THE WAY OF THE GLASS
Working with her own hands and being able to express herself through her creativity were always important to Birgit Dopsch. She started her journey when she attended the artistic gymnasium in Salzburg with a focus on painting. The classes of Mag. Marlies Egermann on art history and practical art, which were taught with much proficiency and passion, were especially important for her and reinforced her wish of studying art. After her matura, Birgit Dopsch made her way to the Mozarteum Salzburg, where she studied painting. However, she did not feel like she had arrived at the right place to continue her study.
This changed when she visited the HTL Kramsach and fell in love with the material of glass. Birgit Dopsch switched to the college for processing and design of glass in Kramsach (Tirol) and entered a fascinating world made from the everchanging colors of glass.
She specialised in a technique called fusing, which requires the glass being cut and while cold before heating it up to around 800 °C and melting the different parts together. An average heating cycle takes aproximately twelve hours. This technique offers the possibility to work on surfaces with bigger scales, and to “paint with light and color”. That is how the artist combines painting and glass art in her creations.