Glass goes Bollywood

Say Bollywood and immediately we've got visions of bright and hot colours, sparkling jewels, gold, silver, bling bling, .... .

That same spirit of luxury indulgence is now captured in the newest and hottest thing to hit the glass art and craft world : dichroic glass. Since its development for the aerospace industry, artists have started using this glass to create unique items for public, art, home and personal use.

Dichroic glass is glass that contains multiple micro-layers of metal oxides vapours, condensed on on the surface of the glass in the form of a crystal structure. The main characteristic of dichroic glass is that it has a transmitted colour and a completely different reflected colour, as certain wavelengts of light either pass through or are reflected. This causes an array of shifting colours to be displayed, depending on the angle of view.

Dichroic glass before use in various fused applications.

Dichroic glass can be fused with other glass in multiple firings. Due to variations in the firing process, individual results can never be exactly predicted, so each piece of fused dichroic glass is unique. Dichroic glass is specifically designed to be hotworked but can also be used in its raw form. Sculpted glass elements that have been shaped by extreme heat and then fused together may also be coated with dichroic afterwards to make them reflect an array of colors.

colourful door knobs by Uneek glass fusions , beautiful plates by laurelyourkowski, jewellery by argeebargee, architectural applications by john blazey.

The glittering, playful, rainbow magic of dichroic glass makes it very sought after for jewellery, home details that are the talk of the town and large, mesmerising archtectural installations and artworks. Glitz and glam has never failed to capture the imagination of humankind!

Chihuly

Chihuly - the biggest name in the development of modern studio glass and definitely the deciding factor to pursue a dream of working with warm glass.

mint museum

My family still lives oveseas and when we planned a visit at the end of my last year of my studies, I was totally excited to see that our visit would coincide with the exhibition:

My children and I crossed the channel (our families live in Belgium and hubby stayed) and while my 2 sons decided to paint London red, my daughter and I set off by train to Kew to see my "idol's" work in real life!

Even though the weather was typical English (wet and misty), it was the experience of a lifetime to walk through the spectacular installations and feel like a kid looking for colourfull Easter eggs between the greenery of the conservatories.

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.