Since childhood, Denise has been seeing the world with her own unique vision:  noting the lines of objects, the particular way a shadow fell, the hidden textures of the world. She first “borrowed” her mom’s camera at six or seven and that passion carried her through college and to San Francisco and the world of advertising photography. After six years as a big city girl, she relocated to a northern California college town; she came to realize that her long-time drive to work as a photographer was becoming second to her spirit’s need to find expression through art. Photography was moving ever further into the digital age; with her creative spark re-ignited, she was ready for a different medium. She explored clay and fabric extensively, but in 2005, when she moved to Steamboat Springs with her husband and year-old daughter, it was kiln-formed glass that would become her focus. The following year she helped found the Artists’ Gallery of Steamboat, and finally she had a place to showcase her evolving artwork.

Since then, her work has grown through varying styles and color palettes, through traditional glass platters and bowls to her current focus on glass as pure aesthetic:  fine art for tabletop or wall, creations that can truly be termed glass sculpture. Her designs, often abstract in nature, are inspired by the natural world – both in the Colorado mountains that she calls home, and in her travels around the US and beyond. Years of darkroom work taught her to see the absence of the subject itself, to see its space and its shadow, to see in the negative; often when an idea emerges for a new piece, this vision helps to pare the mental image down to the shapes, lines and shadows that ultimately become her design.