I had a plan, a technique, a design in mind, I had already purchased the glass in the right quantities in the right colors - three shades of blue, and was driving over to the glass studio to make my piece when... out of my passenger-side window I see a car... It is completely rusted - but beautiful. I think it has been rusted out on purpose. The colors are dark grey, light grey, dark rusted orange, rusted yellow. I can't get those colors out of my mind.
So - as you already guessed by now, I set aside my plans for the blue project and bought new glass in the colors of the rusted car. Here is the rest of the story in pictures. This is a technique I learned at my glass class in January from visiting artist Richard Parrish.
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| Select the class, cut, clean. |
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| Next, make the mold |
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| In the kiln, ready to be fired I chose not to pre-fire into a slab |
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| Out of the kiln |
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| 15 min of grinding grey, orange coming through |
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| 30 min of grinding yellow and clear coming through top right has clear window |
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| Done! |
It is pretty, but it is not what I expected. This is always the case with glass - they turn out pretty but they are never what you had in mind. I had planned for more yellow/orange, and less grey. And also planned for more texture than I ended up with. But in chasing the yellow/orange I ground down more than I had planned for, and lost most of the texture.
Learnings... If I wanted more of the yellow/orange, and less grey, then I should have either flipped the stack order or carved the mold deeper. Always new learnings, and new things to try - I love it! Next project - use up the blue glass that I originally bought for this project :)
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