The Art of April M. RimpoFused Glass Gallery
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April first studied fused glass in the early 1990s when warm glass techniques were beginning to re-emerge as an art form in the United States. She has received an award for Most Original Fused Glass. She has studied in Arizona and Maryland, continuing to add more advanced warmed glass techniques to her repertoire. She had a solo exhibit of her glass at the Maryland Federation of Art’s Circle Gallery in Annapolis in 2007. Her glass was accepted into an international open medium show at Gallery International in Baltimore. Her glass has also been exhibited at Quiet Waters Park Gallery, the Columbia Art Center, Montpelier Art Center, the Dorchester Art Center, and at The Artistry in Arizona. As part of the National Capital Art Guild, April has participated in juried exhibits at Arts Afire Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, American Craftworks Collection in Annapolis, Maryland, and at Rossdhu Gallery formerly in Chevy Chase.
April's fused glass projects are varied in technique, style and purpose. Some of her work is representational, while others explore textures, or strive to evoke an emotion through color and form. Several of April’s pieces are of galaxies and deep space objects; inspired by her husbands love of astronomy. April currently has glass jewelry for sale at Joie de Vivre in Cambridge, Maryland.
April uses a variety of techniques in her fused glass. Her vases are done by slumping disks of glass through custom molds that she creates. The flower petal vase shown here was created by first creating a ¼” thick billet of glass composed of fragments of a variety of colors of glass, including clear glass with a metallic iridescent finish that helps make the piece glow. The billet was full fused so all the glass fragments became one smooth piece of glass. It was then cut using a ring saw to form the petal shapes slightly larger than the size of the mold. This allowed the petals to droop over the edge of the mold as they heated. The molds have holes in the center where the glass can “drop out” as it heats and becomes fluid. Once the glass reaches the bottom of the kiln surface, either creating a flat bottom or connecting to a base, the vase is ready to cool and anneal. Some of the molds April makes have scalloped edges, while others do not. Since April allows the glass to flow over the edge of the mold on some of her pieces, disasters can occur; perhaps the vase cannot be removed from the mold or the outside edges droop too far and become too thin. It is this experimentation that keeps April enthralled with these projects.
“The Forest” on the bottom right is displayed in a simple rod iron stand. It is about ¼ inch thick and was created from two home made sheets of glass. One sheet was made of warm colors for the treetops and the other was created in earthtones for the background. These custom sheets are created from shards of glass cut from a variety of glass sheets to create the desired color palette. 
The tree top sheet was cut into tree shapes using a ring saw and then composed into the final panel along with additional glass strips, lamp worked components, and glass powder and frit to create the desired look and feel of the piece. These components were fused in the kiln to attach the separate elements and create the final composition.
The bowl in the upper left is part of her electricity series. This piece uses lamp worked black stringers that she pulled from strips of sheet glass in a torch and gold zigzags painted on with a gold pen. Stringers are thin pieces of glass that look like spaghetti. Most stringers are made by pulling strings from a molten piece of glass. In this case, April bent the stringers while they were hot to give them an organic feel. The gold and stringers are fired into pre-cut sheet glass so they are smooth with the surface of the bowl. The black stringers run into the black glass that borders the green iridescent glass, so they appear to grow out of the border. Once the square piece was fully fused with the stringers and annealed, it was heated another time to slump it into a mold.