Heart of Glass: In the Zone May 9, 2011

By Cyn Gagen

Last night on In the Zone with Roberta Birnbaum and me, our theme was the number one Billboard hit for this week in 1979, Heart of Glass by Blondie.  As always, it was fun to see the different ways in which Roberta and I interpreted the theme.  She even found an actual heart of glass!!! I simply went with the “glass” part of the theme and worked with some inspiration I’ve had.

This charming little piece is a silhouette painted on a glass dome.  I found it in Waterford, Ontario at a little flea market/antique mall there and as soon as I saw it, I just had to have it.  It also reminded me of the vacations I spent as a little girl in Fundy National Park, New Brunswick.  They had a free arts program every morning for all ages and my family usually started each day going there.  One of the pieces I made was done by placing a colouring book picture under a piece of glass to use as a pattern and then painting it on the glass with tempera paints.  I still have one of the glass paintings I did tucked away in a box somewhere.

I decided to do something along the same lines.  This piece still needs some tweaking but the inspiration for it came from a trip to Thunder Bay in northern Ontario.  As we drove through the night to get there, I remember seeing all the trees looking like black silhouettes and the northern lights looking like a pink, purple, and yellow glow above the trees.

For my other piece, I found a photograph of my city of London, Ontario’s skyline.  Again, I painted the skyline onto the glass and then created a sky behind that was reminiscent of a beautiful sunset.

To see the details and hints for how I created these and to check out Robi’s amazing creations as well, watch the playback of our show here:  http://www.linqto.com/PlaybackRoom.aspx?roomname=creativeedventures&name=SingleExplicit_2011_05_09_19_59_38_218