TOOTS Zynsky is a household name in the world of glass art.

Her glass vessels are collected by over 70 international museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York, and London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.

In 1993, her work was chosen for the White House Collection of American Crafts, and her fans include former US President Bill Clinton and fashion mogul Gianni Versace.

Zynsky, born in 1951 and raised in Massachusetts, recently visited Shanghai for her solo-exhibition at the Liuli China Museum, on display through June 1.

It features nearly 20 of her glass vessels that she crafted for a year and a half, especially for the exhibit.

To make her vessels, she first layers thousands of multicolored glass threads onto a round, heat-resistant fiberboard plate. For her, this part of the process is like drawing or painting. This mass of glass threads is then fused inside a kiln. While hot, the fused thread disk is allowed to slowly slump into a series of consecutively deeper and rounder preheated bowl-shaped metal forms.

“Glassmaking was wide open,” she said, “Hot glass slipped through the air, pulled and stretched. There was music and the furnaces were roaring...and everyone was working in concert... It was this material that hadn’t been widely explored as an artist’s medium. Everything was possible, and there was so much to be discovered. There were no rules. You could do anything you wanted.”

Despite her busy schedule, Zynsky sat down for an interview with Shanghai Daily.

As a world famous glass artist, have you ever experienced the “artist block” in your career?

I always thought that I would never lack inspiration and energy before. But I lost eight family members in the recent two years, and those deaths almost left me paralyzed. I even wondered if I was done. But one day, my son went to my studio and he told me to “make a red piece.” In order to make him happy, I did a red piece. Guess what, I “recovered.”

Your work is remarkable for its rhythm and color. You have lived in Ghana, in West Africa, before. Can you tell us how your experiences there have influenced your art?

Living in Ghana was a life-changing experience. We went there to participate in a broad-ranging music-recording project all over the country in collaboration with a Ghanaian musicologist, their Ministry of Culture and a Dutch sound foundation. We were in villages almost every day for half a year recording everything from very ancient to very contemporary music. The country, its people, its music, its colors, its food, its landscapes — everything about it was overwhelmingly beautiful. Music has always been a central part of my life since I was a child. Music and color are inseparable to me. I listen to every kind of music I can find. Although I was not doing any of my own artwork while I was in Ghana, after my return to the Netherlands, where I was living at that time, I resumed work in my studio. I quickly found that my time in Ghana had liberated any restraints on my sense of color.

What does glass mean to your life?

As a means of expression, glass has more possibility than any single material. I have to learn a lot to find a way to use the technical knowledge to speak for myself. The complexity of glass is similar to the complexity of life.

You said that you like to hear music. What kind of music do you prefer?

I have a funny taste in music. I love all music, and I am curious of sounds and how they can be combined. Although I learned how to play the piano as a kid, I am not creative in that sense. I love classical music to contemporary music, and sometimes even rap music. My husband asked me not to play any rap music in our house. But I do have my favorite singer — Jimmy Hendrix. The moment I first heard one of his songs, I felt that it was a life-changing experience. I started to think in a new way.

When you were studying at a design school, you wanted to transfer to medical school and took a break for nine months. What made you change your mind again?

I was interested in medicine for a long time, but one day when I stepped into a glass studio at the design school, I was amazed to see some people moving around freely and happily and producing something beautiful. To tell you the truth, I wanted to be a dancer when I was a little girl. The movement in the glass studio reminded me of the steps of the dancers on the stage. I immediately told myself that this was the job I wanted. Who knows, may be I could be a good doctor. You know what, I actually had a classmate who was always number one in art at school, and I was the unchangingly second best. But guess what, he’s now a surgeon. That’s life!

How many hours a day do you spend at your glass studio?

I go to my glass studio almost every day and I will stay there for 15 hours a day. I keep a strict schedule for myself, like an Olympic athlete, not too much coffee and eight hours’ sleep every day. In fact, I have to keep myself in a good condition. In fact, I think any sculptor should be mentally prepared. The glass making process is physically demanding, it requires the perfect coordination of a team of more than three people.

Your style is very unique, please talk about how you hone your sense of beauty and meld it into your art?

I was fortunate to have grown up surrounded by a beautiful natural environment but I was also lucky to have spent a lot of time in the city of Boston. Since then I have lived on two other continents for extended periods of time and traveled extensively on five continents which has been a wonderfully enriching experience. Being immersed in other cultures, their music, art, food, and their way of life has all broadened and deepened my sense of beauty and continues to drive my creativity.

You were the first contemporary glass artist whose work was directly acquired by MoMA, and subsequently, they commissioned two more pieces. What do you think about contemporary art?

I’m enthralled with all periods of art from all over the world. I think it’s important to remember that every one of these periods in art at one time was the “contemporary art” of that time.

Do you have some hobbies? I like to take photos, which is my memory bank. I am especially enamored with the fine lines of any object stretching in front of my eyes and the intimate ambience wafted over the image. I also collect Chinese bamboo-made baskets and some are antique ones. I usually buy them at the second-hand stores or some antique shops.

What would you tell a young Chinese glass artist to encourage his work?

Work very hard. Learn everything you can about what has already been done in the field and in contemporary art in general. That’s a big assignment, but after that, you can take your work to the next level. I’ve never seen any use in repeating what has already been done, except as a temporary learning tool. Challenge your own imagination! I wasn’t successful until I was 35. I had tried some other jobs, like doing some special effect for film and I was a professor and taught to support myself before.