“I find that glass really is a medium that the majority of people don’t understand,” said Oklahoma City-based artist Suzanne Mears. “They don’t know how it is created, what you use to create it, or what kind of equipment you need to produce it. The basic materials that go into it are very expensive, so you end up with a product that is going to cost a lot of money. People don’t know how it’s made, but they know it costs a lot of money. And it’s glass, so it will break.”
Mears stood looking at a large glass piece affixed above an outdoor fireplace in her backyard. It has sat in that exact spot for roughly 15 years, unweathered by Oklahoma’s heat, wind, ice, and recent snowstorm.
The piece, defined by bright greens on its left, deep blues on its right, and a myriad of colorful lines and dots all over, depicts a horizon. It’s turned vertically to fit onto the fireplace’s narrow brick chimney, even though the more orthodox viewer might prefer it horizontally, so that the glass ocean lies atop the textured hills. But, regardless of orientation, the spontaneity of the colors coupled with the fragility of the glass makes the large work captivating.
For the past 25 years, Mears has perfected the complicated techniques required to create kiln glass work. Yet, even in this challenging medium, her process is anything but formulaic.
“Artists that work in glass are often very structured. They measure everything. They’re very precise in how they cut it out and how they put it together. I’m more of a slinger, in all aspects,” said Mears, explaining her open-minded and often messy approach to glassmaking. Her pieces are birthed out of creative intuition, as opposed to a meticulous harnessing of an elusive medium. As a result, the final products are often unpredictable. “I like the creativity, the freedom. To me, that’s fun, because there’s always a mystery about it.”
It is this curiosity that characterizes the entire breadth of Mears’s current work, which includes both glasswork and painting.
Mears’s upcoming show, “Sailing Into Spring,” will open on Mar. 5 at Oklahoma City’s Howell Gallery, and it will feature her most recent body of work. The show will also be the first time Mears showcases a collection of paintings in 25 years.
The paintings, which are the defining feature of the show, are floral themed. Why? That just happened to be what Mears is working on at this period of her life.
“Why do I use color? Why am I contemporary? Why am I spontaneous? Why do I sling paint?” Mears asked. “I’m rather fearless. I don’t really accept defeat. I always think that if you fail, there’s another way. And, you better explore some other opportunities so you can take that failure, whatever it is, and make it into something that it wouldn’t have been otherwise.”
It is this fearlessness that has pushed her to explore different mediums. Before working primarily with glass, Mears worked with clay. Before that, she was trained as a painter. Her ability to hop between mediums has cultivated and sustained her creative practice, even in moments of artistic defeat. “If I’m painting and the paintings aren’t going well––maybe the paint runs together and it all turns to muck––and I’m not focusing, I’m not concentrating, I’m not committed, then I just stop and I move into working with glass,” Mears said. “I don’t want to get in a box. I want to be free to grow.”
Even in periods where one medium or subject feels eternally invigorating, Mears’s openness to failure and commitment to growth remains abundant. Many of the paintings featured in “Sailing Into Spring” were made using acrylic, oil, or ink and then coated in resin.
“It’s a little forgiving,” she said, turning her attention to a painting of a pear hanging on her studio wall. Looking at the painting, she said, “I don’t like this. To me, it isn’t correct. So, I will go back in and I will add more alcohol ink, more paint. I will change it, and then I will add another coat of resin. You can keep doing that until you finally get what you want.”
This process often gives her paintings more literal depth, allowing viewers to glimpse at the layers of paint and time that comprise the piece.
While Mears has been an artist her entire life, she didn’t begin doing art full time until later in her life. Before moving back to Oklahoma City, Mears spent decades traveling: from visits to Nepal, China, and Greece to more extended stays in San Francisco and Aspen.
“I took a tanker from Athens to Crete just for fun. I had seven suitcases or something like that, and I booked the wrong end of the island––I had to drive four hours to get to my hotel. And the taxi driver, we had a language barrier. He’s trying to find [the hotel], but he had never been to the other end of the island before,” described Mears, laughing. “Would I do that today? No, I would not.”
These adventures gave color to much of the work that she produced after. “I always thought that I was an empty canvas, that I really didn’t have enough background to be a really, really creative artist, the way I wanted to be, that that wouldn’t happen to me until I was really much older,” Mears reflected.
Now firmly stationed in Oklahoma City, Mears works in the art studio in her backyard seven days a week, a notably different lifestyle than her retired peers. “It worked out well that I did all that traveling when I was fairly young, in the middle of my life,” she said. “Now, I don’t travel at all. I just work full time, and I love every bit of it.”
Much like pursuing a creative profession, working with glass requires a level of determination, but also flexibility. Perhaps a show centered around springtime, a season characterized by playful rebirth and blooming amidst frost, is apt for an artist inspired by challenge, led by curiosity, and invigorated by the freedom of creative conception.
Mears lifted the lid to her largest kiln, revealing a vast, circular cresting wave, partially covered in fiber paper. This piece was made to replace a prior glass wave that cracked during firing. The broken wave now stood nobly in Mears’s kitchen.
In the new wave’s moment of birth, Mears peeled away its protective paper and revealed its body, which was characterized by a deep, translucent purple. “I don’t know where that purple came from,” said Mears, inquisitively. “I put in [iridescent] blue glass, and maybe it turned purple in the fire.” She placed the large piece back down. “That’s going to be fun, I think.”
This article appears in Spring Break Splash.