News

GLANC visits Latchezar Boyadjiev and Penelope Comfort Starr

GLANC members spent a terrific May Saturday in beautiful Marin County, north of San Francisco, visiting two artists. Our first stop was to the new home and studio of Latchezar Boyedjiev. He has converted an old lighting factory to a state of the art casting/coldworking facility. For years he designed the forms and created the plaster positives which he then transported to the Czech Republic to be cast into glass.

With this new facility he is able to complete the entire process himself, using primarily a non-lead crystal, which still retains the optical qualities but lessens the weight and environmental impact. The result is stunning sensual and joyful work in rich clear colors that allow light to define the shapes.

Latchezar Boyedjiev

We then visited the home/studio of Penelope Comfort Starr. Her work focuses on the discards of history. She is committed to post-consumer materials, creating castings with a mix of recycled glasses.

An award winning series depicts shreds of World War 1 letters sent to family members, using a transfer process to faithfully recreate the handwriting in the glass casting. Her current series is “industrial fossils”, glass installations made by casting discarded factory parts and gears from shuttered New England factories. The resulting pieces could almost be Precambrian fossils.

Penelope Comfort Starr

While both artists use the casting process, each has an intensely personal vision. We were delighted that our favorite material can produce such a range of artful results.

[Susan Longini]