Heather Robyn Matthews: Etched and Carved Glass Artist

Heather Robyn Matthews, an award winning glass artist and furniture designer, has been a professional artist since 1979. As founder of Heather Glass, her body of work ranges from table-top sized sculptures to large architectural panels and carved glass and steel tables weighing up to several hundred pounds. She creates one-of-a-kind and limited edition pieces for residential, commercial, and corporate clients worldwide. Her husband and business partner Tim primarily handles the business side of the studio, including project management, and is also a commercial and fine art photographer.

A lifelong artist, Heather was born in Sacramento, California, and educated in Europe and the United States. She studied drawing and printmaking in college, and although she was accepted to several prestigious art schools, Heather had become fascinated with the transparency and crystalline nature of glass. She began experimenting with carved and etched glass and many commissions followed for entries, partitions, and windows.

Giving Form to Artistic Vision

In the late 1980’s, Heather began designing and building carved glass and metal chairs, tables and screens. Although she works with several talented metal smiths to produce her furniture, Heather does all of the design and supervises the metal fabrication and finish work very closely. Her exquisite carving of both plate glass and crystal, reflect her years of experience in both design and execution in this medium, and her natural talent as artist. 

Heather has participated in many group shows and showcase homes, and her work has been seen at many charity auctions such as Hearts for the Arts, Stars, Hospice of Santa Cruz, Save Our Shores, and Friends of Long Marine Lab. She participated in several group shows in the 1980’s and 90’s and also participated in Open Studios from 1987 through 1999. For the last 25 years, Heather has focused on one-of-a-kind, site-specific, commissioned work in carved and etched glass. She has worked for both commercial and residential clients, locally and nationally. Some of her Santa Cruz County, California work can be seen in the Crow’s Nest Restaurant, Star of the Sea Catholic Church, Oakwood Memorial Chapel, Seymour Discovery Center at Long Marine Lab, and the Watsonville Superior Courthouse.