My name is Kenan Tiemeyer. I was born in Chicago, Illinois almost 34 years ago. I am the oldest child of my parents Brian and Arlene. I have 6 brothers and 6 sisters. From the time I was 2 until I was 24 I lived in Grand Haven, Michigan. This is right on Lake Michigan about 2.5 hours from Chicago. Great place to grow up!
I remember being fresh out of high school and looking forward towards the unknown. I remember thinking to myself that no matter which way life took me that I would never stop learning. I would always look for new positive experiences and constantly learn no matter what the subject matter. As it turned out I ended up getting a few scholarships and grants to attend college and decided that I could not turn down a free year or 2 of college. I chose Film and Video production because on the list of possible majors it was the only thing that looked remotely interesting. I was simply going to "wing it" for awhile until I could figure out what I really wanted to do. At least I could continue learning.
2 years after graduating from college (01-01-2000) I decided that it was time to venture out of Michigan and fortunately found a wonderful home on 12 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. It is the only piece of property that I looked at and it just felt SO right. 6 months after moving to Virginia, Tree and I, got married at the creek that runs on the border of our property. That same year I came across the opportunity to learn how to work with borosilicate glass. Again, this new opportunity felt SO right. I jumped at it and never looked back.
During the last 9 years of working with glass, improving our home / property we were blessed with 2 beautiful children (Sequoia and Sage). We also had a lot of time to enjoy "country living" while creating and trying to figure out what we really wanted out of life. It has been an exciting 9 years as we have gotten used to our chosen lifestyle (only having 3 tv channels, heating our home with a wood stove, growing as much of our own food as possible, eating vegetarian) but nothing is static. As great as the last 10 years have been, things do change. What was once new and exciting gets old in as what was once fresh gets stale and stagnant.The last year has been extremely busy as we started a large addition to our home, expanded our gardens, built facilities for our chickens while looking forward to getting goats and who knows what other sort of critters in th
e future. Even though there has been a lot of progress and change in our home life there has been a lingering feeling of stagnancy in my glass work. The truth is that I have made some of my very best glass work over the last few years but the best way to describe my feelings towards my work is that it had gotten "easy" and predictable. When I first started working with glass it was an immense challenge to not only make nice work but to make fresh original work with stimulating content to back it up. 9 years into glass work I have definitely not perfected the medium but the challenges that once stimulated me had diminished. Over the last year or the idea of "what's next" was creeping into my mind. I had been unsure of where it was coming from while subtly keeping my eye out for new and unexpected opportunities.
Finally the new opportunity has presented itself. For the last few weeks I have been working part-time in a new studio in Blacksburg, Virginia. It is a fledgling studio that needs to be nurtured but I hope to be hosting classes, selling a lot more of my glass there, and generally interacting more with the local public. The new studio is in the same building as New River Prosthetics and Orthotics. That business is run by Phil Johnson CPO who also happens to be a glass enthusiast who has been putting a ton of energy into the new glass studio. He has offered me the opportunity to learn the craft of making Prosthetics and Orthotics. How could I turn this down? So, I am very happy to say that I will be dividing my time between the 2 businesses and am very excited by this new opportunity as well as the many others that the future potentially holds.
I am hoping to get away from the wholesale end of my glass work (that has provided so much for me over the years :) and start selling primarily through the glass studio / gallery and my website. Really, this is what has finally prompted me to put together the long anticipated "1st news letter". New energy, fresh perspective, return of a passionate spirit. There should be some significant changes coming to my website very soon, fresh progressive glass work, as well as newsletter every month or so.For right now I want to thank everyone that has purchased my glass art in the past. I feel very blessed to have been able to support my family with my art for the past 9 years while living in the country. I have truly been enriched by these experience and give many thanks.
NEW GLASS WORK AVAILABLE:
I put up 7 new marbles and a new paperweight for sale 2 days ago with the intention of getting this news letter together but 2 have already sold. Check out the 6 that are still available: MARBLES
I have 1 new bead and 1 new pendant available in my Etsy.com store: ETSY
Thanks for taking the time to check out this 1st new-letter. I look forward to creating more in the future. Hopefully the will improve with time. Cheers! - Kenan Tiemeyer
If for any reason you would like to be removed from my mailing list please email me here: Kenan with the subject of your email "remove"
