Packing May

May won’t be out of the kiln until tonight, so  I’m occupying my time with about a million things (including work, other sculpture, buddies, etc.)…and documenting the whole process of making her. So far I’ve covered:

The inspiration for the sculpture “May”
The constructing of May’s clay model
The making of a silicone mold of May
Planning May’s mold
Making May’s mold
Packing May’s mold (this post)
Decanting May’s test run
May the second (final version)
Taking the girls for a stroll

So now, the last step before firing: Filling the mold with glass.

With most types of casting, filling the mold is pretty much a no-brainer: Stick some colored glass in specific spots and hope it stays there, dump the rest of the glass into the reservoir, pray to the kiln gods and stick the mold in the kiln. Maybe takes an hour.

Loading the glass into a pate de verre mold of this size takes at least 12 hours, with lots of decisions to make along the way. The way I do it (other PdV artists do it differently), the glass goes down in sticky, tightly packed layers, generally starting with the smallest particle size (and therefore the most bubbles/opacity) and working back to the largest, most transparent chunks (to add volume without compromising light transmission).

I can put as many as 20 layers into a sculpture–each falls into one of four categories that run from mold surface to the back of the piece, in order:

1. Color/detail layers. These are the surface layers that give final texture, define very fine line/detail, and provide most of the color. They’re generally done in glass powder.
2. Overtone layers. These sit behind the detail layers, enriching surface colors and opening them up to light. They’re generally made with frit tints, i.e., strong transparent or opaque powder distributed as evenly as possible onto “fine” frit. When melted, this gives the effect of a thin layer of color surrounding a “bubble” of clear glass, increasing light transmission. They allow me to add strong, rich color without making the piece too dark or opaque, as would happen if I tried using dark-colored glass exclusively. Generally, they start fairly dark but use less and less color with successive layers.
3. Undertone layers. Unlike the overtones, these layers use different colors than the surface, and provide deep shading. For example, to simulate tissue under human skin I’ll sift a dark red or orange powder well back in the layers, adding more where the skin is naturally redder (cheeks, lips, etc.) Or I may throw a dark purple shadow under the eyes. The undertone layers also control light transmission. If I want an area to glow with light, I’ll fill the undertones with clear glass. If I want the eye to stop on the surface of the piece and take in more detail, I’ll stop the light with a layer of opal (opaque) powder.
4. Filler. My pate de verre pieces are hollow, which makes for faster firing schedules, lighter-weight pieces and reduces production cost/effort. It also gets more light into the piece. Still, for strength and stability the piece needs to be at least 3/8 inch thick, so I add coarser clear glass to the back.

Sifting the first (powder) layer for color
May’s a relatively straightforward shape, with fewer undercuts and shelf overhangs than I usually sculpt (thank heavens). She shouldn’t need a supporting talc core to keep the glass in place. And, aside from detail in the eyes, she really only has three color fields: Flesh tones for the head, greys and purples for the hair, and black for the background.

She has old skin, which tends to mottle and streak, and her hair and skin are essentially the same value. That gives me a “get out of jail free” card as far as color mistakes are concerned–if some hair tone strays into skin or vice versa it won’t hurt much, and minor color reactions will look like age spots. She’ll actually look better if the packing is not so precise. (whew)

Still, her coloring has given me fits. My original idea was to portray May as a series of darkish grey tints to boost the whole notion of end-of-life and prison-drab. Unfortunately, the greys I’ve tested so far–about 80 different combinations of grey, blue and purple–haven’t cooperated. No matter how carefully I mix, the samples are far too mottled and blotchy.

The grey opals don’t seem to disperse well unless I make them very dark and too light-restricting, and the transparent greys need quite a bit of thickness to actually look grey. BTW, I do my layering tests for pate de verre with a mold made from a madeleine cookie sheet–the shell’s ridges give me a good idea of how the layers will respond to the contours of a face.

Even when I can get an even mix, the color is too lifeless. So I fall back on my old standby, Bullseye Light Peach Cream and 1401 Crystal Clear. Mixed together, the two take on a warm, even honey tone, easily altered with tints. In this case, I’m greying them down a bit with a little Uro Grey Blue Opal, boosting the sere with some Light Coral Orange Tint and Medium Amber, then slightly increasing the opacity with Lighting White.

I start with the eyes–each must be detailed with the correct color around a clear frit ball and then protected with a thick layer of clear powder. I dab a bit of wax bondo on the center of the pupil and adhere the frit balls (they weren’t sticking out enough to embed in the plaster/silica). Then I carefully top them with chunks of black and amber frit, also stuck on with wax bondo. I surround that with a thick layer of Midnight Blue in the iris, and French Vanilla in the pupil–white glass here would be too white, and the FV will give me a slight yellowing which will go with the aging skin tones.

Then I top that with my clear powder, clean up the spillover onto the face with a wet brush, and start filling in the facial color. I add a slight warmth, not much, to the lips with the coral tint, and sift a little Blue Gray Opal on the eyebrows. The rest is covered with “face powder.”

The powder layer is about an eighth of an inch thick, thicker where I want more opacity to give an aged, “velvet” skin, thinner in areas like the cheeks where I’ll want the deeper color layers to show through and give the face some life. I always mix up about twice as much as I need, and store the rest in an empty frit jar, formula marked on the side, for subsequent color corrections.

The “hair” is nearly vertical in this mold, which lets me sift a light coat of Blue Gray Opal just onto the ridges of the hairlines. I’ll come in with lighter colors in the fritpack–the contrast will emphasize individual strands of hair. I’m leaving the background strictly alone until the face is completely packed.

Frit-packing
Now that I’ve got the face colored with powder, I can pack in the frit layers, which provide underlying color and depth, and round out the volume of glass in this hollow sculpture. Each layer in May’s face is a different color of almost entirely transparent glass. The signature bubbles of pate de verre interfere with light transmission and make subsequent layers just visible enough to give depth and life to the face:

• Layer 1 (powder): Provides most of the color and detail.
• Layer 2 (powder tints surrounding fine crystal clear “carrier” frit): Uses the powder mix from layer 1 to reinforce the color. Because it’s now coating fine clear frit, the powder will be more translucent and open.
• Layer 3 (powder-tinted frit): The skin undertones, stronger colors that lie below the surface and give the illusion of flesh/fat/blood beneath. In May’s case, I’ve mixed about 70:30 fine Crystal Clear and fine Medium Amber as carrier frits, with coral tint, transparent red and light peach cream powders (photo below).
• Layer 4 (powder): An optional, very light coat of strong color, usually opaque red or orange, primarily in the cheeks, center of forehead, tip of nose and tip of chin to provide additional shading and reinforce the liveliness of the skin. Here, it’s a very, very scant sifting of my favorite color, Pimento Red.
  

  Just laying down the third and thickest layer in the pack. This is primarily an undertone layer--it won't be seen on the surface, really, but will add color depth. In this case I've added some medium amber "carrier" frit (the larger particles that will be coated with tint powders) to my usual crystal clear. That will darken and warm up the face considerably. The tint colors, mostly warm reds, will add a "blood" tone to the skin. The third layer of the hair, which includes mostly pale purples and blues, is already down.

• Layer 5 and beyond: Pure crystal clear frit, fine, medium and then coarse, packed throughout. This will add volume to the glass while minimizing interference with light transmission. If I continued to use colored glass, not enough light would reach May’s skin.

I do something similar for the hair. Crystal Clear frit will read as a cold blue-white in pate de verre, perfect for grey hair, so I mostly just play with the tints a bit to give it some life.  The intial frit-pack layer is a mixture of clear carrier frit tinted with blue-grey, white and silver-grey powders. The second layer contains Dusty Lilac and Lightning White, and the subsequent layers are simply crystal clear frit.

When I’m done, I’ve used about 9 pounds of fine Crystal Clear frit to fill May’s head (that’s why I buy it in 40-pound tubs) and about half that much in other colors and frit sizes. This will be a heavy piece.

Laying in the background
I razor off any remaining wax or crud, carefully vacuum any stray glass particles from the background. Then I start laying in the background glass.

I want May to emerge from the darkness, so the black should smoothly engulf the head. Since the background is a smooth sheet of glass it won’t grab the powder and frit the way plaster/silica does, and without some kind of transition it’s liable to separate from the head. So I lay scraps of thin black around the edges. They’ll hopefully “catch” the face and slide slightly in, keeping the face layers in place and making a black halo that fades into the background.

I cut a shield of stiff white paper to fit around the thin black sheet, then add blue painter’s tape “handles.” This will help keep black and blue powders out of my face area. Black, especially, is a nasty, eat-every-thing-in-sight-and-spread kinda glass, so I don’t want it messing up my carefully packed face area.

May believes that she’s being held prisoner in the nursing home, so as a private conceit I sift and hand-draw “bars” on the background, in transparent Midnight Blue, a very dark, almost indigo blue. The background is going to be completely black so it’s unlikely that much of these bars will show…but I’ll know they’re there.

I sift Stiff Black powder on top of the bars and all over the sheet glass. I’ve found Stiff Black to be a little less transparent than regular black, and that’s exactly what I want–the light should all be coming through the face. Once I have about an eighth of an inch of powder I spoon coarse Stiff Black frit on top, carefully, until I have about a quarter-inch in place.

Then I add my final color conceit, a very uneven sifting of Pimento Red (right). It won’t really show, even though it’s an opal color, but if some drops through to the front it’ll give a little fire to the black.

I top it all with the rest of the stiff black coarse frit and then carefully, carefully lift off my homemade shield from the face area, by the blue tape handles at either end. The shield worked; I’m left with only a few large chunks of frit in the pristine white, easily removed with tweezers.*

And that’s pretty much it. May goes into the kiln with a slow, slow ramp up schedule that allows 12 hours for drying and settling of the frit, she’ll process and anneal and be out Thursday afternoon. I’ve made so many process changes that she’s probably more rough draft than final work…but we’ll see.

————————————

*HAH! Famous last words. May’s mold was absolutely pristine, with absolutely no black in the face field at all…in the studio. I carried it to the garage and discovered that it’s extremely difficult to keep a large, heavy mold full of loose glass level when you’re lowering it into a kiln that’s not a lot bigger than the mold. The mold slipped, the glass tilted and about 3 lbs of black frit streamed across May’s face and into the kiln.

45 minutes and a lot of vacuuming later, I’d learned it’s better to just do the face in the studio, move the mold to the kiln and do the loose, dry-packed background inside the kiln. Normally all the glass is securely packed against the mold and can be moved fairly easily, but the glass background makes it easy for the frit to slide. I’ll remember that for the next one.

So…I scooped out and replaced the back (clear) layer of May’s face to get rid of the black contamination and redid the background in the kiln. May’s face area is now MOSTLY free of black glass, and on Thursday we shall see what we shall see. (sigh)

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