Add a bit of warmth and luminosity into the gray winter days by visiting the Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley City, where dozens of pieces of glass art made by local craftspeople are on display and for sale. 

“A Glass Menagerie” features dozens of intricately and painstakingly shaped creations made out of glass by 23 artists. The show runs until March 18.

“It’s just totally amazing how much creativity goes into this and how many different ways that you can use fused glass,” said Sheen Wolfe of the Glass Art Guild of Utah, sponsor of the show. 

Like the material itself, creating something out of glass is a delicate process, requiring a fairly precise temperature from fire in a kiln, a thermally insulated oven, that must be raised or lowered depending on how the portion of glass is to be shaped. “Glass melts at 1,500 degrees, give or take a few, and if you don’t go up slowly and you don’t hold at a certain spot and go back down slowly, it will crack and do all kinds of weird stuff. It’s very finicky,” Wolfe said prior to last year’s show. “You do not know what you’re getting until you’re done,” she added. “It can take anywhere from a week to months in a kiln so that it won’t crack.” 

Fused or warm glass is the oldest type of glass art known to humankind, but the least well known. Most historians believe that the first glass fusing and kiln casting was done by the ancient Mesopotamians in 2,000 B.C. Egyptians and Romans were the most prolific, and examples of their work can be viewed in museums around the world. 

The Glass Art Guild of Utah is a community of artists working collaboratively to support, promote and develop warm glass art forms. Many members are local and national award winners for their art and educational contributions to the warm glass artistry. 

“A Glass Menagerie” is free. The Utah Cultural Celebration Center is at 1355 W. 3100 South. Hours are Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

For more information about the Glass Art Guild of Utah, visit glassartguild.org, Facebook at GlassArtGuildofUtah, and glass_art_guild_of_utah on Instagram. 

Glass creations made by local artists are among dozens on display at a glass art display at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center. (Courtesy Glass Art Guild of Utah)