16 MARCH 14-20, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Ashes to Ashes MEET THE “SUBURBAN WEDNESDAY ADDAMS” WHO MAKES ART OUT OF DEATH. BY EMILY FERGUSON The workroom at Flux Studio is hot from the blazing furnace that Danelle Rains uses to craft her swirling glass sculptures. From buoyant teardrops to hearts and spheres, the shapes are fl ush with bright, spiraling hues — as well as intriguing fl ecks that glimmer like snowfl akes. Cradling one of the pieces in her hands, Rains explains that her friends call her the “suburban Wednesday Addams” because, similar to the fi ctional youngster, the local artist isn’t afraid of what others may label creepy or dark. And that’s been necessary for her artistic endeavor, Memento Mori: Those sparkling fl ecks shining from her glass pieces are cremation ashes. “Some people, when they ask about it, they’re kind of creeped out by it,” she admits with a laugh. “Other people think it’s the best idea. It’s really a personal thing, just like grief is very personal. And I just love that it’s something that I get to do. “The whole idea behind it, rather than having it be something like an urn that’s somber that you kind of keep hidden away, having something to display and show off that you have this beautiful art that used to be your loved one,” she explains. Rains has been making cremation me- morials for two years, after learning how to incorporate ashes into glass from her original mentor, Jessica Schimpf of Mantra Glass Art, who has since moved from Colorado. “She was the one who taught me how to do it,” Rains says. “It’s a niche thing, and not a ton of glassblowers do it, and she was one of the few in the Denver area at the time when I started who did it a lot.” She knows that her pieces aren’t just artworks — each one is a representation of a life lived and lost, to be honored by vivacious color and shapes. As she explains how the glass is heated, cooled and shaped with the remains of loved ones, it echoes a quote from Chase the Rainbow, by Poorna Bell: “Grief that arises from death is fi re, and in this fi re you will be remade into something different, something that feels and sees much deeper than other people around you.” The memorials, pulled from fi re, evoke that depth like a phoenix — a mythological crea- ture that Rains adores. “I love the idea of fi re as an agent for rebirth,” she says, “and being able to take essentially silica and fi re and cre- ate something that makes somebody come alive to somebody else again.” It’s an emotional art form, to be sure, and her pieces are emotive before you even realize what you’re holding. Perhaps that’s the palpable energy of the person inside, like a genie in a bottle; perhaps it’s because Rains invokes her work with so much thought and intention. And perhaps it’s both, as Rains suggests. “I’m a lit- tle woo-woo,” she admits. “In my astrology chart, I have Neptune in the eighth house, and one of the things that stems from that is I have this weird fascination with death. I have this dreamlike qual- ity to where I don’t really think that death is a tan- gible concept; it’s more like it’s a person to me. So I feel more like it’s me interact- ing with that person, that personifi cation of death.” When Rains is commis- sioned to make a memo- rial, she has a one-on-one consultation to discuss what her customers expect from the work. A box of tissues is usually handy. “So much of it is just being able to let somebody express their feelings and let somebody feel what they’re feeling,” Rains says. “I’ve had consultations where they start telling me stories and I’m sitting there crying. And nine times out of ten, I do it at coffee shops, and so we’re both crying in a coffee shop. “But it’s cathartic, and it helps me to realize that grief is what helps us hold on to life,” she adds. “It’s what helps us seize life. Because it’s what reminds us that we’re only here for a short while.” Rains is a person with whom it’s easy to talk about death. She has a warmth and calm- ness about her, and that’s helped customers open up to her on such a heavy topic. “Part of my process when I meet with people face- to-face is I’ll ask them for specifi c memories, beloved stories, because at heart I’m a story- teller,” she notes. “And when people relive that moment in their memory, as they’re telling me the story, for a fl icker of a second, that person is still alive to them. And that is amazing to witness, and it is overwhelmingly cathartic, not just for me, but for them. And I love to help people in that way.” Her calm nature also helped when Rains was a dispatcher for the Colorado State Patrol. “It was the greatest job I ever had — or job job, I should say, because clearly, this is much more rewarding,” she says. “But every day I got to improve somebody’s life. And yeah, I had bad days — some days that I think about to this day, ten years later — but I wouldn’t trade it, because I got to learn a lot about myself.” She also learned how to ask for help when she needed it, and in 2022 that led her to work with artist Jesse Guess, a new mentor who currently assists her on the memorial pieces. “I wasn’t getting to where I wanted to with my glassblowing,” Rains recalls, when her cousin suggested she ask Guess, a longtime family friend, to guide her. “Why didn’t I think of that?” Rains re- members thinking. “So the next day I called him, and we’ve been working together ever since. Even something simple like that... to just ask for help, to show me the things that I’m not fi guring out myself, was huge.” After quitting her full-time job, Rains con- centrated on becoming a full-time artist. “As I started thinking about it, I thought about what ways I could help people,” she recalls. “And one of the things that I love about being able to do these cremation memorials is that I get to help people process their grief, and I get to help them be a little bit of an outlet.” Rains is a fourth-generation Denver resi- dent, and creativity runs in her blood. “I come from a long line of stagehands,” she says. “I am a little different in that I’m branching out into the visual medium, but really, it comes naturally to my family to be attracted to these kinds of creative endeavors.” Creativity isn’t the only family tradition she’s honoring: “My husband and I recently renovated my great-grandparents’ house. That’s now our home, where we are raising the fi fth generation of kids of our family,” Rains says proudly. “My family has had this house since the ’50s, and we’ve always lived in it at some point.” When she’s not there with her kids, she’s at Flux Studios or selling her non-cremato- rial wares at craft fairs. Being able to make monuments for people to treasure forever, though, is what lights her fi re. “If I could do this until the day I die, I absolutely want to do that,” she concludes. “I love being able to have this gift and sharing it with people, to help bring them peace.” Visit mementomoriglass.com to learn more. CULTURE KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS Danelle Rains of Memento Mori. DANELLE RAINS