Ottawa artist's 'glass fur coat' set to dazzle thousands

An Ottawa artist will have the opportunity to show off her unique take on a classic Canadian garment to thousands of people next month at an international conference on glass art.

Charlynne Lafontaine's Choice Edible is made of approximately 8,000 pieces of blown glass, wire, and bronze, and is inspired by a fur coat her grandmother once owned. After more than a year of meticulous construction, the 35-kilogram piece is now on display at Ottawa's Loretta Studios and Gallery.

"I work a lot with found objects... I had my grandmother's old fur coat, and it was one of those coats that had a three-quarters sleeve, and it's not really practical for Canadian winters," said Lafontaine. "So I decided to base the glass fur coat on that. I deconstructed her fur coat, and from that made a pattern and made this coat."

Coat has 'wowed' glass fans

Lafontaine began work on the unique garment when she learned of a glass fashion show coming up at this year's Glass Art Society's 45th Annual Conference in Corning, N.Y., home to the prestigious Corning Museum of Glass.

"There'll be about 2,000 people attending the conference, and all glass people, which is really exciting for me, because sometimes I feel a little isolated," she said. "There aren't that many glass people in Ottawa. There are a few, we all know each other. But it will be fun to exhibit my work on a large scale."

Lafontaine says she's "really happy" with how the piece turned out, and that it's "wowed" a lot of people who've seen it.

She says creating Choice Edible by deconstructing her grandmother's old fur coat also became a fun history lesson.

"(The coat) was from Holt Renfrew, but then when I removed the lining, and I started taking apart the pieces, you could see the trapper stamps, and then the government approval stamps, and then the manufacturing stamps on the different pelts," she said. "So that was kind of a history lesson for me."

The Glass Art Society's conference takes place June 9-11.