Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
One of the most beautiful things about art is that it can evoke memories, spark emotions and inspire others to be artists.
That was the case for Marlinton glass artist Lyn Cetani.
More than 30 years ago, she found a piece of stained glass at a shop and bought it for her husband as a gift. Both liked the piece so much, they decided they wanted to learn how to make stained glass themselves.
“He and I both actually took a beginner class and from then on, I just became self-taught,” she said. “Once I knew the very basic part, I just started experimenting and doing different things. My husband worked at it for a while, but because of his job, he didn’t have a lot of time.
“I just kept with it as a hobby and made things for my family, friends and making little tchotchkes and things,” she added.
Cetani and her husband lived on the west coast and retired to Arizona. After her husband passed away, Cetani moved back to West Virginia in 2021 – she is originally from the eastern panhandle, but settled in Marlinton to be near her sister, Cathy Mitchell.
“My husband and I used to come here during the summers,” she said. “You don’t want to be in Arizona during the summer – it’s 120 degrees. We’d spend three months here in Marlinton, so I decided that it would be nice for me to come back and stay here for a while, so here I am.”
After all those years of making stained glass, Cetani said she was looking for something new to do and, about eight years ago, she discovered fused glass.
Although it uses the same materials, fused glass relies on a kiln to melt glass to make pieces.
“I do platters, bowls, candle shelters,” Cetani said. “I do some jewelry. I’m trying right now to get into more sculptural pieces. I have a sculptural piece in the gallery now. It’s an ocean wave.”
With fused glass, once she has her landscape or picture planned out, Cetani lays out the piece, layer upon layer, and fires it in the kiln to fuse it all together.
“It doesn’t fire as hot as pottery,” she said. “Pottery fires a lot hotter. Glass will start to change its shape around twelve hundred degrees and then you can go anywhere from there up to sixteen hundred degrees depending on what you’re doing.
“If I’m just making a platter or a bowl, that’s a two part process where I fuse the piece first with the design on it that I want and then I put it into a mold which slumps it into the bowl shape or into a platter shape, or whatever shape I’m doing,” she added.
To make a sculptural piece, like the ocean wave at the gallery, can take three or four firings to complete the scene.
When Cetani first began working in fused glass, she had a small kiln.
“There are kilns available for people who want to start – it’s a small kiln that you put into a microwave and you can fuse small pieces like jewelry,” she said. “I started doing that and making cabochons and things in the microwave kiln. Then I just got hooked on melting glass together and making things.”
Fusing glass is a vast art form and Cetani said she is still discovering new ways to work with it.
“I’ve only scratched the surface as far as I know,” she said. “There are so many things that you can do. It’s just a fascinating process to me.”
Cetani’s fused glass may be found at the 4th Avenue Gallery in Marlinton.
