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Mark Matthews inspects a fresh layer of hot, clear glass for impurities. Matthews will be the featured artist at Moon Marble’s Marble Crazy next week, speaking Thursday and demonstrating filigrano glassmaking Friday. Matthews will also have on display his glass art, including the Animal Skin series of 19 spheres, each based on the hide pattern of an extinct or endangered animal.

Bonner Springs — An internationally known glass artist will visit Bonner Springs again next week to wow marble lovers. At Moon Marble Company’s eighth annual Marble Crazy, Mark Matthews — whose work is on displays throughout the world, including at the Smithsonian Institution’s Renwick Gallery of the Museum of Natural Art — will demonstrate a centuries-old technique for working glass, and give a talk on the evolution of his own work the night before.

Matthews has been working with glass since 1974 and is the glass artist in residence at Sauder Village, a historic village in Archbold, Ohio, west of Toledo.

Matthews’ work in glass goes far beyond marbles, and in his demonstration at Moon Marble on Feb. 28 he’ll show how he creates filigrano spheres, which feature twisted stripes of different colors and widths around them.

“It’s kind of the root of all antique marble types,” Matthews said.

At a reception the day before, at the Kansas City Toy and Marble Museum, Matthews will give a 45-minute, 120-slide presentation tracing his artistic career.

Sure to be included are his Population Portrait series, which began with a piece that didn’t include any glass, but did incorporate 25 pounds of already-chewed gum, various found objects and out-of-focus crowd shots from Sports Illustrated.

The idea then, Matthews said last year, was to explore the tension between the individual and the group. The series evolved into his most ambitious work, Population Portrait IX, a 144-marble collection encased in a 37-inch glass cylinder.

Matthews said he strove for an “orchestral use of color” in the arrangement of the collection, with greens and browns at the bottom of the cylinder, going up to darker and more black and white balls at the top, and the topmost, dominant ball at the top of the rounded cylinder is the largest of the spheres, the Hugo Largo, which incorporates a brown core, symbolizing Earth, 15 colors symbolizing the visible spectrum of light and black and white stripes, which represent reason.

He’s made six of the collections, which cost $97,000 each. One sits in Sauder Village, but there won’t be one at Moon Marble.

What will be on display are many other styles Matthews has worked in, including “Sacred Clowns” and his “Animal Skin” series.

Matthews has developed 14 spheres, each of which started out with a photograph of an actual animal pelt — each one either endangered or extinct — which image is then transferred onto masking material. Matthews then uses the masking to sandblast a pattern onto the glass on top of which goes a clear layer of glass.

The size of each sphere is proportionate to the animal’s weight it represents, so that the smallest marble is an ocelot, and the largest a reticulated giraffe. Just as with the actual pelts, the patterns change from one end of the ball to the other, and from the top to the bottom, as does the coloring.

Matthews has developed with a blacksmith two different displays for the Animal Skins series. Three spheres sit on tiny pedestals atop a curvy spine made of iron. The spheres’ situation is intended to appear precarious, which is why Matthews said he couldn’t bring the display to Bonner Springs.

“Glass is so mystical, it’s kind of a metaphor for the life force,” Matthews said of the Animal Spine. “It’s like you’re looking at a creature one second it’s alive,” and the next it’s dead.

Also, Matthews said, the precariousness represents another, larger fact of biology.

“Every species that exists is supported by thousands of generations of deceased specimens,” Matthews said. “And if you pinch one (species) out it’s the end of that line.”

Given Matthews’ enthusiasm for glass art as well as his penchant for drawing connections between the form and other media and the sciences, he may have a hard time fitting his talk into the scheduled 45 minutes Thursday night, depending on where he decides to begin.

Matthews said the first glass came about by accident, when ancient artisans mixed very fine clay and mixed it with salts for a shiny finish to seal their ceramics so they wouldn’t leak.

While applying the mixture, Matthews said, some would drip off the ceramic vessel. Eventually Egyptian artisans, who already knew how to cut and polish stone, would fill clay pots with a solid mass of glass, which they could then work with in the same way.

Bruce Breslow, co-owner of Moon Marble, said he was excited about this year’s event.

“We have a new venue,” Breslow said, meaning the Toy and Miniature Museum. The setting for Friday’s reception for all the marble artists taking part in Marble Crazy is apt, as the Toy and Miniature Museum recently added the vast marble collection of of Cathy Runyan-Svacina and Larry Svacina.

Also, “we have more glass blowers than we’ve ever had,” Breslow said. “We’ll have a little larger glass-blowing area.”

There will also be the marble machine, and many demonstrations given throughout the day.

The eighth annual Moon Marble Company’s Marble Crazy will be noon to 9 p.m. Feb. 29 and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 1.

The event will kick off with a reception 5:30 p.m.-8 p.m., Feb. 28, at the Toy and Miniature Museum, 5235 Oak St., Kansas City, Mo. RSVP’s are requested for the reception, and can be made by calling (913) 441-1432.

The next day, Marble makers from across the country will gather at the store, 600 E. Front St., to give live glass-working demonstrations and meet with the public. Visitors will be able to watch marble-making and purchase directly from the artists.

From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., March 2 at Holiday Inn, 101 W. 151st St., Olathe, the Kansas City Marble Club will host the marble collectors show for artists and collectors to display and sell antique and contemporary marbles. There will be door prizes and free marble identification.

Admission to all events is free. For further information call the Moon Marble Company at (913) 441-1432.

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