By now you’re probably wondering when this is ever going to end; we’ve made our models, turned them into molds…now what? We fill them, that’s what. In this post I’ll discuss how to choose and layer frit into your mold, and getting them into the kiln. In the final post (next week), I’ll show you how we finished the panels. [...]
In Part I of this series, I gave a (long-winded) description of designing, making and refining a model for a pate de verre garden panel. It's about 5x7 inches and maybe a half-inch thick (or a bit less), meant to hang on the wall. In Part II (this post), I'll talk about making the refractory mold. Part III will cover [...]
Pate de verre combines glass casting plus frit-painting plus sculpting plus moldmaking plus coldworking. Each of those can be daunting by itself; when you combine them, pate de verre can seem awfully difficult. In this project, I'm trying to reduce the complexity for beginners and still come out with an acceptable pate de verre piece. Most pate de [...]
It's all in the way you slice it. And the way you slice it is, apparently, profoundly affected by a good blade. Check any glassmaker's forum and you'll probably find someone with glass cutting issues, usually stemming from a tile saw that's more like a Cuisinart than a slicer. I don't claim any special expertise at this stuff, but I do have a decades-old, cheap, badly made, out-of-true tilesaw that reliably cuts amazingly thin murrini cane* slices. I do this a lot. So I must be doing something right...right?
How do you give non-casters a taste of pate de verre making..in less than four hours? That was the assignment, anyway. It was the Portland chapter's turn to host the Oregon Glass Guild's annual state meeting, and we wanted to do something a bit special. We decided on a theme of Stretch Your Wings, and gave it multiple meanings. First, we meant "stretch your wings by reaching out to the community." Instead of focusing on personal enrichment, this time we'd make art for the community, a glass quilt to be installed in a local hospital. Everyone who came would make at least one 6x6 inch tile for the quilt.
Lemme borrow a writer’s proverb for a sec: I hate coldworking. I love having coldworked. More particularly, I love having coldworked by hand.* I’ve so far found nothing to match the incredible, silky finish you get with hand-coldworking a piece of glass, so I was really interested in Paul Tarlow’s new book, Coldworking Glass without Machines: A complete guide to [...]
Glass may be one of the most untouchable of artforms--its strong relationship with light and color makes it extremely visual anyway, and its fragility and razor-sharp fractures most likely reinforce the "eyes only" notion. But what if that's not an option? Why can't artists create glass that speaks to the visually impaired? This is something ELSE I'm learning from this little informal teaching stuff I've been doing. (I gotta wonder if the whole reason you teach is to be able to learn more.)
Fun little project, which started with my urgent need for about 600 glass cabochons for a craft fair. I began cutting up dozens of failed projects, roughly shaping and firing them into cabs ranging from about a quarter-inch to 3x3 inches. Sometimes the results were spectacular, sometimes not...but my absolute favorites came from failed boxcasting experiments. I decided to make [...]
Apologies for the lack of posts lately; working silly-long hours at my day job at the moment (never have multiple clients in a crisis simultaneously) and also determined to stick to my "at least 20 hours/week" on my glass work. At the moment I'm rediscovering my INability to add another six hours to the day, and thinking that sleep is [...]
Whew. Been so busy my eyes are crossing (which makes it kinda hard to write), but did want to mention what I'm up to this week: Alicia Lomne's pate de verre class at Bullseye. I am having a ball, and sorry that the week's drawing to a close. Most people employ pate de verre techniques (there are many) to create [...]
