Jacqueline Mc Kinny

Jacqueline Mc Kinny

Biography

Jacqueline McKinny was born and raised in Niwot, Colorado. She moved to Boulder in 2001 and began blowing glass after graduating form the University of Colorado at Boulder with a BFA in Humanities and Medieval Studies. After graduation, Jacqueline found the career of her dreams by looking in the want-ads of a random local paper. It said: “Glassblowing Apprenticeship. Pays in 3 months.” It was the last time Jacqueline looked at the want-ads. In 2006, she started Rowan Tree Studios to market her glass work. Her love of hollow form torchwork has morphed into a passion for all forms of glass work including cold working, fusing, and furnace work.

Jacqueline learned by watching anyone who came through the shop and taking workshops from Robert Mickelsen, Sue Ellen Fowler, Bandhu Scott Dunham, Steve Sizelove, and Sabina Bohem. These workshops coupled with demonstrations at glass conferences, flame-offs and working with other artists in the studio have been incredibly important to the development of Jacqueline’s glass skills.

Artist’s Statement

Many of my pieces begin as simple hollow shapes, visually broken with organic webbed trails of curving, spiraling figures, moving in, out or around it. I enjoy playing with the way an organic shape can flow out from a simple form, like a sphere, and completely change the feel of a piece. Perfect shapes can have an elegant beauty in the simplicity of their lines, but when mixed with organic forms they can become imperfect, and then their potential becomes endless. It’s like building a puzzle without the picture on the box lid. You think you know what it should look like. You may have an idea or three, but you never know exactly how it will come out…and sometimes you end up with extra pieces.