MEET
CLOVER
SEVY
No path is ever straight.
When I was nineteen, I decided college wasn’t working for me and got a job working at a pipe production shop in southern Oregon called Studio G around 1999. I worked there for almost a year then would move on to work at another production shop until 2003. The second shop belonged to Darby Holm. Working for him and his wife Lila was great. Their shop was a busy, positive place to be and learn. I’ve always been grateful for my time as a production worker, because once I left, I’ve been mostly self-taught in my creative pursuits. It’s one of my foundation puzzle pieces.
My original background was in painting so in 2003 I decided to go from fire to paint brushes. I hadn’t yet come to appreciate what glass meant in my life. Glass was shelved for the next eight years while I pursued a career in painting. My focus was the figure and portraiture. I loved painting but I would eventually realize (and admit to myself) I didn’t enjoy painting as a business.
I had never forgotten my glass roots. I decided I would return to glass but this time I was going to create beads made from borosilicate glass. Same glass, different subject. Bead production naturally lead to making jewelry with my beads. Wire wrap techniques, acid etching, forming and minor silversmithing. I have an overwhelming compulsion to make every aspect of my work. More than ever, I love learning new ways to create.
Since then I’ve thrown myself back into glass full tilt. This time around I am experimenting with a mixed media glass version of my work. I’m back at the torch but I’m also learning as much as I can about kiln casting with lost wax casting and pate de verre. I am very much in the middle of a exploration/ merger to combine these three glass types and techniques together to manifest my work. I also think of my varied past work as puzzle pieces that may look unrelated but are beginning to fit into each other. All the little pieces of me (professionally and personally) and what that means in my work. I’m excited to see where it goes. I am constantly inspired by all the parts of a person’s life story that makes a person who they are. My goal is to reflect that in my future work. Don’t be afraid to embrace change and see where it takes you. Like I said, no path is ever straight
The heart needs to expand and grow to thrive. With time, I began exploring small scale glass sculptures in my jewelry design. I created pendants of female torsos, hands, feet, and faces. I wanted to take my two-dimensional background in figurative painting and reflect it three dimensionally in my glass work.
After a big move from Colorado to Washington in 2018 I didn’t have a workshop for longer than planned. I took up ceramics to continue the sculptural ideas that were rolling around my head. The subject was still the female form. It was also at this time that I started researching glass kiln casting. I enjoy ceramics but, in my mind, I always looked at all of it as if it was glass. And that it would eventually be glass.
