I’ve had a studio upstairs for working on the odd glass project, but this spring (2019), I’ve put together one on the main floor exclusively for Glass Art. I’ve always enjoyed working with glass, and have a large project to work on this summer, that combines a few ways of working with glass. If you’ve followed my work over the years, you should know that I love to mix-and-match my techniques and my media (like added stained glass to a wood carving).
I’ve been trying new techniques that involve painting on glass, fusing glass, slumping glass and many variations of them all. I’ve been adding copper foil and gold leaf to the fusing process as well.
I found that painting glass took some practice as the paint flows much differently than the acrylic I’m used to. I also had to consider the transparent aspects of the piece. With some of them I fused a white piece behind the painting, or added a small copper plate to it. But the possibilities are ENDLESS! 😀
I’ve also been doing some ‘torch work’, which involves heating glass up over a hot flame and forming it into shapes, as well as fusing other colors to it. This is the technique I’ve used to make the eyes for my ‘barnyard portraits‘. It took quite a few practice runs to get the colors and shapes for the eyes I needed and then have not crack during the cooling off process. Glass art requires more patience than I am usually used to (and this is from someone who carves pencils!!) 😀 Here’s a shot of me in my temporary glass art studio (aka the wood working shop).
Fusing glass has been fun. I’ve made a few small pieces of glass art so far, and am planning bigger ones soon. Much of the fused work will later be ‘slumped’, which is when I take flat piece of glass and melt it into a shaped mold, like a dish or plate. Of course, this involves one kiln session for the fusing and a second session for the slumping (each load takes about 24 hours) – again my patience!!! 😀
In the two fused glass art project shown above, I used some ‘stringers’, which are long thin spaghetti-like glass rods that I pulled from the bottom of a hot kiln. It’s a fascinating process, which again offers many possibilities. Below is a short edit of a video I made for a ‘Facebook live’ session which shows my pulling the molten glass from the bottom of a kiln.
I’ll have some more updates on this page as I work through more techniques, so check back!
I have been commissioned to paint an alpaca. But not just ANY alpaca, this alpaca painting features “Amy the Alpaca “. This fun theme is being commissioned for a wine label.
