as the result
of ceramics research with glazes, so
we would get batches of these color
experiments and they would have us
test them in our pieces. Then we would
tell them if it worked or not. So it was
a collaborative thing to get the colors to
become prolific. When we started there
weren’t really any colors to work with and
now we have hundreds.
Eventually, because it was such a topic
of research, I wrote articles, tutorials, and
contributed to textbooks on the medium.
By sharing the techniques I researched
and developed specific to borosilicate
glass, the artwork style that a small group
of us were creating became widespread
and is now practiced worldwide.
Now there’s a mechanized process to
make colored tubing and colored sheets of
glass. People are doing all sorts of things
that we didn’t do in the beginning because
we didn’t have the technology available.
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ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
Art Chowder:   So you’re as much a scientist as an artist.
Chorvat:  In a way, but without all the degrees. 
Most of my work now is focusing on what you do with the medium as the
conceptual material. I like to use it to make a piece more informative, based on the
fact that it is glass. So, in a sense, glass informs people of things just in its nature.
Meaning I wouldn’t use glass to make a sculpture of something like a dog, because
glass doesn’t say anything about dogs. Instead, I’m trying to apply the Gestalt
principles of critical theory to glasswork and use it as an element in other sculptures.
This is because it, as a material, informs you of the delicacy or temporal nature of
what I’m trying to say.