Vogue, 2024

Tessa Qwartz  

Studio Qwartz is an initiative of Tessa Van Thienen (°1996).

As a child Tessa already had a passion for drawing and painting. In her spare time she was frequently found at the local art academy and this for 12 years.

After an inactive period, as a result of her higher education, Tessa has picked up her passion for art again in 2020. The frequent puzzling during the lockdown inspired her to a quest to create works based on mosaic. First with materials available in the local hobby store, and not much later to cut her own glass pieces using special kiln glass in different sizes, colors and structures. She uses this to create a palette of glass pixels by combining various types of glass and melting them together in different layers in a glass kiln. This is called glassfusing, the oldest technique used in glass art. These composite pixels are then glued to a silk matt MDF panel (HPL / melamine) or dibond.

Unlike MDF, plexiglass can be background-coloured. For several reasons, plexiglass is not used within Studio Qwartz. As a result, creating a nice transition of shades in the skin on a pure white background is quite a challenge. Especially when you know that the colour palette of glass is limited and that the colour of glass plates can vary by production. Consequently, each portrait is always a challenge to fine tune the pixel colours according to the original image.

By often using abrupt framing and a subtle, sometimes minimal, translation in glass, she gives her glass art portraits a contemporary style.

Dirk, Tessa's father, has always been passionate about drawing. Even at the age of 6 he started following courses organised at elementary school. Later in life he began studying at the Provincial Higher Institute of Art in Hasselt. Dirk also does the cutting and breaking of the glass sheets, prepares the works and also finishes the artworks with frames as well as preparing them for shipping and delivery.