zingaro

THE ARTIST

Vitreous enamel artist

A colorful romance of the soul

Artist Zingaro, born 1954, is an American artist best known for his original artworks the ancient medium of vitreous enamel. Zingaro creates artworks in his New Mexico studio and shows his works in galleries across the U.S. Abstract color forms, flowers and organic elements are common themes in Zingaro's enamel artworks.

Zingaro's passion for art emerged while working as an apprentice for an aging painter in the village of Hyannis, Massachusetts. The master found in Zingaro a vessel in which to pour his legacy – a kaleidoscopic philosophy of form, color and motion. When the old man's time was done, young Zingaro traveled, drawn by the magnetism of abstraction in the works of Mondrian, Picasso and DeKooning.

Zingaro arrived in New Mexico where the light and opalescent sunsets bid him to remain. It is here that he met and befriended the late Craig Ruwe, master enamel artist. Ruwe's career dates back more than two decades to the period of the great Fred Uhl Ball, with whom Ruwe worked until 1985.

Ruwe introduced Zingaro to the ancient art of glass on metal – vitreous enamel. The depth and light of this medium sparked Zingaro`s eye. Zingaro aided Ruwe in his works for two years until Craig passed in the spring of 2004. He asked Zingaro to carry on – a gift Zingaro could not deny.

Today, following in the paths of Ball and Ruwe, Zingaro pursues the evolution of this mesmerizing medium in his New Mexico studios. Each piece is an inimitable collaboration of images interpreted in luminescent glass, reflecting new discoveries in this timeless art.

THE PROCESS

The translucent footpath of color and light

The vitreous enamel piece begins as a series of thin waves of metal, usually copper or brass, over which images are dusted in finely ground glass. As the layers encounter their first kiln firing, they take on a glimpse of light, a shimmering radiance to sustain the three-dimensional imagery to come.

Layer upon layer of glass is then delicately introduced and fired to the tile, each one blending its own vibrancy to the one before. Like a fingerprint, the tile takes on a unique gradation and refraction of light. The temperaments of color coerce one another to an excited balance of harmony and contrast as the firing continues.

Each Zingaro vitreous enamel piece is a collaboration of texturally luminescent imagery drawing the viewer with the ethereal movement captured by the heat of its reflections.

Vitreous enamel, also called porcelain enamel, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between 750 and 850 °C (1,380 and 1,560 °F). The powder melts, flows, and then hardens to a smooth, durable vitreous coating. The word comes from the Latin vitreum, meaning "glass".