I have always believed that great beauty comes from attention to details. Straight, clean lines, together with the elegance of hand-painted precious metals creates a graceful style. Words with meaning or the hint of a lost memory are provoking. To me, this is what the essence of life’s experiences brings to art.
Dinah Ihle has been primarily a torch worker and jewelry artist for years. She has found her favorite medium to be glass. Her life’s work is not about shocking or traumatizing the art patron, but rather about bringing beauty and comfort into their lives—she wants her art to show those goals.
She has always considered education to be important and has strived to take the best classes available to improve her work and skills.
Dinah was raised with art all around her home, so that art was in her blood. Once her children were raised, she needed something to fill the void, and glass was it. In 1994, Dinah, her husband and daughter opened a bead store in Salt Lake City. As in her other later work, she wasn’t satisfied with just owning a bead store—it had to be the best and most unique, which is why she began lampwork or beadmaking and teaching beadmaking to interested students.
Dinah always says that “the devil lies in the details,” and has given all her pieces the cold work (finishing) they need; she finds a great deal of satisfaction in her finished products.
Fascinated with texture, color, and the transparency of glass, she has explored the medium of fusing and casting glass. She brings her expertise of the torch into all of her work, creating additional elements.
Dinah’s work is created so that the patron not only lives with, enjoys and takes pride in the beauty of the art work but also can utilize it as a functional element of the home, e.g., as plates and platters or using beads to adorn purses.
She also feels that presentation is everything and was fortunate to marry well. She has enlisted the aid of her husband, an engineer by trade, to create the stand for each piece. Together, with their meticulous eye for detail, they create the stands to hold and enhance the art. They are then powder-coated, making each piece a true and lasting symbol of their special relationship, to be enjoyed by others for many years to come.
