I've loved colored glass for as long as I can remember. As a child I would visit churches to watch stained-glass windows and the way light moved across walls and floors, turning ordinary rooms into shifting mosaics of color. It felt almost magical that flat pieces of glass could make pictures seem to come alive and change with the sun.

In 2006 my husband gave me a weekly class at a local art center, and that small gift changed everything. I set up a basement workshop and began learning and creating in earnest. Working with my hands became a calming ritual that helped me stop overthinking and simply enjoy the act of making things.

I continued taking local classes and expanded my education by learning from studios and visiting artists across the New York Tri-State area. One artist introduced me to the idea of combining fused glass with traditional stained glass, opening a whole new world of possibilities. I bought my first kiln in 2007 and upgraded to a larger one in 2013 to handle more ambitious projects.

I love letting the glass speak for itself. Colors in glass retain their identity when heated, so by layering opaque and transparent pieces you can achieve endless variations in tone and depth. Creating useful and whimsical handmade glass items is both exciting and deeply rewarding, and I still find the process as captivating now as it was when I first saw those windows as a child.