I know I've promised a bunch of you that I'd deliver a compilation of knee replacement surgery information and I WILL PUBLISH THAT SOON. Promise. It's just that I'm having a little trouble developing a new template that doesn't take 9 gazillion years to edit and maintain. Thanks for your patience because I'm swiftly running out of mine. Whoever thought shortcodes [...]
This is the fourth and final installment of the (longer-than-War-and-Peace) tutorial on making a pate de verre panel. In the first post, Carla, Shelby and I designed and made our models. In the second, we "invested" them, i.e., poured refactory plaster over them and made molds, and in the third we filled and fired the molds. This time [...]
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 [...]
If you mix frit colors--as all pate de verre and frit painting artists do with abandon--you quickly learn about reactivity between colored glasses. Try warming up the chill BE Salmon Pink with a little BE Medium Amber, and the resulting sludgy grey-brown will stick in your mind forever. Or so I thought. At a beginning casting workshop recently, one of my students complained that it was tough to simply remember what reacted with which. Or worse, when they combined glasses from two manufacturers, they couldn't find any reactivity info at all, which apparently resulted in some unpleasant surprises.
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.
OK, so where are we? Oh yeah. At the end of the first firing of Triangle, this was the tally: One destroyed clay sculpture (getting it out of the mold kills it) No silicone master as a backup One spent plaster/silica mold About 8 pounds of unfused frit mixed with talc and hence garbage One giant glass donut that should [...]
So...in part I, I meandered through a lot of creative angst and made this clay sculpture. Now, in part II, I pretty much wreck the heck out of it.
Sometimes, no matter how often you destroy it, a piece refuses to go quietly. Instead, it hangs around and bugs you until, in desperation, you finish it just for the sake of peace and quiet. Triangle was one of those. Despite seven disastrous mistakes, it's finally out of the kiln. Along the way, it taught me quite a bit about what makes my work tick.
