Pompous Glass is Lisa and Mel Chernoff who live and work in the beautiful Sandia Mountains between
Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico a couple of miles
beyond the scenic village of Placitas. Lisa's inspiration for
her glass work often comes from the natural beauty in the
canyon and surrounding mountainous area where she lives.

To compliment Lisa's creativity, her husband Mel brings to the partnership his skills in photography all images are his (unless otherwise noted), accounting, making local area deliveries and performing many tedious tasks around the studio.

Pompous Glass began in a very small way in a small corner
of a garage in our log home. Working in a small pottery kiln
Lisa started fusing her abstract designs in glass.
Photo- Karen Kuehn

The kiln was controlled manually so Lisa was running up and down the stairs from the house to the studio every hour or two to ramp up the temperatures and to cool down and anneal the glass creations after the fusing was complete.

As the years went by, she bought her first glass fusing kiln which was much larger than the pottery kiln
she had started with. This new glass kiln had a computer controller to take care of the multiple changes
in temperature. Lisa finally got to sit still during the firings. One kiln led to two and then the rest of the
garage was filling up with Pompous Glass equipment and a small show room/gallery, and the cars
were evicted to living outside. When it looked like Mel's motorcycle might be displaced it seemed like
the time to build a larger studio.

Prior to building the new studio we relocated to a lovely canyon with Las Huertas Creek running through
it, at least some years when there was sufficient runoff in the Sandia's, and built our present facility, a 1,200 square foot building.  About half of the space set up for working and teaching workshops, with a third kiln
that has an interior shelf that six feet long and thirty inches wide. The other half of the building is the
showroom and photography area along with some storage for crates of sheet glass in many colors just
waiting to be cut up, laid up and turned into works of art.

Mother's Day weekend, Placitas hosts the Placitas Studio Tour where up to 60 artists have opened their
studios to the public. Lisa has been a participant in this from the very first tour and looks forward to many
more. Try and make it out that weekend, or if in the area, call and drop in for a mini tour.

                                 
                                Photo- Britta Ferguson