Favorable (glass) reactions
November 22, 2011
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 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.
I gave them some rules of thumb I go by when I don’t have access to a reactivity chart and/or have no time to check. [Read more]
Keryn Whitney and glass inspiration
August 11, 2011
Got the sweetest email the other day, right on the heels of my, er, terms & conditions for the use of this blog. Don’t know if one had anything to do with the other, but it sure tickled me to read this:
Hi Cynthia
I just wanted to send you a quick thanks for imparting your wonderful
knowledge on the use of super glue with fusing. I had been working on a
design in my head for a while and just couldn’t work out how to translate it
into actual glass. I was able to take your tips and twist them a bit to suit
my needs. I have taken the liberty of attaching a couple of photos of the
end result. I submitted it to the “Ranamok” glass competition in Australia
and was selected. And while I don’t expect to win anything, there is
certainly no other glass quite like mine. The piece entitled “destruct ;
construct” was made using blown shards, that were lampworked, introducing a
secondary colour to them, and then kiln fused (using the super glue to
construct and hold in place before going into the kiln). While I’m not
completely happy with it - I think the piece is a good starting point for
further development of the idea.(some stuff deleted for brevity’s sake)
Once again thank you so much for your generous advice and please keep up the
great work with your blog – it’s one of the highlights of my day.
Cheers & regards
keryn
Cool, eh? And yup, she’s definitely a 2011 Ranamok finalist–go see who she’s competing against. Here’s what she submitted:
So how cool is that? (and yes, I did ask Keryn for permission to publish this and she said yes) Here’s a detail:
Complicated process; I can see how the superglue would help. And her idea (correction: her BRILLIANT idea) has now given me more ideas. I’m thinking about how to use superglue to solve a float glass casting problem I’m muddling through in my head. I’ll test it this weekend, and then we’ll see.
But isn’t that what artists sharing is really all about? IOW:
- You pass a technique to me, through a class, lecture, demonstration, exhibit, etc. I’m inspired all to heck.
- I play with your technique, put my own twists on it, and come up with something different. Then I blog about it, demonstrate it, write about it online somewhere.
- Somebody else sees it, adds THEIR brainview and sooner or later shows me the result…
- …and I get all inspired to heck. Again.
The sharing/brainstorming/collaborating/stealing with pride/whatever has just enabled me to do something better than I’d probably make on my own. Or as Keryn says:
I figure any “glassie” worth their salt will work out how I did it anyway – perhaps not the superglue trick (unless you’re a “fuser”) but what the hay – that’s how we all learn, when one person has an idea and they freely pass it into other people.
Anyway, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for Keryn with the Ranamok. And thanks, Keryn!
Touchable glass
April 18, 2011
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-edged fractures most likely reinforce the “eyes only” notion.
But what if “eyes-only” isn’t an option? Why can’t artists create glass for 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.)
Playing in the sandbox
April 11, 2011
Fun little project that’s worth investigating, one which started with my urgent need for about 600 glass cabochons.
I wanted to get as many cabs as possible out of scrap, so I began cutting up dozens of failed projects and refiring the pieces. Sometimes the results were spectacular, sometimes not…but my absolute favorites came from boxcasting experiments gone wrong.
I’d been experimenting with pate de verre boxmaking methods to get the look of PdV without all the just-under-the-surface bubbles, which make it difficult to carve into the glass without creating pinholes. [Read more]
Kinda like peanuts
April 1, 2011
Guess what I’ve been doing in my spare time?
I gave myself a goal to make 600 glass cabochons for a project I have at the end of April. And so for the last three or four weeks I’ve been chopping, shaping, grinding and firing dozens and dozens of those kilnformed murrini I’ve been writing about.
And they’re kinda like peanuts: I examine a fresh-from-the-kiln batch, wonder what would happen if I sawed the cane THIS way, or fired an extra 30 minutes, or stacked the glass THAT way…and off I go to try that, too.
A cabochon’s small format is useful–I can try out all kinds of variations without breaking the bank on glass. (And, actually, my OTHER goal was to use as much scrap as possible, so this is becoming a great exercise in recycling.)
Tonight, though, I pressed “Start” on the kiln controller, walked past what is now called the Counter o’Cabs…and for the first time started to count.
578.
Drat. Still short by 22 cabs. Then I remembered I’d loaned Mom 40 of the little beasties to colormatch, up north.
So, actually, I’ve made 618 (rather good-looking, if I do say so myself) cabochons in maybe 20 weeknight evenings.
Done! Yeeeeeehah!
What I’m going to do with the hundred or so blanks currently cooking in the kiln, or the maybe 50 more waiting to be coldworked, I dunno. And I still have about 20 pounds of cane waiting to be cut up…
Uhm….there may be an Etsy store in my future. Cabs, anyone?
BTW, this is part of a series that I *still* haven’t finished–never knew there were so many ways to make murrini in a kiln. Here’s the rest of the series:
- Murrini cane in a kiln: Sandwiches, Part I
- Murrini cane in a kiln: Jellyrolls
- Kilnformer’s murrini you can buy
- Murrini cane in a kiln: The rod pod
Murrini cane in a kiln: Sandwiches, Part I
March 2, 2011
What’s the difference between a murrini cane and a pattern bar?*
Beats me; I’ve only found two: Pattern bar typically isn’t stretched or compressed to reduce the pattern (and incidentally increase the number of murrini) and the final slices are generally bigger than typical murrini. In fact, for many types of murrini you start with a huge pattern bar, then heat and stretch and compress it until it becomes…murrini cane.
BTW, this is part of a series that I *still* haven’t finished–never knew there were so many ways to make murrini in a kiln. Here’s the rest of the series:
- Murrini cane in a kiln: Jellyrolls
- Kilnformer’s murrini you can buy
- Murrini cane in a kiln: The rod pod
- Kinda like peanuts
Murrini cane in a kiln: Jellyrolls
January 4, 2011
Last time around, I talked about murrini cane, and the most obvious way to make them in the kiln: A murrini rod mold, AKA “rodpod.”
As I’ve said, I’m not pretending that anything I discuss here is my invention or brand new stuff: Murrini-making is one of the oldest glassmaking techniques. This is just a compendium of methods I use to make murrini in a kiln. You’re welcome to try these; please comment if you have other/better ways of doing this.
Murrini molds certainly can make some beautiful murrini, but it’s a grab-bag affair. The size of your cane is limited to the dimensions of the groove in the mold, rarely more than a foot in length, so the number of murrini per cane is relatively small.
Worse, because the components are harder to keep in place in these molds, canes aren’t particularly reproducible unless you stick with squarish designs. Gravity tends to smoosh everything into a squarish loaf shape, flattening out any round or symmetrical patterns. Stuff may or may not slide around, so it can be difficult to exactly reproduce the same pattern across multiple cane. If I need to cover two or three square feet with identical murrini, I make two or three times what I need and match it by hand; I usually wind up with two or three totally unusable cane from a rodpod.
BTW, this is part of a series that I *still* haven’t finished–never knew there were so many ways to make murrini in a kiln. Here’s the rest of the series:
- Murrini cane in a kiln: Sandwiches, Part I
- Kilnformer’s murrini you can buy
- Murrini cane in a kiln: The rod pod
- Kinda like peanuts
Murrini cane in a kiln: The rod mold
December 22, 2010
FINALLY I’m back in the studio after a seven-month hiatus. I figured I’d start with something easy: Making components for bigger sculptures. Then it turned into this bigger thing, i.e., surveying methods for making murrini cane in a kiln. The whole thing is ‘way too long to publish in a single post, so I’ll break this up into sections. Sorry about that.
I’ve got some ideas for cast, figurative sculptures and vessels that incorporate murrini, bronze and other things. I’m not entirely sure where this is going, i.e., I want to play around a lot before I finalize the series design, so I need a LOT of murrini to experiment with…and I set out to make a bunch.
BTW, this is part of a series that I *still* haven’t finished–never knew there were so many ways to make murrini in a kiln. Here’s the rest of the series:
- Murrini cane in a kiln: Sandwiches, Part I
- Murrini cane in a kiln: Jellyrolls
- Kilnformer’s murrini you can buy
- Kinda like peanuts
Pop goes da weasel
September 8, 2010
Ever had one of those moments of sheer, utter astonishment, where your mouth drops open all the way down to your ankles and stays there?
That was me on Monday, thanks to the artwork pictured above. The rightmost panel quietly separated itself from its hanger and came off in my hands…while I was rehanging it. Since it’s been hanging perfectly well on that same wall for more than three years, I was, uhm, kinda taken aback.
The heck with it. Let’s play! (Part 2: Zen gardens)
June 12, 2010
(BTW, you folks know that you can click on one of the images in these posts to bring up a slideshow with more info about what’s pictured, right?)
Most of us get into the art business because we love it…but it’s possible to love it to death. You can get so serious and self-critical about your art that you maybe forget why you’re doing it: Because it’s so much fun. I realized last weekend that I was headed that way, fast. [Read more]