Some years ago, Suzanne Kindland dreamed she was suspended in a pillar of fire. By turns in the flame and of it, she danced to its rhythms.

 

Shortly after that, she began an intense search for her medium. She raced from her office job to chorus practice, to theater rehearsals, to volunteer work with a local arts association. Then it was on to Portland to see a friend who was sculpting marble. She wondered what it would be like to be more intensely involved with the arts, to not simply watch art being made, but to make her own.

 

"In the way that soft thoughts have of becoming solid, life presented me with a chance to do just that: to explore form, to learn color, to play with fire in a way that is anything but peripheral.

 

Dancing in the flames, I learn the ways of glass.

 

Coaxing rather than forcing, with the glass as my partner, we bring forth objects reminiscent more of water than of fire: cool, smooth forms that reflect light as a pond does, sculptures that bend the light as a ripple does, quiet creations that transmit the light as does the stillest pool."