09 Jun Ones to Watch: Suzanne Wallace Mears

There are no rules in Suzanne Wallace Mears’ world. She comes at her glass work from a place of pure joy and abandon. Each bowl, mask and abstract sculpture is an act of bravery. Not only does she approach her glass from a painter’s perspective, but from a place of achievement — she is not afraid to fail.

“I’m very interested in the mystery,” she says. “When I first started working with glass I carried forth my ceramic technical applications. I bought all this glass I loved and put it together and I expected a masterpiece. When I opened the kiln it had blown up all over the inside of it.”

But she wasn’t discouraged. She went to classes and workshops, listened to her teachers. And she kept coming back to the malleability of the medium and her sense of color, which is barely contained in her pieces. “Now I have enough technical skill to apply it to pieces I’d like to do,” she says. “It allows me to play with the compositional elements. It’s a wonderful medium to work with and I love the freedom. I’m not one to cut pieces precisely to go into a geometrical pattern. I love life and I’m not afraid to try something new. I lose some pieces, but it doesn’t affect my ability to go forward. There’s no end to what I can do. I’m pushing the envelope.”

She is represented by Pippin Contemporary in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Howell Gallery in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Joseph Gierek Fine Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and G Gallery & Glass in Guthrie, Oklahoma.