JENNIFER BUCKNER
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I’ve always loved the bright jewel tones of stained glass. One day, about 30 years ago, I saw an ad for an adult education class in glass at a local school where I had a weekend home in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. The tuition was $6.00 for one night a week for 10 weeks! I took the class and I’ve never looked back.
Since that class I’ve studied stained and fused glass techniques at Studio du Verre in Montreal, at Corning Museum of Glass, Oatka Glass School and Bullseye Glass in New York, at Leatherbarrow Glass Studio on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia and at Weisser Glass in Maryland. Each class and workshop gives me a new and challenging way in which to manipulate glass. Sometimes it’s simply cutting up a sheet of glass for a stained glass panel. Sometimes I fuse large amounts of glass together at high temperatures in a kiln, then cut the results up to rearrange them in a different pattern; other times I pull molten glass through the bottom of a kiln overhead to form twisted canes and murrine. I’ve learned to make representations of early human cave drawings and to create realistic bird feathers all from powdered glass. This is a life-long adventure and the magic never stops! My inspiration comes from the natural world and I portray flora and fauna in glass, frequently including objects from the woods and lake near my home in the Champlain Islands. From time to time I throw a little humour into the mix. I’m fascinated by the endless variety of sea shells and I love to add them to my work. 
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