Karen Ichino

I am a graduate of Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary, Alberta where I completed a four-year program in Communication Arts and received Nelson McDonald Design Scholarship. I developed a love for the human form and the marriage of curving, flowing organic shapes to the stability of the geometric form. During college and after graduating, I worked in the advertising industry for a number of years as a freelance fashion illustrator, a technical artist, an advertising artist and an art director.
I returned to university and graduated from the University of Lethbridge with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Education with Great Distinction, majoring in the fine arts. During this time I focused on fine detail and muted colors in watercolors and oils, and the fine arts.
Since graduating, I taught art at junior and senior high schools, acquired my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design from Alberta College of Art and Design, taught some community level art courses, and am now retired from formal teaching.
I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the art of stained glass in 1992 by a second generation glass artisan, Linda Maxwell who was trained by her father who trained in Europe. It immediately held a special appeal because of the absolute quality of light that is transformed through this medium. I am free to paint with light. I began with traditional 2-d design in glass, but shifted to creating original pieces in sculptural form. It parallels my interest in traditional Japanese and original paper sculpture, which embodies many of the same concepts and media characteristics. When layering glass to create 3-d effects, I try to maintain the fluidity and transparency of the medium, yet balance the solidity of the form with the qualities of the glass. In 1998 I began working with 'hot glass', creating one-of-a-kind beads individually over an open flame torch. Unlike stained glass which is rigid in nature, hot glass is “alive” as the molten glass takes on a life of its own.
I became more active in exhibiting and selling my work and sold to private and public collections in Canada. With the use of the Internet and email, I sell work online in Canada and the United States. I also have done original designs for large custom work for churches. In collaboration with a Linda Maxwell (she builds), I designed, painted and airbrushed large scale church windows in southern Alberta.
After the surgery for osteoarthritis in my shoulder, I find that it has slowed me down and I spend more time on 2 dimensional work but still do some stained glass.

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