These three objects have been finished since summer but I have not had a chance to shoot them until recently when they were returned from an exhibition in Beaverton Town Hall. The first four images are of a piece titled "late bounty" which has been silvered on the inside to turn the lenses into fun house mirrors. Optically this piece isn't as engaging as those with greater transparency, but the mirrored surface duplicates the painted exterior.

The next six photographs are of "harvest", and the last set are of a piece titled "early frost". These blown glass forms are painted and fired several times integrating the use of leaves and grasses in an expanding vocabulary of methods and techniques. Some of the detail shots begin to render the depth provided by the lenses on the inside of these forms, but I struggle to capture the details that are seen in person which are most severely activated by the movement of the viewer. These are fun.

Matthew David Stewart

Here are some images of the most recent piece in this new body of blown glass orbs with leaf forms painted, printed and stained on the outside. I am so very happy making this work. I look forward to making more of these objects, to becoming more familiar with these processes, and exploring new ideas as well.

-Matthew David Stewart

After doing some tests and artist studies with leaves I jumped into this piece with both feet. There is a layer of enamel leaves, some drawn pen outlines and some amber silver stain leaves. I am exceedingly happy with this piece and with each of the steps of each of the many processes needed to achieve this whole object. The most important goal in developing this body of work has been to minimize or eliminate negative thoughts and emotions from the time spent creating the work. Several of the previous prototypes were dismissed or steps abandoned due to their negative affect on my peace of mind. This piece was a pure joy to make from the initial blowing and hot glass manipulation to the final moments of signing the bottom. I love blowing glass and this work gives me good cause to slow down and spend more time investing myself in the object in a personal way. To harvest the organic material, the oak leaves, it is necessary that I climb a tree. It should go without saying that that is a great thing. If it wasn't for my gardening painter friend, Gina Bonner, I think I would still be floundering with the subject matter for the painting portion of this work so I am grateful to her for her input and direction. The organic nature of paint applications is freeing and allows me and the viewer to ignore the notion of mistaken smudges or accidental touches. This work is fun and profoundly simple yet I find that I see new and increasingly complex interactions each time I explore this golden orb. The lenses provide minification and distortion which I feel add necessary depth to the imagery.

-Matthew David Stewart

Here is an image of a piece of glass that I was asked to paint by a friend of mine to be auctioned off as a fund raiser. The due date for this project jumped forward by several weeks and I was not able to apply as much imagery as I would have liked.  The central glass sphere was blown by my friend, Andy Paiko, and has six hollow transparent balls made from color which I mixed several years ago at Penland School of Crafts. cold fused to its surface along with some transparent blue enamel which I fired on.  I filled it with water to increase its optical intensity and capped it with a solid clear ball.  The object weighs right at eighty pounds and is difficult to move.  The space in which this photograph was shot had limited lighting options so unfortunately this flat image is the best one I was able to take of this project.   The title of this piece is "valence memory"

-Matthew Stewart

Here is an image of a two dimensional painting, approximately two by three feet, I recently finished of Fritz Dreisbach gathering honey from a giant pot surrounded by the amorphous, non-crystalline molecular structure of soda lime glass.  Honey is one of the analogies that students seem to understand when describing the consistency of hot glass; its fluid nature.  In addition to being one of the founding fathers of the American Art Glass Movement, Fritz is a great teacher and a real prince in and out of the glass blowing studio.  He also does love honey.  This tribute to him is the first glass painting that I have made and been satisfied with.  

-Matthew Stewart

These vessel forms are like those below in that they have lenses applied to the inside of them while they are hot, instead of grinding facets on the outside or adding hot bits to the outside.  By adding the bits to the inside and shaping them appropriately I am able to achieve the optical effects I am looking for without compromising the exterior spherical form.  On these two spheres I have painted designs on the outside with reusche fire on enamel paints.  I continue to explore the imagery necessary for this work to really come to life.  For me this work is comprised of processes which are each enjoyable and fun.  I have reached the conclusion that if I am going to be a glass artist for the rest of my life that I should resist making work that I find to be stress inducing, if I can.  For example I really enjoy making goblets, but at the end of the day I am exhausted from the stress of trying to make everything so thin and straight.  When I am done painting I usually feel sort of recharged and looking forward to the next steps in the piece.  These spheres take about two hours to make in the hot shop and I really enjoy the pace that this work imposes.  I have much more to say on this new work, and will as I post more pictures.  

-Matthew Stewart 

This is an image of a painting I did ofPaolo Veronese's "the annunciation".  As you can see the Mary, on the right, is being told by the angel Gabriel, hovering left, that she will conceive and give birth to the son of God.  The story of this particular painting is what has made it so intriguing to me.  In the mid sixteenth century, Paolo Veronese painted this version of the Annunciation and in it he included a glass vase on the rail near Mary.  This vase had not been made by any of the glass makers at the time or before, he sort of invented it.  Fast forward to the early twentieth centrury and a young Italian artist, designer and glass maker named Vittorio Zecchin, saw the vase in the painting which still hangs in the Museum in Venice and started making them.  The story differs depending on who you talk to about it.  Some say that Zecchin only popularized the form, others say he brought to life the design of a man who had been dead for over three hundred years.  The vase itself is a stunning blown glass form and a technically challenging exercise due mainly to its design's simplicity.  I fired this piece many many times to achieve this many different colors.  Some of the shading I am really pleased with, some of the other illusions are less convincing.  I am very much enjoying the new [to me] discipline of glass painting.

-Matthew Stewart

These images are of a mid process piece of the most recent generation of the new work I have been developing since the summer. At the advice of Raphael Schnepf I have started using an airbrush to apply the glass enamels to achieve a more even field. The lenses inside the form distort, minify, and repeat the pattern on the outside of itself. More layers of enamel will be applied to this blown glass form and more images will be added as they are available. These are the first images seen of this new work which show the entire piece; this is a reflection of my satisfaction with the whole of this particular object thus far.

- Matthew Stewart

These are images of the Holy Water Font that I made in memory of my dad, David Ewing Stewart Jr, which was dedicated on March 3, 2009 in the chapel at Still Hopes Episcopal retirement community where he was the priest in Columbia South Carolina. He had wanted to find and install a font in the sanctuary and it therefore seemed an appropriate tribute. The font itself is a large opaline blown glass bowl resting inside the stained and finished, octagonal walnut base. Bishop Dorsey Henderson and Cannon George Chassey performed the dedication in an evening vespers service.

-Matthew Stewart