Originally started as a mother/daughter project creating jewelry and artwork from found and reused glass, ReMelt Glass continues to grow and evolve.

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Elaine Rettger was born in northern Ohio. From a young age, she loved the vibrancy of nature, particularly her neighbor’s garden, which bloomed all summer with fabulous flowers.

She also enjoys arts and crafts, drawing and creating. She received a liberal arts and sciences degree in Industrial Design from Purdue University. After graduating, she moved to Arizona and worked as a graphic designer, creating artistic, balanced compositions for marketing materials.

Fascinated by the properties of glass, she apprenticed for a glass blower in the early 2000s. After that, she took glass technique classes all over the U.S., including Bullseye Glass in Portland and Urban Glass in New York. Recently, she has taken courses from international artists to improve her sense of design and her skills. In 2004, she purchased her first kiln and began working with kiln-formed glass.

The fleeting beauty of leaves and plants inspires Elaine’s recent work. She is also fascinated by the shapes they take and how they respond to their surrounding environment. Her vision is to capture a moment in time, representing color, movement, shape and transition. Her graphic design background helps inform the composition, layout and placement of elements to achieve a harmonious outcome with her glass creations.

Each glass leaf is carefully crafted from a natural leaf, taking more than 20 hours to create. An impression mold of clay and plaster is the first step in the process. The molds are filled with glass powder and fused at temperatures exceeding 1200 degrees for more than six hours. Next, the leaves are draped over refractory material to provide depth and movement and again fused for over six hours. A final fusing to a glass background offers stability and strength.