MOULTRIE — Colquitt County Arts Center’s glass art exhibit, “Clearly Colorful,” features a plethora of glassworks created by artist Cindy Hammond. 

Colquitt County Arts Center hosted the exhibition of glassworks — from windows to bowls to Christmas ornaments and many more unique designs — until June 16, according to the “Clearly Colorful” program. It opened May 6.

The exhibit is scheduled to open June 25 at 

Tifton Museum of Arts and Heritage (The Syd) in Tifton. Mary Ann Cox, a former Tifton resident, will also be exhibiting her works during the Tifton show. The show opens with a greet the artist reception, 5-7 p.m., and the exhibits will be show through July 24 at The Syd, 255 Love Ave., Tifton. More information: Contact jyost@tiftonarts.org.

Pieces range from large window pieces to small window hangers and paperweights. The colors come from the amount of lead in the glass.

The exhibition has had at least 100 visitors accounted for on the sign-in sheet, as well as many others who did not sign in, Arts Center officials said. It is free for the public to see during the Arts Center’s normal hours, and some of the glasswork pieces are on sale. 

Tifton-based artist Cindy Hammond is a Panama City, Florida, native who attended Agnes Scott College in Atlanta as a biology major. In an interview with The Moultrie Observer, a sister publication of The Tifton Gazette, Hammond discussed her journey to South Georgia and her love for glasswork. 

Along her journey, Hammond moved to Savannah where she got married and worked in the medical supply field. Her time in Savannah is where she found her love of glass making. 

“When I was working in Savannah, a friend that I worked with said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna take this class. Do you want to take this class with me?’…I’d never done it before and we made a little glass window, and I went ‘Wow, that’s cool.’ So, I started making glass windows and stuff at home,” Hammond said. 

Hammond worked with stained glass from 1980 until 1984 before she took an 18-year hiatus to raise her three sons, as mentioned in the “About the Artist” page of the exhibit’s program. Afterwards, Hammond resumed making glassworks as a hobby while living in Albany. 

At that time, Hammond’s hobby grew as commissions for glass windows and other pieces would come in by word-of-mouth. 

“My kids got bigger, and I started doing glass art again. It was a hobby and word-of-mouth…It was a hobby that just grew,” Hammond said.

She had also received a gift certificate from one of her children to attend a glass blowing workshop in Atlanta, and she loved it. In addition, Hammond took on another technique of fusing glass together in the kiln and sandblasting the glass after working with someone in Ashburn. 

With her techniques, Hammond’s art continued to grow with more commissions coming in. She made windows, Christmas ornaments and paperweights. 

From then, Hammond continued her work and was asked to showcase it at the Colquitt County Arts Center by Kim Yarborough, who was an employee there at the time. Yarborough had seen her work, loved it and booked the exhibit a year out, Hammond explained. Hammond stated her excitement as the exhibit at the Colquitt County Arts Center would have been her first. 

So, Hammond collected pieces that she had done from states such as Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky and Illinois. She also collected pieces that she had been working on at the time. 

Each piece Hammond showcased is unique because she seldom duplicates her work. She works with three different kinds of glass: cold glass, warm glass and hot glass.

Cold glass, as Hammond explained, is cut with a diamond cutter into different pieces and put together like a puzzle. It is usually flat, like some of the window pieces in the exhibit, or it is put together as things such as a jewelry box. Much like the name, it is cold glass in the room that is cut and shaped into a picture. 

Then, there’s warm glass — which is put into the kiln and can be fused together. Warm glass temperatures can rise from a range of 1,400 to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which causes the glass to become soft. Then Hammond puts the glass onto structures she built to shape it.

From there, the glass is allowed to slowly cool so that it does not crack or break.

In this process, different pieces can also be fused together in order to become one piece, or they can be fused together as separate pieces that maintain their rigid differences. Pieces such as the hollow, half-moon shaped piece by Hammond are warm glass pieces.

The third kind of glass, hot glass, is glass blowing. In this method, the hot glass is on one end of the blow pipe and air is blown into the other end, causing the glass to blow up. Then, a wet rag or wooden shaping piece is used to shape the glass. This glass is designed or shaped in a way which molten glass can be added to the piece for design, such as a standing fish piece Hammond designed. 

With each kind of glass, the process can take anywhere from 20 minutes to multiple days, Hammond explained. She designs and creates each piece of work from scratch.

“I just love it. I like that design process,” she said. “I like creating something that somebody has envisioned in their mind and then I can make it in glass for them.”

Hammond plans to continue her work, and is excited that the exhibit will be showcased at the Tifton arts museum from June 25 to July 24. 

Hammond’s art can be found on Facebook at Cindy’s Glasswork Designs or on Instagram at cindysglassworkdesigns. She may also be contacted by email at cindyshearer1@gmail.com.