Loaded and ready to fire...

The studio is up and running and I am knee deep in glass. I’m just starting out in the kiln glass world and want to give myself plenty of room to explore and play without the pressure to produce. Oh I have plans to produce some interesting works, but for now my sloppy idea books and napkin sketches are taking a back-seat to pure unadulterated childlike glee. I’m putting my hands in the paints (frit in this case) and letting my inner kindergartner come out to play without threat from the school ground bully. The bully in my case is my own way of talking myself out of trying things that aren’t “for sure” going to work. I give myself permission to fail. I give myself permission to throw things together just to see what happens. And that little inner bully can just stay in the principals office.

...first peak at the fuse!

Here is what the above piles of glass turned into after coming up to a full fuse. Lessons learned: Dense white is, well, dense. So it didn’t quite flow as smoothly as hoped, but the beauty of this medium is I can add some glass and fire it again, Bullseye compatible is tested up to three full fuses so back in the kiln for the leafy one. The two abstract black and white rectangles to the right are soon to be candle holders. I had made this rather pretty light plum on white part sheet with a suttle overlay of course clear that I was itching to use up so I decided to smash one piece just to see how it would flow back into the darker base and the other I cut more orderly. I like the effect, and though you can’t see it in the picture the interesting clear drops look like permanent water bubbles sunk into the white. Its neat! The last project was my first “play date” with painting with light. or drawing in a painterly fashion with frits. I started making piles and moving them around untill the frit decided to be a bird. The first tackfuse on this piece was very light so this round I tried building up a white fill to the birds body to give it some solidity on the mostly tranparent base. It’s starting to work, but I underestimated the amount of white powder to build up an opaque look. This one is also going back in for another round, I’m thinking maybe a solid sheet to the back for contrast but we’ll see…