TOOTS ZYNSKY

risd connection: BFA in Sculpture/Glass, 1973; visiting artist

talent: Filet de verre, the process of pulling glass threads from hot glass cane, has earned Zynsky international acclaim. Inspired by barbed wire, the focal element of her ‘70s “dust collector series,” she uses glass thread to give her work a quality never before achieved in glass.

getting there: Some of her fondest RISD memories are of midnight maneuvers in the Glass Shop exploding stacks of gratis glass (“How else could I learn about the nature of glass?”). A pioneer at both the famed Pilchuck Glass School and New York’s Experimental Glass Workshop, Zynsky was nurtured at RISD by the epic energies of glass genius Dale Chihuly MFA '68 CR, who often looked at her strangely, "but in the end always said, ‘Go ahead; find out!’”

breaking in: In the early ‘80s, Zynsky left for a two-week vacation to Europe and didn’t return for 16 years. Settling in Amsterdam, she joined a group of experimental glass artists in renovating a small factory. When a Dutch inventor wandered into her studio one day and “began grabbing everything in sight – an old drill, a hacksaw blade, a bicycle chain,” she collaborated with him in fabricating a machine that produces thousands of glass threads in a matter of hours – a process that “used to take days.”

making it: Today Zynsky’s work can be found in private collections and at major museums throughout the US, Europe and Japan. Her move to Paris in the early ‘90s with husband Ernesto Aparicio, a graphic designer, and daughter Julia was followed by a recent move back to the US – to Providence, where she renovated an East Side carriage house/studio. (She got the hint that “it might be time to head home” after receiving a midnight call from the Museum of Modern Art informing her they had bought one of her vessels and would like to commission another.)

average day: …hopping a flight to Seattle for an opening of her work… ordering a shipment of glass cane from Murano, the renowned glass center in Italy… reviewing Julia’s homework…

discoveries: “Glass thread is like a flat canvas – I paint with it. And it’s incredibly tactile – I sculpt with it. I do things with it I could never do with blown glass.”