From Carly Wickell,
Your Guide to Jewelry / Accessories.
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Meet Faith Davis Ferris, a second generation glass artist who literally grew up in a glass studio. Her sculptural lampwork beads are amazingly detailed, with a natural fluidity that makes you think they can move on their own any time they wish.

Carly: How long have you been interested in glass?

Faith: I'm in the very unique position, particularly in the US, of being the daughter of a master glassblower. I chose to apprentice with my father, ultimately becoming a full time studio artist. David Davis (my father) specialized in scientific glassblowing professionally and pursued artistic glasswork personally, finding great joy in creating art from glass. For him, being at the torch was never 'work.' It was, and is, a lifelong passion.

I happily confess that I was drawn to the siren song of glass as a child, surrounded by torches, annealing kilns, the magic of the dancing flames, and the fluidity and magic of a material that could be solid, liquid, then solid again! I was fascinated with this art that seemed to have no limits and allowed the ability to form 3D creations that danced with light. From the beginning, I was hooked.

Carly: So when did glass beads become a part of your work?

Faith: While working glass has been part of my life for many years, I began creating wearable art glass beads for my own designs, and eventually for other jewelry designers, eight or nine years ago. My passion for creating sculptural lampwork beads began to dominate my creative process in beads two or three years ago.

Carly: Do you begin making a bead with a specific design in mind, or do you go where the shapes that take form lead you?

Faith: That's the amazing thing, for me anyway, about working glass; I find every session behind the torch is unique in that respect. There are certainly many days that I have a very specific creative concept in mind, dragons or mermaids or perhaps a bead request from one of my jewelry designers or other customers, so the studio work that day will flow (literally!) to that specific outcome. There are also days--and I try to block off at least one day every week--that I have no goal whatsoever in mind. I let the time at the torch evolve by following whims, previous concept ideas that have come to mind but had to wait till I had time to develop them.

Carly: Well then, what's the most fun?

Faith: It sounds odd I suspect unless you have a passion for working the material, but the days I find MOST interesting are the ones that do an 'opposite morph,' because they tend to produce some of my most creative and interesting pieces... let me explain a bit.... It often happens that I'll head to the studio, coffee in hand, to create, lets say frogs. But the first frog resists, the second looks like road kill and it's clear that the glass is trying to talk, trying to be something else that day.

I do a fair amount of discretionary production work, so I'm very comfortable with creating on demand, so it's not technical block, it's truly that the glass seems determined to become something else. When I relent and 'listen' to the flow of the glass, relinquishing design control, I invariably create what are, to me at least, my best works. Many of my oldest series of beads began this way.

Conversely, on a day of total abandon where I can do anything at all, I am often drawn into deep detail on one specific bead design or style detail - perhaps intricate latticino for mermaid hair, and I become immersed in that one effort. While not necessarily intending to, I will spend the entire day on one specific style of bead or detail for that bead style that will enhance it definitively.

Carly: Do you do other types of glass art?

Faith: Amazingly, torchwork has so many 'subcategorizes' or 'blossoms' that I've yet to wander too far afield into other areas of working glass. With torches, you can work rods of glass that are so large in diameter they require rollers for support or stringers of glass so thin they are barely visible. In that wide working range I've the option of creating: beads, both geometric and sculptural, vessels, blown glass, icicle ornaments, free form sculptural art pieces--there's literally no end. So there's an impressive array of options at the torch.

Fusing and furnace work are things I've spent time associated with and may revisit, but my heart will always belong to the song of the torch.

Photo Gallery of Faith's Work

Read Faith's tips for buying lampwork beads.

Page 2, How To Get Inspired