In the spring of my senior year I decided to take hot processes, a free elective glassblowing class. This was for mainly for fun and it was a great chance to work in a new medium. Plus a glassblower I’m friends with mentioned, you can do pottery/jewelry anywhere; however glass blowing studios are harder to find.
This class was divided into 2 segments: glass casting, flame work.
Flame Work
For those unfamiliar with flame working, it involves taking essentially a table mounted blowtorch and using it to melt borate silicate glass rods. By using various graphite/steel tools the glass can be shaped into what ever your mind can imagine. Skilled artisans can use this method for blowing smaller glass pieces and they can use color to make pieces really come to life. As this was an intro class we only touched on the foundational skills.
My first project in the flame shop I elected to make skiers for my dad and sister who are both big skiers. My dad already has a metal skier, a wooden one I carved, and I figured a glass one would make a good addition to his collection. This was made as one piece with the exception of the skies which were made separately and glued on.
The second skill we learned was networking which can be used to make very intricate detail work. Famous glass artists such as Robert Mickelsen have made incredibly intricate pieces using this method. For my project I elected to make a leaf. Part of this reason was I made a wooden one in furniture design and wanted to make one out of glass. The other reason is I wanted a shape that could be well represented using lines, but simple enough that I could make it in the two classes we had set aside for the project.
Glass Casting
The other half of the class was spent learning how to cast glass. The first step in the process is to carve a wax mold which is then cast in plaster and divested to leave a negative of the wax. For this project I made two turtles. Turtles are my favorite animal so anytime I’m working with a new medium, one of the first things I try to make is a turtle. I have a collection of wooden, stone, and clay turtles so of course I needed a glass one. This process was pretty straight forward and just involved carving a turtle out of wax. Afterwards the mold was made by pouring plaster around the wax in a box and the wax was divested using a steamer. Once the molds were steamed and dried they were handed off to the professor who placed them in the kiln with glass chunks for casting.
The second casting project was an exercise in hand building. This is a process for building a mold around a 3D structure. To start we were given wax apple blanks to carve. I made a swimming first and then after seeing other students make cup like structures decided to give that a try with my spare time just to see what would happen. After carving, the molds had to be hand built layer by layer with plaster reinforced with fibers. After building the mold the rest of the process was the same as above.
Date: Spring 2019
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