Ginger Kelly looks to her youth for inspiration in her glass art.

"It's a kind of retro design - bold colors and random graphics," she said. "I'm a product of the '50s and '60s. I think all those colors from the '50s and '60s have inspired me."

Kelly's art isn't meant to sit on display tables in galleries, although many of her pieces have been shown in galleries and at JazzFest in New Orleans.

"I gravitate to functional designs," she said. "I like the idea of someone really enjoying looking at it, but can really use it in daily life."

She uses the traditional method of blowing glass to make the glasses, pitchers and vases that are the main focus of her designs.

She also uses blown glass in designing jewelry.

"The reason I started doing jewelry is because when you're blowing glass, it's a lot of work, a team effort. Jewelry is something I could do by myself. It's a different scale, a different set of problem-solving."

To showcase her own art and the art of others, Kelly recently opened the Glass Gallery in Breaux Bridge. Besides her glass and jewelry, she shows the work of other artists, some from Acadiana and some from around the country. Among the guest artists are her son, Jesse Kelly and Christy Decker, both Seattle artists.

Born in California, Kelly studied graphic design in the 1980s at California State University, Chico, which had a glass-blowing department.

"I always made things," she said. "My father was a mechanic, so we learned how to use tools and build things. I went into glass and latched onto it. I liked the three-dimensionality."

She subsequently moved to Seattle and pursued a career in art there, selling some of her designs to department stores across the country, but was drawn to Louisiana after showing some of her art at New Orleans' JazzFest.

"I had been coming to Louisiana - the people, the music, the food and all that."

She moved to Mandeville in 2005, across the lake from New Orleans, but recently decided to move to Breaux Bridge.

"New Orleans is great, but it's still hard, over there," she said. "Breaux Bridge has small town amenities and it's close to a city."