Juanita Cheng McCarron
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My medium is glass – a liquid moving so slowly it offers the illusion of solidity. With it I try to capture the "there/not there"-ness of experience, and hold it for a moment in a form field of light and color.
I fuse and form glass in a kiln. I also carve and etch glass with a sand blaster.
Both processes are playful, alchemical. I never know what awaits when I open the kiln at the end of a cycle, because glass is alive with a will of its own. In the blast cabinet, I work almost blind as I carve, because the cabinet fills with clouds of black silicon dust.... Often, all I have to guide me is the ball of light created by the silicon abrasive’s contact with the glass. It is beautiful. Like a tigle (the spark of consciousness in Vajrayana Buddhism).
I often incorporate my sketches and drawings into both fused and carved glass. I call them 30-second sketches as a pneumonic to help me step aside and allow the image to step forward. Some of the images are quick and free, others are more deliberate. This allows me to combine free form organics with the play of glass, color and light.
I was blessed to study glass carving under the master glass artist Norm Dobbins of the Aliento Glass school. He was among the kindest teachers I’ve ever known. I studied fused glass with Edythe Lewis, an abstract artist who opened me up to color, form and the bold gesture. I began, first, carving in stone – tapping into the ancient urge to mark rock with indelible meaning. Stone became glass…. Glass became dharma….
My first career incarnation was as a lobbyist and fundraiser for international human and civil rights issues. This is where I encountered Vajrayana Buddhism. While working with Chinese dissidents from the Tiananmen Square movement, I took a meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He showed me how to offer a kata; I have never seen so much light in my life. Years later, root lama H.E. Garchen Rinpoche scooped me up like a long lost daughter. Lama Chenmo. I bow at the feet of the father….
I was born in Baltimore MD. My mother is Puerto Rican, my father Irish/German. Music and dance were my childhood cornerstones. Our summers were spent on my grandfather’s coffee farm in Puerto Rico where we’d pick breakfast, cool our feet in the cow pies of my uncle’s field, and spend endless hours lost in the jungle behind the house only to come home at dinner time (maybe) wearing lizards in our hair. They were easy to catch if you knew how not to scare them and would docily crawl all over you.
I live in New Mexico with my husband, son, five dogs, five cats and many koi. Now in my 50’s, I look back on the dream of this life I and can see that the Dakini has always been there. How can she not? She is the very atmosphere of art and inspiration.
I fuse and form glass in a kiln. I also carve and etch glass with a sand blaster.
Both processes are playful, alchemical. I never know what awaits when I open the kiln at the end of a cycle, because glass is alive with a will of its own. In the blast cabinet, I work almost blind as I carve, because the cabinet fills with clouds of black silicon dust.... Often, all I have to guide me is the ball of light created by the silicon abrasive’s contact with the glass. It is beautiful. Like a tigle (the spark of consciousness in Vajrayana Buddhism).
I often incorporate my sketches and drawings into both fused and carved glass. I call them 30-second sketches as a pneumonic to help me step aside and allow the image to step forward. Some of the images are quick and free, others are more deliberate. This allows me to combine free form organics with the play of glass, color and light.
I was blessed to study glass carving under the master glass artist Norm Dobbins of the Aliento Glass school. He was among the kindest teachers I’ve ever known. I studied fused glass with Edythe Lewis, an abstract artist who opened me up to color, form and the bold gesture. I began, first, carving in stone – tapping into the ancient urge to mark rock with indelible meaning. Stone became glass…. Glass became dharma….
My first career incarnation was as a lobbyist and fundraiser for international human and civil rights issues. This is where I encountered Vajrayana Buddhism. While working with Chinese dissidents from the Tiananmen Square movement, I took a meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He showed me how to offer a kata; I have never seen so much light in my life. Years later, root lama H.E. Garchen Rinpoche scooped me up like a long lost daughter. Lama Chenmo. I bow at the feet of the father….
I was born in Baltimore MD. My mother is Puerto Rican, my father Irish/German. Music and dance were my childhood cornerstones. Our summers were spent on my grandfather’s coffee farm in Puerto Rico where we’d pick breakfast, cool our feet in the cow pies of my uncle’s field, and spend endless hours lost in the jungle behind the house only to come home at dinner time (maybe) wearing lizards in our hair. They were easy to catch if you knew how not to scare them and would docily crawl all over you.
I live in New Mexico with my husband, son, five dogs, five cats and many koi. Now in my 50’s, I look back on the dream of this life I and can see that the Dakini has always been there. How can she not? She is the very atmosphere of art and inspiration.
Juanita Cheng McCarron * Dakini Glassworks * DakiniGlass@gmail.com
