Tag: experimental glass

Hey Cube’sters!  Here’s an experimental piece I made using a fairly new technique from http://www.fusedglass.org called Kiln Pressed Glass. The goals are:  1)  to have the colors stacked without letting them mix up, 2) to have them spread like watercolors and, 3) all this without the piece becoming thick.  The light refraction is beautiful, like a kaleidoscope!  I’m such a metal head and any color not metal related doesn’t come naturally to me.  So, of course, I gotta master it, right?  🙂  This one took two full fuse firings up to 1500°F and held for – wait for it, ‘cuz I had to – one and a half hours!  The annealing (holding at app. 900 degrees to ensure stability/longevity of the piece) took two full hours.  The indention around my nose occurred because I didn’t plan my glass volume carefully enough on the 2nd run: the glass flowed around the fiber blanket squares used as a vertical spacer UNDER the kiln shelf which was on TOP of the glass which had a metric ton (well, not literally, but almost) of other kiln posts, bricks, shelves, etc on top of that; hence the “press” in the title. Plenty nerve-wracking.  Sorry I don’t have photos of the stack; maybe next time. The first firing looked like this after I opened the kiln and removed all the weights that were stacked on top:

Then I added more colored and clear glass pieces, stacked it up with tons of weight on top and repeated the process. This time I used as many colors as I had on hand for testing purposes.  I’m looking forward to other projects with planned color and pattern schemes to incorporate into mixed media works.  Stay tuned…