Janet Kelman has loved working with glass all of her adult life. As a chemistry student at University of Michigan, she watched with fascination as the glassblower made instruments for their labs. Since 1985, Kelman designed and created decorative sandblasted architectural glass. She learned to create fused pieces in an electric kiln where some of her early fused glass works were exhibited in the Corning Museum of Glass. More recent fused glass pieces were exhibited at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, MI in 2016 and 2017. Driven by curiosity about the glass material and opportunities for challenges, Janet has designed and fabricated many diverse fused and slumped architectural projects, including a five foot tall Sanctuary Lamp for the Chapel of the Jesuit Retreat Center in Oshkosh, WI, and an eighteen foot wall piece for the Boardroom of NSF Headquarters in Ann Arbor, MI. In her body of work, Kelman is drawn to themes of water and the plants and animals that inhabit it. Using these elements, she creates patterned layers that float in the glass. Images weave in and out, suggesting flow and movement that metaphorically reflects our buried thoughts and feelings. “Peering into water, as a metaphor for awareness, I wonder how much can be known and what is always hidden?… My “boats” are paintings in glass. Each element leads your eye to another and each spot or string of color expresses movement. The overall effect is of floating layers of images.” - Janet Kelman