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…

After an exhausting search for a suitable kiln stand that didn’t cost a fortune in shipping, ending with no stand and keyboard cramped digits, we decided to make one ourselves out of some salvaged boxes that were acting as a temporary resting place for the afore mentioned kiln. Here’s a Do-It-Yourself step-by step guide so you too can construct a $20 kiln stand…

STEP 1 — Gather your materials:

• Salvaged Base (ex. wood shipping crates, old work table etc. Check garage sales, Thrift stores, or local salvage yards)
• Steel Flashing (DO NOT use aluminum, it has a much lower melt point)
• Roofing nails
• 1/2″ compressed board (check the scrap bin at your local hardware store for a deal)
• Flat & “L” brackets
• Screws
• 3M Metal repair tape
• Hammer
• Metal Awl (for punching screw holes)
• Power Drill
• Tin Snips or Metal Abrasive cutting saw
• Cut resistant gloves
• Safety glasses
• Paint (optional)

I happened to have picked up a few old wooden crates from work that were being tossed out that had formerly been flat files for storing film. I snagged them thinking they would make great glass storage crates, however I was a bit overzealous and realized four was way too many. You need to find a base structure that is sound, can hold the weight, and will end up being the correct working height for you once the kiln is on it. My biggest hurdle in finding a stand was that since I’m not overly vertical, having a top loading kiln chest high was not going to work for me.

STEP 2 — Reinforce your base:

For this particular stand, we needed to attach the two boxes to each other and also add the top board for extra strength. We used two flat brackets on either side of the boxes and then used four “L” brackets to screw the top down to the base. We also chose to paint the boxes black beforehand for a more finished look since they were originally powder blue…

STEP 3 — Heat resistance:

Even though this kiln has a built in raised venting base, for heat resistance it is recommended that the kiln rests on a metal surface. We picked up roll Steel Flashing used for roofing to accomplish this. We first laid the roll so that approximately 3″ was left to hang off of the side edge and the sheet would overlap roughly 1″ down the center. Next, we used the snips to trim the roll leaving 5″ hanging off the ends. The remaining roll was about the same length so the two pieces fit just right for overlapping the seam and leaving enough edge to fold down over the corners. We used the awl and hammer to pre-punch nail holes and then tacked it all down with the steel roofing nails.

Once the flashing was secured to the top of the base we made a short cut in each corner so that the sides could be folded down, much like wrapping a gift, the hammer was handy at this step to tap down the edge to give a tighter fold. A few strategic nails to hold down the fold and some metal repair tape to cover any exposed sharps from the tin snips left a pretty neat and safe corner.

STEP 4 — Finishing touch

As a last thought we decided to cut the scrap from the top board into two panels roughly 4″ high by the width of the end to screw in over the exposed sharp edge of flashing. Not only did this make the stand safer and a bit more finished looking, but as an added bonus provided a handle grip for picking the box up to move into place. Two hours and $20 later we had finished our stand…

A note about safety. It is probably a better idea to invest in an actual kiln stand, there are a few on the market, or have someone make you a heavy duty welded steel stand. I’m sure an all metal stand provides better heat resistance and a higher weight bearing limit. However, for us, for now, this was a good solution and reused some materials which would otherwise end up in a dump somewhere… if you choose to build your own stand be conscious of the requirements of your kiln, and of course be safe

The idea of super heating glass to melting temperatures just gives me the most delightful gooseshivers! I enjoyed stained glass for a few years, but cold glass has NOTHING on the power trip of 1200+ degree work and after a year of various fusing classes at Bullseye I dumped a chunk of savings into my very own Bullseye Edition Paragon Pearl-22.

So now that I own a kiln… where do I start?

This is the first of a many part series where your humble narrator shall chronicle her fusing adventures. The first of which will be starting my workshop. Phase 1 involved searching for ideas on how to go about setting up an in-home studio.

Face it… I’m a glass NOOB

There isn’t much out there on this key first step, and what I did find was mostly for smaller jewelry making set ups. Below 14th has a nice easy and encouraging little tutorial to check out. Not bad, but I was looking for a bit bigger scale which led me to About.com and another nice blog about fusing. Still not exactly what I wanted until I searched through one of my new favorite glass bloggers and found Cynthia’s Studio Tour post…. very thorough and super helpful it gave me some great ideas on efficient storage and work table set-up. Unfortunately, it’s an older one and when I checked it to reference here I noticed the wonderfull pictures are no longer active.

*Sad Panda*

Oh well, now that I have my kiln and an idea of what I want to do with it. Phase 2(a) is getting it plugged in, Phase 2(b) will be designing my space and picking out stuff to go in it (look forward to my adventures in IKEA land). Stay tuned Readers…More to come!

My favorite piece from my adventures in Jeff Wallin’s workshop.

The truth is, glass has never been as accessible as it is today in the Northwest. What many glassists already know is that not only is our region home to many of the most respected masters in art glass, including Dale Chihuly, but also a number of educational resources and the most respected manufacturer of art glass in the world. This overwhelming network of glass enthusiasts is an amazingly friendly and helpful bunch, and over the past year I have had the chance to delve into this addictive medium and unleash my inner artist.

Recently, I had the opportunity to take one such workshop with artist Jeff Wallin. Jeff’s work is an intimate yet obscure study of the human figure, and each mark he makes expresses his long study of life drawing with a new translation into the glass medium. The class was structured in such a way to be absolutely welcoming to anyone even without prior experience to come, create, and play with glass. During the workshop I created a nice handful of pieces. Compared to Jeff’s process these are only in stage one and would go through a number of additional treatments, so hopefully once my kiln is installed I’ll try my hand at building a few of them up.

My pick for “Not to be missed” is Nathan Sandberg‘s show ON THE MOVE, June 21st – July 7th, at Portland State University’s Autzen Gallery. Nathan is one of the super fantastical kiln-glass magic makers who teach and play in the BE R&E. I love his “sugar cube” cast frit cubicle concoctions*

*do not let him hear about that “sugar cube” descriptor…