Beryl Brenner

I think producing art challenged me in ways that nothing else could. It fed all my creative instincts as well as my intellectual curiosity. I started studying art as a little girl when my mother sent me for art lessons.  I loved to go to art museums with my father who encouraged me.
Ultimately, I went on to receive my BA in Fine Arts and my MA in Art Ed. from Brooklyn College in NYC. While training to be a professional artist, I was blessed to have the opportunity to experiment with numerous materials and techniques. This education empowers me until today to decide when I feel that certain materials will work better for a particular concept or series. In those instances I like to experiment and diversify. However, these days my primary media is either fused glass or mixed media. I love the stunning look of glass. It has a dramatic "wow" factor that forces the viewer to look at it. I feel that this media gives me a great deal of freedom and I love the experimentation that it affords me.

Glass presents the artist with a wonderfully spectacular material to work with. It is a cold, hard material that can be melted and made to be hot and soft. It can be opaque or translucent. Works made in glass can be functional or they can be art or they can be both simultaneously. Glass that hangs in a window can look one way in the morning sunlight and a completely different way when sunset arrives. Once an artist discovers the pleasures of working with glass they inevitably fall in love with its look and its unique properties.