The ‘studio glass’ movement celebrated its official 50th anni-
versary in 2012. One of the trailblazers within the ‘studio glass
movement’ was Boyce Lundstrom, inventor of the ‘Glass
Raku’ firing process. In the 1970s, Lundstrom pioneered an
exciting offspring of the glass art form, namely FUSED GLASS.
Beyond contributing untold new advances in the fused glass
technology, perhaps of equal importance was his fostering of
a new generation of glass artists, such as Cynthia Ann Swan.
Boyce offered Swan the rare privilege of entering into a profes-
sional mentorship with him. This was especially meaningful, as
he was already very ill, and the time frame in which this could
be accomplished was uncertain. In fact, Boyce passed away
the very night Swan installed her first full collection at GDCA.
Since that fateful night, GDCA Gallery has proudly debuted
many of Swan’s subsequent series.
Swan terms her artistic style ‘Modern Abstract Impressionism’.
Modern: because fused glass is a relatively young medium,
and because it breaks the rules and pursues creative innova-
tion. Abstract: because it loosely references natural content,
reducing it to its minimal essence of form, and Impressionism,
because the artist employs color “to convey the mood of a
place at a particular moment in time”, in the tradition of Impres-
sionist Painters, such as Monet and