Glass artist Peggy King from Columbia creates many different items. Each is stunning in its own way. Read about her journey into the creation of art from glass and her commitment to Best of Missouri Hands.
“I can’t draw, so I assumed I wasn’t an artist,” says Peggy King, a member of Best of Missouri Hands and indeed an artist who lives in Columbia.
But creativity will find a way. Peggy had enjoyed doing cross-stitch, but she worked for a utility company. When she turned 50 in 2005, as a birthday present to herself, she saw a class in an adult education brochure for making glass beads or lampworking.“I didn’t know such a thing as glass jewelry existed. But I was mesmerized by glass, melting it, and shaping it.”
It wasn’t easy. At first, Peggy thought she wouldn’t have the patience for working with glass. She couldn’t make the lampworked glass do what her mind wanted. But then she went back and took a one-on-one course for fusing glass with Suzy Fiegel at Village Glass and bought a kiln for herself that same day. She also later took classes at Third Degree Glass Factory in St. Louis.
“I never turned back. Glass is tactile, touchy feely, and I was mesmerized by it. There’s just something about melting glass, whether it’s melting the glass, scoring the glass on a sheet, taking the rod or other forms of glass and fashioning it into something else..”
Peggy got more kilns, bigger kilns, and then learned to work with murrini, an Italian term for colored patterns made in a long rod of glass, revealed when the rod is cut into cross-sections.
Her work was noticed. A gallery called Painted Daisy in Eureka, now closed, carried her work. “Del Glenn was so encouraging, and she turned me onto Best of Missouri Hands. That organization is so good for so many members. That’s when I learned I really was an artist,” Peggy says.
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“I really enjoyed the positive reinforcement and encouragement from other artists and just talking about art. It was nice to get confirmation from the rest of the membership, to be accepted, both me and my work. She applied for and became a juried artist in BOMH.
And then she began doing art shows. It was also nice to see her work appreciated by the art-buying public. She describes two sisters who always sought out her and her work at art shows and became collectors of Peggy’s work. “It just feels so good—to know something I created gave others pleasure. It’s kind of weird because I’m an introvert, but I really liked doing shows.”
She enjoys making fused glass art pieces and making plates and bowls that people use more for display than utility. “But my love right now is the murrini. You zone out. You stand these little pieces of glass up on a base and just get lost in it. It’s my favorite thing to do.”
Peggy’s glasswork often incorporates dichroic glass, which is glass produced by applying layers of metal oxide vapors in a vacuum chamber. This results in glass shifting colors in different light.
Peggy no longer does art shows, but she gives a lot of time to Best of Missouri Hands and encourages more art education, especially for 3D art, in schools. She wants children to discover their inner artist at a much younger age than she did.
See Peggy’s work at Snowflakeglass.com, in Bluestem in Columbia, St. Charles Artists on Main Street, and Missouri Life Mercantile in Rocheport or at MissouriLife.com/shop.
Read about more Missouri Life Mercantile artists here and here.
