Spotlight on Kathy Latini
I have always loved crafts of all kinds, a trait I share with my sisters, especially my twin sister, Karen, who started me on my journey into glass many years ago. Karen originally started as a hobbyist jewelry maker (stringing together commercial beads), until she discovered that you could set up a home studio and make your own beads out of glass. She learned the basics through books, classes and online videos, then passed along her knowledge to me. She gave me my own torch and basic lampworking kit for Christmas about 20 years ago.
Karen lives in Florida, is a member of The Glass Dragons and invited me to join. When Covid hit in 2019, everything went viral and made it possible for me to participate virtually from my home in NJ. I still consider myself pretty much a beginner with glass. I see so many talented artists creating such wonderful sculptural pieces (my sister included), while I pretty much dabble in basic dot beads and simple sculptural pieces.
At one point, I was playing with animal hair and glass – long story short – my glassmaking evolved into ceramics, which introduced me to horse hair pottery. As a veterinarian in my day job, I’m sometimes asked to make memorial pieces for pets that have passed.
I wondered if hair could be burned onto glass to make interesting effects, like when horsehair is burned onto ceramic glaze in pottery. Found out quickly that the hair just burned off, but I discovered that if you coat the hair with more glass, as the hair burns off it creates lots of little bubbles in the glass. So now I frequently get requests to make my bubble bead jewelry, incorporating the hair from a beloved/deceased pet into a memorial keepsake.
Although I haven’t been spending much time on the torch lately, I really enjoy seeing what other members of The Glass Dragons have been making – gives me incentive to get back into glass working more regularly again.
As I said before, I love crafts of all kinds and I frequently get distracted from my work with glass. Lampworking naturally led into glass fusing, which evolved into ceramics (I was amazed when I found out you could fire ceramics in a glass kiln!), which meant a bigger ceramic kiln and eventually a potter’s wheel.
Then my other sister, Peggi, purchased a flock of sheep in Vermont and sent me in another direction: fiber crafts – spinning yarn from raw fleeces, weaving, knitting, crochet and needle felting.
In addition to the above, I also love to play music. My primary instrument is the flute, but I have also dabbled in mountain dulcimer, hammered dulcimer, guitar, oboe and violin.
When not involved with the above activities, I enjoy riding my horse and spending time with my other pets! Can’t wait to retire from work within the next few years so my hobbies can take over full time!!
