Once an artist, always an artist.
When Clintonville resident Maria Guarracino found her creative side taking a back seat to her professional career, she knew she had to find a new outlet for her imagination.
“I used to draw and paint in college, but when I started working, I stopped doing highly creative and hands-on stuff,” Guarracino says. “I’ve always had an interest in glass, so my friend and I both decided to take a class (on glass-making). I picked bead-making at Glass Axis in Grandview. After one class, I knew this is what I wanted to do.”
Over the past three years, Guarracino has bought a home kiln for cooking glass and successfully transformed her basement into a jewelry building studio – decorated with paintings from her biggest inspiration, Mark Rothko, and a TV for downtime, and visited frequently by her wandering cat, Izzy, who provides companionship while the pieces wait to be completed.
Under the name Guarracino Photography and Glass, the artist recently started selling her works at M
ary B’s in German Village, but that’s not why she continues to create.
“The cool part of it is, whenever I go out with friends, almost always there is someone wearing something I made,” says Guarracino, who also works as the senior graphic designer at inVentiv Health. “I love my job, but this is gratifying in a different way. People at work wear my stuff and it’s just so cool seeing your stuff in pictures. Any money I make, I invest back into better stuff.”
Guarracino crafted a collection of purple-themed pieces, and a friend of hers who had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer took a strong liking to the creative line.
“Purple is their color,” she says. “And (my friend) wore it to all the walks and events for pancreatic cancer. She was beaming the whole time, and I got chills because she was so happy about this stupid piece of glass. She has, however, since passed.”
Glass-making and crafting aren’t the most difficult media, says Guarracino, but adding new elements can rejuvenate the art form.
“If you take baking soda, wet it and cook it with the glass, it makes bubbles,” she says. “It’s completely hard to control, you never know what you’ll get, but sometimes it is incredibly great.”
Guarracino has found that glass ha
s a mind of its own and tends to shape itself.
“The funky thing about glass is that it likes to be a certain height or thickness,” she says. “If you stack 20 pieces of glass, it will flatten itself to become that thickness. It’s a great property. I put a piece in at night, so when I wake up, it’s like Christmas morning. You never know exactly how it will turn out.”
The addition of organic matter, such as leaves and small plants, into the mix makes the craft even more interesting. Because of the high temperatures, the plants burn away, leaving behind a ghost image.
With high temperatures comes a risk of injury, but Guarracino hasn’t seen much danger in the heat, especially when she compares it to the damage she has sustained from loose glass remnants.
“A lot of times, I forget what I’m doing,” she says. “I’m not really precautionary. I mean, if I’m building a fire and it needs a log, I’m just going to move the log without gloves. I’ll brush broken glass on to the floor, and I tend to get cut sometimes.”
The artist primarily makes jewelry, including necklaces and rings, but she has recently delved into belt buckles.
“These pieces have some weight to them,” she says. “I’ve only had one person break a piece and it was on ceramic tile. I’ve thrown them straight on the floor and haven’t seen one break.”
Besides Mary B’s, Guarracino takes custom orders through Etsy, at www.etsy.com/shop/GuarracinoGlass and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/GuarracinoGlass. She also accepts orders via email at design13.mg@gmail.com.
Stephan Reed is an editorial associate. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
