Helen Munroe’s love of ‘bright and shiny’ led to numerous art endeavors

Describing herself as a “magpie who loves anything bright and shiny,” artist Helen Munroe has plenty of ways to work color, shine, shape and depth into her creations.

Munroe, the owner of HB Jewelry and Glass Design, creates items as varied as glass Christmas ornaments to bowls, jewelry, night lights, art glass and large wall hangings.

Inspired by nature, sunsets, mountains and beach scenes, Munroe works in a variety of techniques and mediums, including dichroic glass, kiln formed, or fused glass, fused glass painted enamel and precious metal clay.

Munroe has a special love of dichroic glass, a manufactured glass with a vibrant, shifting color effect, depending on the lighting and angle of view. Dichroic can be used to create iridescent and kaleidoscopic effects in jewelry and art, but is also used for filters in microscopes and telescopes. NASA uses dichroic glass to shield spacecraft instruments from cosmic radiation.

“The kiln-formed glass — which is not the same as glass blowing — is also bright and shiny, but a little more abstract,” she said.

Kiln-formed glass is a technique using the heat of the kiln to shape and fuse glass into new forms; it can be used for a variety of both decorative and functional items, such as bowls and sculpture.

Fused glass painted enamel, another one of her interests, involves using enamel paints on glass, which are then fused in the kiln.

“It’s similar to fused glass, but allows me to make some things with a more painterly feel; I paint it and it is melted onto the glass after being fired in the kiln,” Munroe said.

She often paints pet portraits using the method.

Munroe also works with precious metal clay (PMC), a material made out of fine metal particles, a binder and water that can be molded and worked like clay, but also fired and finished using traditional metalworking techniques. Munroe uses PMC with fine silver, sterling silver and bronze in some of her art pieces.

She discovered the material after she decided to try beading, but then wanted to make her own beads.

“The day I found out I could put glass in the PMC, the heavens opened, the sun started coming down, I left the beading behind, I had found my happy place,” she said. “It’s got the color, the transparency that brings the light and the dichroic glass has the shiny element as well. I can zone out playing with my glass all day.”

Since 2008, Munroe has been certified to teach classes in precious metal clay.

Munroe said she has always been interested in art.

As an 8-year-old third grader, she competed in an art contest held at her school in Tucson, Arizona.

“I didn’t get first, but I got second place,” she said.

By the time she was in high school, between 1981 and 1984, she was taking an art class every year, usually painting or drawing. She even took a commercial art class and played with becoming a commercial artist.

She continued to take basic design classes while attending the Northern University of Arizona. She graduated in 1990 with a political science degree, with a business minor.

In 2002, she became a teaching aide, and in 2005, she became a special education teacher for the Poway Unified School District.

As a teacher, she was able to combine her love of art with her love of working with children.

“I always incorporated art in some way, such as using art projects to help teach the kids math,” she said.

In 2019, Munroe retired from teaching and moved to Ramona, motivated by the art community she discovered in town and a need for more room.

“I needed more space for my art,” Munroe said. “I had three kilns, a large grinder, a lot of smaller equipment and tons of glass. There is all sorts of glass you can get, and I have it and love all of it.”

She was familiar with the town not only from living in Poway and San Diego, but from attending the very first Art and Wine Festival in 2013, held at the Amy Strong Castle.

Munroe has continued teaching private lessons, and once or twice a year with the Second Saturdays program at the Art Center in Ramona.

After joining the Art Glass Guild in Spanish Village in Balboa Park at Studio 25, she also became a part of Studio 34B, where she creates art with four other artists one to two days a week on different days.

Munroe said she plans to continue trying new things and improving her art.

“I don’t want to ever stop learning,” she said. “I want to continue to learn and experiment and hope I will be doing something even slightly different at any given time.”

She encourages others interested in art to do the same.

“If you love art, it’s worth trying and taking some time to learn about it,” Munroe said. “The more you practice, the better you get.”

Munroe’s fused glass works and art jewelry can be seen at the Spanish Village in Balboa Park, 1770 Village Place; the 2Create Gallery in Ramona, 438 Main Street; the Fallbrook Art Center, 103 S. Main Ave. in Fallbrook; and the Poway Arts and Crafts Guild Artisan Market, Old Poway Park, 14134 Midland Road.

For a list of Munroe’s classes and upcoming events, visit hbglassdesign.com.