Glass jewellery - flameworking and fusing

While experimenting with the diverse warm glass techniques in the glass art studio of NMMU in that first year, I also had the opportunity to attend a 2 day bead making course with Ingrid de Haast in Cape Town.

http://www.glassbeads.co.za/blog/

I learned about how to work with a proper hothead torch and the right way to handle the mixing of the two gases. (I had been working with camping gas only up to now). The most valuable word I learned was “POOP” (propane, oxygen, oxygen, propane) – the correct order to open and close your gas bottles. Quite important advise if you don’t want to blow up the house! You can bet your bottom dollar, I’ll never forget that word ever again and what it stands for!

I also learned about the importance of protecting your eyes from the glare of the molten borosilicate glass and the variety of equipment that's available to make flameworking versatile and creative.

Ingrid showed me how to design the workspace for convenience and easy workflow and explained the various suppliers and differences between the various glass products.

Back at the NMMU Glass studio I also tried my hand on “fused glass jewellery” and tested some scraps for fusing, tack fusing and gold enamel results. I even made a necklace with small glass mosaic tiles screen printed and baked with glass enamels.

left: blue scraps of cathedral glass (traditionally used for stained glass windows) fused and gold enamal applied before 2nd firing. I combined it with flameworked beads and commercial beads.

middle: homemade float (window) glass stringers tack fused onto other pieces of float glass with gold lustre added before second firing. I combined this with commercial crystal beads.

right: I screenprinted patterns onto commercial available glass mosaic tiles with glass enamel and fired at lower temperature. Completed it with jewellery findings and black seed beads.

These were fun projects, but the other experiments with fused and slumped glass would eventually prove to be much more challenging to tap into my creativity and I embraced that with fervour and enthusiasm.

Glass techniques united

Once we were more proficient in the various glass techniques, we were encouraged to start thinking about a project where we could combine all we had learnt so far.
Because I feel it as a waste of time to just randomly make something, the proposed project needed to make sense to me.
Far from being an accomplished glass artist with potential exhibitions to work towards, I had to find a way to make this meaningful for me and assure that it wouldn’t end up in a corner gathering dust.
That’s when I decided to get my inspiration from familiar territory: my family.
I compromised to combine all the newly acquired techniques in the still traditional format of a leaded window and ultimately made 3 circular windows with distinct focus area’s.

The central window: our current life – combination of past and present

• Central panel includes all our initials and excerpts of texts of our wedding ceremony and our children birth announcements. Techniques: texture slump, acid etch, gold paint.
• First circle: very abstract reference to quirky attributes in my husband’s and mine personalities in context of our present life. Techniques: tack fuse and sandblast.
• Second circle: reference to some of our cultural background with reproductions of sepia postcards of historical towns where we grew up and abstraction of lace patterns. Stains, oxide and acid etch.
• Outer circle: a modern twist on family life. In the fashionable Zen tradition and everything Eastern : kiln casted and tack fused pieces with Eastern symbols representing family values like respect, honour, love, etc.

The window to the left: reference to my husband’s and my background

• Central panel: a fused map from the area where we come from, with reproductions of stamps, done in silver stains and oxides, to refer to important dates and places in our lives. Some relief details were etched with hydrofluoric acid.
• Outside circle: Acid etch, sandblasting and a few details with gold paint. These small sections refer respectively, in an abstract, ornamental fashion, to the music of our wedding and one of the cultural legacies of our country of origin: lace.
  
  

  

The window on the right: concentrated on our children

• Central panel : as this was a combination of trial pieces of the first term, I had a duplicate of the central panel in the middle window and decided to repeat it in another one.
• First circle: fragments of my children’s fingerprints rendered in both oxides and sandblasting.
• Outer circle : an ornamental jumble of all the letters that constitute my children’s names. Techniques: stains and oxides and acid etch.

  

Although this project still has plenty technical mistakes it was, in the true sense of the word, a labour of love and gave me the opportunity to reflect on all that is important in my life.

First introduction to warm glass

At the evening classes Amanda had tempted me with all the warm glass techniques the full times students were experimenting with and now it was my turn to start playing.

All of a sudden I was thrown into a kaleidoscope of materials and equipment and the first term we spent experimenting.

I learned :

The importance of the compatibility (or the lack thereof) of various brands of glass and how a different COE (coefficient of expansion) can ruin your work, if you don’t pay attention. We had the opportunity to work with Bullseye glass, which is specifically developed for the warm glass industry, but most of our experiments were conducted with the cheaper float (window) glass and cathedral glass.

How a glass kiln works and how different it works for glass compared to ceramics. (right a kiln traditionally used for ceramic firing, left a kiln more specifically designed for glass with top heating elements.)

What is ramping and annealing and how important it is to know how it works and how to implement it.

Different techniques like: tack fusing (clear 3d definition retained of 2 or more layers of glass), fusing (various layers of glass completely integrated (melted) into one smooth surface definition), fusing with inclusions and what is suitable for inclusions (e.g copper , foils, etc) slumping (glass will adopt the form of a mould or may drop through a drop mould), kiln casting (firing the glass to a temperature to a consistency of honey so that it can fill a plaster mould - although there wasn’t enough time for me to get serious about the casting process.

(pics left to right: tack fuse, cast, drop mould - the cast and drop mould done by fellow students)

How to work with acid and the serious precautions needed to work in a safe environment.

About oxides and stains and how it can transform a uniform coloured piece of glass in something that can have depth and illustrative imagery.

Amanda let us play for a while, but at the start of the second term we were instructed to start thinking about a project that would combine all the methods we had tested so far.

Art glass education - back to basics

My first day at school, I felt like any first grader, who doesn’t want to let go of mommy’s hand (of course I couldn’t hold my own hand!). As my portfolio of 25 years ago exempted me from the first two academic years, I was allowed to start in the 3rd and final year of the National Diploma course. I was the only newby in a class of 15 old hands at art school! Due to my many years of working experience in the real world, I got another exemption in that 3rd year and eventually had a syllabus that contained: art history, life drawing and practical glass.

The art history classes were not too bad –I could sit somewhere in the back, blend into the background and work on my own. The focus of 3rd year was on the modern art trends starting at the end of the 19th century and developing into the vast domain of contemporary art. This part of the syllabus encouraged reading of artists biographies and reviews, researching art works in the various disciplines (sculpture, painting, other) and visiting galleries, analysing movements, attending talks, and more.

After a hiatus of 25 years, connecting again in a serious way with the art world and modern art especially was quite fascinating. I had been out of proper art education for a quarter century and in a way lost touch. Being 25 years more "mature", it also made me look at modern art in a new way.

The most intimidating was the drawing: one 45 year old together with fifteen 22-ish year olds drawing live model! Of both sexes! When I did my degree in Belgium, I was at an all girl technicon and our lecturer only ever arranged female models – imagine my shock. It does seem however that I did a reasonable good job at hiding my discomfort, because I don’t think any of the younger ones ever figured it out. It was a great relief that – even though I hadn’t done live model drawing for a quarter century – I seemed to have had retained my technique and I didn’t have to hang my head in shame in front of the other, younger students. We started off with sketch drawings and focusing on various techniques and materials to get a better understanding about the different results in rendering a sketch with pencil, charcoal or pastel. Although the bulk of our work was concentrated on drawing the human body in all its detail, facets and movement, some of our sessions took us to the outdoors to observe and interpret nature.

The practical glass classes were a dream come through and I enjoyed that to the full. I got hands on opportunities to experiment and with every new technique that I learned, new ideas popped up in my mind and the list of projects that I would want to try grew longer every day.

Learning about Glass.

As I had decided that I wanted to do more than flame working and bead making, and find other ways to learn about glass, I had to figure out how.

Unfortunately, I live in Port Elizabeth, far away from other major cities where more glass oriented courses or possibilities are on offer, and it would have been quite impossible for me (with fully established family, school and husband work commitments) to sign up for a 7 year apprenticeship in a hot shop in Cape Town.

After some research about what was on offer in our own town, I signed up for an 8 week Stained Glass Evening Course at the fine art department of NMMU. Although stained glass was not my first passion, this was a step I had to take in order to start connecting with fellow glass enthusiasts. And boy, did it pay off! I learned so much about various sorts of glass, glass cutting tools and techniques, grinding and polishing to get the correct shape, safety and health precautions in the glass workshop, etc. After an initial trial piece to get confidence at cutting glass and leading up, we had to make a properly designed piece, to show we had indeed mastered the basic cutting and leading techniques. My small trial piece was quite abstract, but for my second piece I took inspiration from theKoisan rockpaintings.

Amanda, our teacher and a wonderful glass artist in her own right, burst at the seams with enthusiasm about the possibilities of working with glass and before my term course was over, we’d spent many hours chatting about why I was there and what I wanted to achieve.

She eventually convinced me to enrol as a full time student (lucky me, I was not working and actually could do this) to work intensively with glass and learn as much as possible about all the different aspects of cold and warm glass techniques.

Although I was scared out of my wits, it was the most important step I had made in many, many years and was looking forward to exciting change in my life.

What's in a name?

Initiative: explanation according to http://dictionary.reference.com/

• an introductory act or step


• leading action


• readiness and ability in initiating action


• enterprise


• one's personal, responsible decision


• the power or ability to begin or to follow through energetically with a plan or task; enterprise and determination.

Initiative : similar meanings according to http://thesaurus.reference.com/

• enterprise


• enthusiasm


• drive


• action


• and more
  

When I decided a few years ago to move into the realms of the art glass world and subsequently educated myself practically and research wise, the posibilities of what I would be able to do with glass were enormous.

My tertiary education at NMMU (B. Tech Fine Art specializing in Warm Glass Techniques) taught me how to think beyond the obvious and create glass that's more than just throwing together a few pieces of glass and see what the kiln spits out.

I also figured out that I would really want to take my view on glass beyond the confines of my own amusement and outlined the basic principles of my anticipated glass business as follows:

• practical homeware (yes, one has to make a living after all)


• using my glass to express thoughts and issues affecting our society (local and at large)


• creating sustainable projects (job creation)


• glass as my personal creative outlet

As my ideas for the glass studio will - in time - reach way beyond me and my kiln, I decided that Initiative would be the right description for what I wanted to do ..... hence... the birth of The Glass Initiative.

Glass, light and transparency, translate to rainbow colours. Living in South Africa for the past 25 years, being ingrained in this society and aiming to develop projects and work that reflect on our rainbow nation, it was only fitting to incorporate the rainbow concept that in what I want to represent.

A quote by Katherine Patterson expresses precisely what I mean

" The name we give to something shapes our attitude to it."

Starting with beads.

My first physical introduction to glass was bead making. This seemed to be something that I could do as a one-(wo)man show and that was precisely how I wanted to ease into the art glass business.

I bought a basic tools and equipment from Bohle Glass and started playing with the colourful Moretti glass rods. These were some of my first results.I decided that I can't just spend my days turning out random beads and decided to make specific colour combinations so I could make up a few necklaces.

I eventually also attended a beadmaking course with Ingrid de Haast in Cape Town .Back home, I continued to experiment and try to improve my flame working technique, but realized that I actually wanted more from glass. I realised that if I really wanted to bring my glass dreams one step closer to reality, I'd have to step out of my comfort zone and find people who could help me with learning more about glass.

Even if it took me a while to come to terms with, this particular decision would eventually mean one of the great changes in my adult life!

My second half century

The big 40 - that is where a big change happened in my life. After a lifetime of freelancing (signmaking and graphic design) and with the blessing (and encouragement) from my better half, I stopped working. All of a sudden I was left with a lot more hours in a day than I had had for a long time. Not wanting to turn into the proverbial soapie watching, tea and cookies gossipmonger, I looked for other ways to keep me out of mischief. One was volunteering in my kids’ Scout Group and another was indulging a passion for reading and catching up on lost times on all matters “design” I could lay my hands on.

A few years later, almost by accident (or shall we call it karma) I happened to see an advert for a Chihuly exhibition in an American home magazine and I felt myself getting all warm and excited.

The picture in the ad was spectacular and it triggered a latent interest in glass. I took reading and research on the subject to the next level and the more I surfed the web, the more fascinated I became. At one particular occasion a friend gave me a gift voucher and rather than go spoil myself with a new wardrobe I spent it on a great book about contemporary stained glass in architectural context. I spent hours devouring each page and trying to figure out: "How do they do that?".

"Even the wildest dreams have to start somewhere. Allow yourself the time and space to let your mind wander and your imagination fly." (Oprah Winfrey)

I desperately wanted to start working with glass for real but didn’t really know how and what. Research about techniques, materials and equipment eventually made me decide to start on a small scale: flame working and bead making. I'm quite a shy person and be able to work in my garage would suit me just fine. Agreed, the budget needed for a small flame working set up was also a deciding factor. I made a few acceptable glass beads but struggled with various problems that even advice from books or internet couldn’t really solve. I figured that I needed to step out of my comfort zone, get a human connection and start to work face to face with people in the industry - glass art industry that is.

To make a long story short: I started an evening course in Stained Glass (although not my primary interest), got convinced by my teacher to go back to school and do a full time B.Tech Fine Art degree with serious focus on warm glass applications et voila - here I am!

A 10 year process of discovery and learning. Now I’m 50 and ready to start something new with my life. I learned a stack in those few years, attended a few really great courses, visited a number of contemporary glass studio's and exhibitions and am hooked more than ever before. I see inspiration in everything around me and the list of projects I want to handle grows by the day. I'm blessed and look forward to a very productive and inspirational second half century!