Featured Artist – Lesley Kelly

Lesley Kelly is the incoming 2024 Board President. She started doing stained glass in 2004, learning from classes at Cline’s Glass after her daughter went to college. In 2008, she began fusing. Since then, she has tried her hand at multiple forms of glass art, including glass blowing, beads, fusing, stained glass, mosaics, etc.

The light coming though glass and creating colors fascinates Lesley as well as the idea of creating nature through art. Lesley creates a lot of bubble glass and has also been working with the new delicate disco method taught by Amanda Simmons. This method uses powder to create glass squares that are then slumped in drop rings to create bowls or other pieces. When asked what new techniques she wants to try right now, she replied, “I just need time to work on the ones I have learned in the past few years!”

Lesley joined the glass guild in 2004 and started helping Charlene Fort with running the Gathering of the Guilds (GOTG) shows. She served as volunteer coordinator for that as well as the information booth for the show for a lot of years. She was the membership chair of the Guild for two years, then treasurer for three years, and volunteered to chair the GOTG in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Her goal is to make the Guild a resource for all members, have meetings that really draw members to them, and to get the Guild on a good financial footing.