All Photos By Gail

Glass artist Toots Zynsky (b. 1951) has taken the idea of the Venetian latticini (glass threads used for decorative effect) to its logical extreme. She had a machine developed to draw glass threads to her own specifications in order to use them as a painter uses tubes of color.

By manipulating layers of fused glass threads in the fire itself, she creates vessels — such as the Tierra del Fuego bowl (1989) — with three dimensional “brushstrokes” of hot glass.

Photographed in The Newark Museum of Art.