Summer Day (Self-Portrait)

Edris Eckhardt created pioneering works of art in both glass and ceramics. As a student at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the 1930s, she worked primarily with ceramics. She became involved with the Federal Art Project, working during the Great Depression to create ceramic tiles for public housing projects in the Cleveland area and figurines of popular literary figures for libraries. Eckhardt began experimenting with glass in 1952. She began melting her own glass colors in her home and testing the compatibility of them with each other. Her most groundbreaking work combined glass with other materials, such as bronze, an extremely difficult process to master. By the end of the 1950s, she had also learned how to cast glass in lost-wax molds, with Summer Day (Self-Portrait) characteristic of her figurative glass sculptures.