Yvonne Buijs-Mancuso

Yvonne seems to be at the height of her art, and after 30 years of working in glass she’s invented a new expression in glass she calls “Transflection.” With her new studio just recently completed it's no wonder where she’s getting inspiration.

Having thoughtfully laid out each detail and space usage she can enjoy an array of technical artistic expression, from jewelry and enameling, stained glass and fused glass works, to black and white photography, and oil painting–all from only a stone's through from her home. A dream studio that’s been a long time coming, and definitely worth its wait.

Yvonne’s first studio location in Avon, Connecticut at the Farmington Valley art center was, as she phrased it, “when I came out as an artist.” Having always worked contemporary jobs she decided to make her art a full time career. Her focus was creating and repairing stained glass designs and offering classes. And, since she wasn’t stocking large quantities of glass just yet, she sent her students to buy glass supplies from the “other” glass artist in the area–Bob Mancouso.

Over the course of a few years Yvonne and Bob got to know one another through their businesses, and began dating, eventually deciding to joined forces combining their shops. All of this led to marriage and two children, and by 1990 the family moved across the country to became permanent residents of San Juan Island. Rather than facing the uncertainty of opening a glass shop on a small island, Yvonne decided she needed to create a product she could ship anywhere. Yvonne decided to take her experience in metal smithing and focus on combining jewelry with glass. The idea seemed conducive to island living, allowing her to be at home and care for their two small children and to produce work that she could easily ship out. Eventually she was doing a lot of traveling to shows, promoting her jewelry. She discovered that it was a fickle industry, and that while her work was large the style was becoming less dramatic, moving into more conservative styles. She considered her work “power jewelry” and the subdued, gentle pieces just weren’t her style. The kids were also getting older and she wanted to be more available. She was at another crossroads in her work, and the next choice was to go back and do what she knew: glass. In short time she found a studio space in Friday Harbor at the Nichols Walk and created a working glass studio–San Juan Glass Works. There she continued to create jewelry, provided classes, did commission architectural glass pieces and even had the kids around. By 2005, having eight years in that location, she definitely had outgrown the space, and as luck would have it, the space her studio was occupying had been put on the market and quickly sold. She and Bob decided to finish the shop they’d been building out on their property, and went into hyper drive to complete the structure. With details of trim and some exterior paint aside, they managed to mostly complete her studio enough to unpack boxes and she moved in by March 2006.

The timing couldn’t have been better as she soon received and accepted an invitation to exhibit her glass work at San Juan Gallery and Framing in just three short months. Immediately she began dreaming up ideas of how to create smaller pieces that people could appreciate as a statement in of itself.

This new problem marked the beginning of creating what she calls Transflection. “Trans” as a transparency effect and “flection” because it reflects the light. She described this project as a combination of fused works to panels of glass to create paintings in glass. Her choice was to create a stylized and semi abstracted underwater subjects, a subject dear to her form her scuba diving experiences. She combined her mastered subject matter into fused glass and opened double paned space, and combined double paned with open areas to create depth–almost a fourth dimension. She went on to explain that Tiffany had laminated the glass, but what is different about her works is that she separated the two panels creating real depth perception, and captures the sense of underwater scenes. She described this new and latest work as a culmination of her experimentation in techniques and moving into new areas. She doesn’t like to experiment with her clients' projects but she can then can offer them what she’s learned by experimenting with techniques and investigating new areas.

With their two girls attending college at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, Yvonne has plenty of time to finish the painting details on the new studio, and put her master gardener skills to work on the landscaping. Eventually she intends to open the studio one weekend a month to the public.

As for the new glass works in Transflection, those can still be seen in Friday Harbor at San Juan Gallery and Framing until July 24. You can also see more of her work by visiting her artist page at www.sanjuanartists.com/buijs-mancuso.