Spotlight on Darcy Abbott
Greetings from Tallahassee, Florida’s capital city. I have been around glass art for as long as I can remember. I grew up in New York, very close to the Corning Museum of Glass. I visited the museum so frequently that the art pieces became as recognizable as family members. My mom was an artist and she exposed me to every type of art as a kid. It was always traumatic for me to bring home artwork from elementary school as I would receive a full artist’s critique of my crayon paper and glue creations! I still hear my mom’s words in my head “make sure there is contrast in your design!” While in graduate school, I worked in Corning at a stained glass studio and that is where my fascination with glass art all began
I retired from working for the State of Florida. As a licensed clinical social worker, I managed state programs for child welfare, persons with disabilities, mental health, crisis response and health care. My specialty is working with traumatic events. When I retired two years ago, I last worked as Florida’s Mental Health Coordinator for the FL Division of Emergency Management, addressing hurricane recovery, the pandemic and other man-made disasters. Due to the stress of my career choice, creating art has been great therapy for taking care of myself.
For the past 30 years, I have been selling my art at local craft fairs. I started out selling carved wooden fish with large lips. Thus, my business name, “Fish Lips Diversified.” From the wooden fish, I expanded to fused glass, making functional bowls, plates, ornaments and lanterns. The art sales helped fund the travel and costs for adopting my two daughters from China. After the adoptions, the sales helped pay for their dance, arts, music classes and sports.
My daughters are now beautiful productive adults. My husband and I love to travel and take nature photos. I am fortunate to have traveled to many of the national parks in all fifty states. Last year, we traveled to Africa and spent a week on the Chobe River photographing wildlife. This was a bucket list experience!
Primarily, I work with Bullseye glass and use my torch to create components for my fused glass creations. I am terrible at making a round bead and prefer to do more glass sculpting on the mandrel or making little boro critters.
The Glass Dragons and ISGB have been a fantastic resource to help improve my lampworking. The many talented artists who are willing to virtually share advanced skills and techniques are fantastic.
My glass art reflects a tropical whimsey theme including birds, critters and all creatures from the sea. I participate in several Florida art festivals and a local gallery. Examples of my glass art: darcyabbottglass.com