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Clearly Unique
by Dani Altieri Marinucci
Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine
October 14,2001
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A dozen pieces of three-quarter-inch-thick glass are bolted to a wall in Pepper Pike. Twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of glass, some bent at varying angles, other pieces with corners dripping like clear molten lava and a few stretched out into perfect planes.
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It's the rainbow of museum-quality art glass posed atop Marc Kony's handiwork that guests ooh and ah over. With hundreds of thousands of dollars of eye candy causing hoopla, many fail to notice the shelves holding the precious Dale Chihulys, Harvey Littletons, Joel Meyers, and William Morrises. "Those artists had the easy job", jokes Konys (Ko-nis), owner of Bruening Glass Works in Rocky River. "What I did was design shelves to incorporate every piece of art into one cohesive unit. I envisioned it in a blink of an eye".
And what an eye it is. Konys visualizes the unimaginable and figures out how to make it happen even when he is told it's impossible, like bending three-quarter-inch glass. He designed and built his own kiln, which enables him to bend and bond glass into unheard of angles.
"Yes, we repair crystal and glass, but when people see my work they say, "Gee, you're not just a glass repair guy, are you?' "
No, answers Konys, who describes himself as a craftsman, designer, engineer and scientist.
His glass furniture and designs have been displayed in museum art shows (Cleveland Museum of Art, Southern Ohio Museum), galleries (Riley Hawk Galleries in Cleveland and Entrée Libre Gallery in New York) and exhibitions (New York's International Contemporary Furniture Fair and the Chicago Design Show) and at the Design Presentation Victoria Lia of Fiam in Milan Italy, Koln, Germany. A fir branch on the 1997 White House Christmas Tree wore a Marc Konys ornament.
The charm of glass seized Konys while he was studying at Kent State University, where he switched from engineering to major in studio glass blowing. It has remained his passion for 20 years. "Glass is the most amazing thing. There's glass that dissolves in water and glass that can contain the most powerful acids. How can you not be fascinated by it?"
Today, Konys says he is in his drip phase. Dressed in a hear-resistant apron, he is designing a 4-by-5-foot glass partition that will hang between a customer's kitchen and living room.
Because he wants the view into the kitchen to be slightly obscured, he has sculpted hand-sized pieces of opaque glass and bonded them to either side of the large divider, creating texture as well as an obstructed view.
He twists and turns rods of colorful glass over a torch until melted teardrops fall from the blue flame. Once cool, he attaches the droplets onto the dividers face, creating a brilliant multihued sprinkling of rain falling through hazy clouds.
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"When you look at my stuff I want you to say, "That's beautiful. How the hell did he do that?' because if it's comprehensible then it's not exciting."
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