A New Chapter
Where I've been, how did we get here, and new adventures
Some of you know me personally, may remember me from my time as Co-Founder and CEO of Lioness (which I have since left), or we’ve crossed paths at some other point in time. If you’ve come across this or are getting this as an email (assuming you subscribed to my personal website back in the day), I’m creating a Substack to document my journey exploring glass, neon, and plasma art.
Why plasma? Why did I leave Lioness?
One reason is simple — I love colorful, glowy things, and neon and plasma art check those boxes.
Another reason is also simple, but deeper, which is I crave making things.
I did my undergraduate degree in studio art (namely sculpture), and making things is something I’ve always done ever since I can remember. It’s how I ended up making Lioness.
As time went on with Lioness, I became less involved in building product and more involved in fundraising, marketing, management, long-term strategy, and other day-to-day duties — things that are essential to running a business. This sort of experience of a founder becoming less directly involved in their product as the company grows is a pretty common experience. As I became less directly involved in building, I became less happy, though the work was still manageable. The different responsibilities helped me grow, and I was supporting a team, customers, and company I loved and grew from the ground up for nearly a decade.
Eventually though, a few things broke the camel’s back that led to my deciding to step away from the company I started, one major turning point being recovering from a very traumatic and life threatening birth and postpartum that was unlike anything I could have imagined. The things that were okay and tolerable before became intolerable and unsustainable. Though it has been extremely painful to step away from something that was so enmeshed with my identity for most of my adult life, and it was not my plan or desire at all to step away from my work after becoming a mother, especially for a company I helped build, in this particular circumstance, leaving ended up making sense for me.
By leaving, one silver lining is that I’ve been able to go back towards the things I love doing, which is making things. Plasma art in particular is fascinating to me because there’s so much more to explore and experiment with that has rarely been explored, much like my experience with Lioness and exploring and expanding the field of sexual pleasure, which has also been rarely explored. Plasma art is also very difficult to do and get into, and given what I pursued in the past with making Lioness a reality I’ve always liked a challenge. Plasma and neon art require learning a lot of different skillsets in manipulating glass and getting it into a condition where it can hold a vacuum and hold some blend of noble gases (for me, usually neon or krypton right now)—and also have the pieces look good while doing all that.
Will I go back to working in women’s health or sexual pleasure one day? Maybe, I wouldn’t completely rule it out. I’m doing a few consulting projects on the side and open to doing more. For now, being able to make things and do new work that’s not always related to my old work is a breath of fresh air, especially after 10 years of living and breathing it every single day.
What am I working on now?
Most recently I finished a few plasma panels I started a few months ago, which I learned from Mark Ditzler and Percy Echols II during a workshop at the Pittsburgh Glass Center.
The cool thing about this recent set of panels was that I did them all by myself from start to finish, even filling them with gas using my own manifold that I built with my husband — most manifolds for plasma art end up being custom built somehow, it’s not something you can get off the shelf very easily.
I really liked making this anime piece as a first test piece. Ever since I saw borosilicate beads be used to make the crackly effect on plasma panels, the appearance reminded me of comic books and manga, so this is my first experiment playing with this sort of illustrated look.
Of course, I couldn’t help myself to do something that leans on my background, and designed a tongue-in-cheek piece tentatively titled “It’s right there,” a commentary on the disappearance and reappearance of the clitoris in medical education, and overall, a lack of information about this body part. I made two different versions of the piece, each with different gas fills, and I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely a fan of the bouncy krypton.
Before that, I also visited Wayne Strattman, one of the OGs of plasma art who’s worked with the medium for many decades, to take a crash course in making plasma art. We filled some pieces, including a pufferfish that I prepared for plasma fills back in California through glassblowing with the help of Lancelot Fraser. I was particularly interested in the pufferfish because it’s a shape with large and small volumes. The gas can behave differently in different volumes/shapes of glass, so I figured it could be a good first piece to create to see some of those differences.
I can get more into the process and the weeds (good, bad, and ugly) in future posts, but for now, these are a few of the fun, glowy things I’ve made so far. :) If you want to see more pieces I’ve made, I have more over on my Instagram @ThisIsKlinger.
Thanks for reading
And if you’re interested in following this new chapter, let me know if there’s anything you’d be curious to learn as I dive into this new world!