Debbie Harary
It’s not a simple art. Holliston glass artist Debbie Harary, whose studio is filled with grinders, cutters, kilns of all sizes and glass, colored glass in the form of crushed glass and stringers to rods and large sheets, will be the first to tell you it’s not easy.
“I make kiln-formed glass,” says Harary, who buys special glass, with a coefficient of expansion (COE) of 90 solely from one company, Bullseye Glass Company. Mixing different COE, she says, can literally shatter a creation she’s making.
“It’s such a hard medium to work in—it bites you when you screw up,” laughs the artist. “If you don’t pay attention to the science of it and what the molecules do, if you’re not careful, something you have been working on for months can blow up and shatter.” Harary says this elicits a great respect for a medium that can literally have sharp edges.
“You set up the work in room temperature, in a solid state,” she explains, “arranging and manipulating the glass with various techniques. Then, you heat the glass accordingly to what you’re trying to design. It’s like a recipe. There’s a process temperature where the glass becomes fluid and fuses together, and depending on the temperature of the glass, you get different effects.”
The art is not only in the vision of the finished product, but in understanding the chemical properties of the material Harary uses.
“Being a glass artist, you have to be very aware of the physical aspects of how glass will perform with heat and cold as well as the design sense. It’s physical and artistic,” says the artist, who started working with stained glass as a hobby when she was a textile designer in Manhattan in the 1970s. In fact, some of her stained glass has adorned a Northeastern University building at 234 Commonwealth Avenue since 1986, three years after she moved to this area, where she and her husband would raise two daughters.
In about 2007, Harary discovered kiln-formed glass at the Worcester Center for Craft, taking the class over and over to sharpen her skill. “(The instructor) really covered many different techniques, and the more you learn, the more you advance. Learning techniques is not easy.” Thus, Harary became involved in the very small community of kiln-formed glass artists.
“Only a few thousand people across the world do it, so people know each other. It’s close knit. When you take classes with well-known glass artists, they remember you. It’s just a cycle,” says the artist.
In 2011, Harary, who ran a home daycare for 18 years, gave up that profession to focus on her art.
“I’m drawn to the colors and the transparency and the way it plays with light,” says Harary. Transparent colors can be changed by layering, and light flows through it, bouncing off and changes according to the time of day you’re looking at it, she says. “I love the purity of its colors – rich, intense, a joy to look at, and I love playing with those colors, layering them and making different combinations.”
Harary says she likes to challenge herself to come out of her comfort zone and come up with “something I haven’t done before, to make it fresh and exciting, keep it interesting.” She has done custom work on commission as well as gallery shows at various levels. In a gallery in Key West, she says, she sells little night lights, while in New York City, one client buys Christmas tree ornaments. Harary says often sells her work at wholesale shows.
“If someone wants my work, I’ll make whatever they want. I make jewelry, as well as table art and wall art,” says Harary, who’s sold her work internationally. Lately, Harary has been making a series of wind chimes, and she’s dabbling in mosaic art working with Carol Krentzman, of Natick.
Harary is a member of the Clever Hand Gallery in Wellesley, an artisan cooperative, and she formerly belonged to Sign of the Dove, in Chestnut Hill, before it disbanded. She sells her art at the Cambridge Art Cooperative in Harvard Square, as well as at a Judaica store in Brookline. Each year she is also involved in the Natick Open Studios, which this month will take place on October 21 and 22. Over 65 artists will show their work at various locations in Natick at the free event (www.natickartistsopenstudios.org), and Harary’s work will be shown at the Morse Institute Library in Natick Square.
If you’d like to view Debbie Harary’s work online, you can visit her website at www.debbieharary.com.
Issue Date:
October, 2017
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