Kyle Kellams: It’s the first Wednesday in December and it’s a red-letter Wednesday because back with us to go the other way, Becca Martin Brown: — Becca, welcome back to Ozarks at Large.
Becca Martin Brown: It’s nice to be back. We have a great guest about to be on our phone, Denise Lanuti, who you know well, just as I do — an amazing Fayetteville artist. And it’s time for her winter show. So we want to get everybody there to see her beautiful work.
Kellams: And Becca, we’ve reached Denise Lannutti and before we brought her on the air she told us that she is enjoying her time in front of the fire.
Denise Lanuti: Did you hear her sigh on the radio?
Martin Brown: I remember very clearly watching you in your studio out by Prairie Grove — make glass beads. It was not cold that day. I also remember that. How did you get started doing this?
Lanuti: Well, out of frustration. During the time when I was weaving beads, I just decided to start making beads and against my husband’s advice and wishes, I went ahead and bought a torch and set up a propane and oxygen setup and started melting glass and just experimenting and figuring it out in my house. I made my house shop as fireproof as possible because I was raised by firemen, so I was always completely terrified I was going to burn my house down. I fireproofed everything that I could, and then as soon as I possibly could, I built a small studio outside of the house so I could feel more comfortable working with a torch. So I just kept evolving.
And now I’ve been doing glass fusing and have gone into doing a lot of lighting. I still enjoy bead making and sitting at the torch, and I use a lot of things that I make at the torch in my fused glass pieces. Some of the glass components — like leaves, glass leaves that I’ll make or flower petals. My husband also helps working making some of my lampwork components that I use in the glass too, but I still like doing all of it.
Martin Brown: Explain what you’re making when you say fused glass.
Lanuti: Well, I buy sheets of colored glass from a manufacturer in Portland, Oregon, called Bullseye Glass. And it comes in this beautiful array of colors and opaque glass and translucent and transparent glass. And I’ll cut the glass with a glass cutter to shape and layer the glass and then put it in a kiln. And if I’m doing a full fuse, which makes multiple layers into one layer of glass, I’ll heat it up to about 1,500 degrees so it completely fuses and becomes one piece of glass.
One thing that’s really interesting, though, is glass wants to be a quarter of an inch thick, and most of the glass that I use is 3 millimeters and a half. About a quarter of an inch is about 6 millimeters. So if I layer two pieces of 3-millimeter glass, it won’t spread and it won’t shrink — it’ll remain at that thickness. But if I stack three layers of glass it’ll spread out and distort. And if I use just a single layer and heat it up to those temperatures it’ll shrink up to a quarter of an inch. It’s the weirdest thing.
Kellams: Denise, your pieces can be lamps, they can be dishes, but they can also be very small, like earrings or jewelry. Which is more difficult to manipulate — the larger pieces or the smaller ones?
Lanuti: I guess the smaller ones are easier to manipulate and the larger pieces. I don’t have that much trouble with breakage or cracking anymore, but it’s always riskier when you’re working with a bigger piece for fear of — you know — something going wrong either getting too hot or cooling too fast. Because the reason you use a kiln is not only to make the glass adhere to itself and other layers of glass, but there’s a process called annealing where the glass cools very, very slowly so that the inside of that piece, as well as the outside of the glass, cools at the same temperature to avoid stress in the glass, which causes breakage. I don’t know if it’s really harder, it’s just more risky actually too because the glass is really expensive. It’s manufactured in Portland, and it’s relatively new. I think they just started making glass that fuses to itself in the 1970s. Pretty new thing, actually.
And our band Mood Swing, which includes Kelly Mulholland and Steve Baskin and Keith Grimwood and Jim Jernigan and my husband Rich plays. We’re playing on Sunday at 2 o’clock at the show.
Kyle Kellams: Oh wow.
Martin Brown: So tell everybody the show hours and how to find your house.
Lanuti: It’s at 623 East Rock St., which is just up the hill past the Confederate cemetery. The numbers are not sequential on this road, so people get confused. Just keep going and you’ll see my big fence gardens in the front. The hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and from 12 p.m. until 4 p.m. on Sunday.
Kellams: Denise, thank you so much for your time.
Lanuti: Thank you and thank you for the interview, I appreciate it.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
