Featured Glass Artist: Miriam Di Fiore

Miriam Di Fiore of Miriam Di Fiore Art Glass Studio, has been a long time customer and partner of Ed Hoy’s, often sharing her extensive glass skills with our customers in the classroom and at our special events.

Artist Bio

IN THE GLASS FOREST

"When I was a child, I lived in a little city near the Atlantic Ocean in Argentina. A big pine forest was around the town, protecting it from the wind and anchoring the sand dunes.
A big part of my childhood passed among those trees. So, the forest has for me a deep and symbolic meaning. From the time of my first memories, I loved to paint and draw trees. Since I have discovered photography, I have taken thousands of images of the forest. There is no other environment where I can feel as comfortable as among the trees.

When I am in front of a millennial olive or I met and old strong oak, I think about what an incredible life it has had, passing through the winters and the summers, year after year, always growing up, always blooming and giving shadow and protection to thousands of other creatures, surviving things that would kill me in a very short time.

So what I try to do with my work is not an “interpretation” of the wood, but rather a simple, respectful  translation in glass of  a little part of our wonderful world where I have been some time in the company of trees.

I just want to tell you how that place was and how I felt there. In that way that I can share at least a part of that magic and beautiful moment that makes me feel happy to be alive. These are my works: a sort of illusion of eternity. Virtual places for trying to preserve what’s constantly changing, what my eyes see in fragments of time.

In framing my work, I connect my forest landscapes with found objects: wooden items which are no longer in use, and I give them a sort of “second opportunity”. Glass and Wood are deeply bonded between themselves. Wood, Fire, Glass. Glass could be almost eternal, but it takes only a minimal act of violence (accidental or voluntary) to destroy it. It takes only a moment of distraction to loose the piece, as happens with the trees, and with life.

The tree from which the wood came doesn’t exist anymore, but the life it led moves me still. Fragile, beloved places, in continuing transformation, everlasting but, in danger at the same time. Sacrificial items, belonging to killed trees, lost and unknown pieces of woods.

My works sometimes are a votive offering, reliquaries where I save memories. At other times they are “reconciliation objects”, things through which I want apologize for humanity to nature because we have hurt her, and we use her, sometimes without enough respect. Nature remains the victim of our emotions, illusions, hopes and the incredible destroying power of our indifference.

Glass is an emotional material, without borders, that can change with the source of the light or the point of view, like our minds, like our hearts."

- Miriam Di Fiore

See more of Miriam's work in her online photogallery.