Winter break 2019-20, and we were again blessed to have both kids home for the holidays. While our daughter was immersed in prep for her MCAT exams, I managed to get our son involved in my Glass work. He wanted to make something from the Game of Thrones TV drama series, and we settled on the Dragon Eggs.
Luckily, I had the perfect sheet glass and powder glass frit colors required.
Now came the difficult part: while I like free flowing designs, our son has more of an exacting, engineer’s attitude. So we had to figure out a way to precisely engineer the scales. The final method was SO SIMPLE…again proving the age old adage that ‘less is more’!
Making the flat egg-shaped ovals was one thing…shaping them into a half-egg proved quite the issue. We had to shape a flat, textured piece into a deep bowl, while maintaining the structure of the scales.
With the help of a few friends from my ‘Glassy’ world, I a) learned to make a mold out of clay, and b) received an ‘egg’ mold from Stephanie O’Tool of CPI . Both worked superbly…the CPI mold is smaller while the Clay mold was a good 5.5” long.
I mounted the 3 Glass eggs on a frame made by my husband, and backlit them with fairy led’s for dramatic effect.
Travels during Summer of 2019 let me check another item off my Bucket List. I got to visit Barcelona and view Gaudi’s masterful creations. The door of the Sagrada Familia inspired me to create a 3-dimensional work in glass. For some reason, I gravitate to Bowls whenever I am making a new project.
The first bowl I made was of textured Green Leaves on an Amber base. I liked the results, and expanded on this to create 4 more bowls, each representing the 4 Seasons. Each design iteration has elements of texture and transparency, juxtaposed to provide depth of vision in the resultant artwork.
Aptly titled ‘Texture, Depth and Transparency’, this tutorial is available for purchase from my Tutorials page.
This year, my husband gave me a very useful Valentines Day gift:) He helped format and e-Publish my Tutorial on Beyond The Sand Dollar, while sitting at the airport enroute to India!
I had made all the pieces, written up all the instructions—text and sketches, and had the step-by-step process pics. But had run out of time to format and publish before I left for the trip.
My ‘very smart’ hubby stepped up and helped complete it—-on his Laptop…in the airport between flights.
I think he’s a keeper…correct?
After months of research and experimentation, I finally completed my Tutorial on Coral Sculptures.
These are free standing pieces, on glass stands (instructions to make the Stand provided in Tutorial), which make stunning decoration pieces.
The e-Tutorial is available from the Learn Tab on this site.
Now to ‘play’ some more with glass…in preparation for the next Tutorial!
June 15th, 2018: My Glass and Copper floral sculptures are now brightening the new MMMB Patient Terrace at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Located on the 2nd floor of the new building…the Scott Bieler Clinical Sciences Center.
Open House was today... and Terrace is open to public as of this afternoon.
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June 1st, 2018: Woohoo…I am now a published author! Check out my Tutorial on how to make a Glass flower—-the Maltese Cross— in the Glass Patterns Quarterly magazine, Summer 2018 issue.
