Flameworked Glass by Timothy Lindemann

Having spent much of his childhood exploring the coastal mountains of Santa Barbara and observing the dynamic wildlife of Southern California, Timothy Lindemann has gained a love and appreciation for the natural world.

Tim has experimented with many mediums including: stone sculpting, airbrushing, pen and ink, ceramics, jewelry, computer graphics, and mixed media sculpture. Although Tim loved and excelled at most of these art forms he found most art classes constricting. In 1996 he graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a bachelors degree in biology. Halfway through his senior year he bought a basic lampworking setup, which consisted of a torch, some glass, and a small annealer. By the time he graduated he was passionately consumed with this fascinating new medium. For the next five years he developed his own lampworking techniques by observing the work of other lampworkers and he reinvested most of his income into purchasing equipment and creating his own studio. In the spring of 2000 he attended Pilchuck Glass School to take a lampworking class from the Venetian master Cesare Toffolo.

This wonderful experience made Tim realize the potential of the medium and set him on a new course of creativity. Tim draws upon both his childhood experiences in the Santa Barbara Mountains as well as his studies in biology to inspire the unique naturalistic themes in his work. "Rather than incorporate obvious symbolism in my pieces I prefer to make them evoke a feeling in a more subtle way. For example, I often incorporate whimsy to make people smile or laugh."

Tim Lindemann uses a technique of glassblowing called flameworking, or lampworking. This technique involves using a torch to melt rods and tubes of glass together and then blowing, twisting, and pulling them to acquire the desired shapes. The glass that is used is borosilicate, or pyrex glass. Borosilicate melts at a higher temperature than most of the glasses traditionally used for glass blowing and therefore needs to be worked in a hotter torch.

For coloration Tim uses colored glass as well as silver and gold fume. The recent technological developments in lampworking equipment and materials have allowed Tim to pioneer new techniques and create bold original works that would have been impossible to create in years past.