Final Term

We have all been working very hard this term, making as much work as possible for our summer show!  This week photographer James Mann has been in the studio taking photos of the our work so far… here are some of my favourites. 

Jewellery

Carrying on from my last project, I have been experimenting with more Blown Glass Jewellery, however instead of using wire to 'clasp' the glass I have been drilling through the glass and using rivets, this is a much more subtle way of using metal with my glass. 

This piece uses a copper 'frame' with a silver chain, however, my future pieces will be made from completely from silver, and will feature much brighter colours in the glass.

Creative and Professional Development

This term I have been experimenting with cutting and polishing my original wood blown vessels, in order to reveal and exaggerate the texture made by the wood. Here are some of the results:

Below is brooch I made from one of my slices of glass, next term I would like to continue using my glass pieces within jewellery, however make the metal work from silver, and less harsh again the glass, in order to keep the glass as the main focus.

Working with Michael Petry

This Friday the glass department at PCA had a visit from artist Michael Petry. As an artist and not a glass blower, we were helping him make work for his up and coming exhibition. This was a really fun day, as we all needed to work in a big team to get the pieces made. The work involves making large spheres, some stay individual, while other get joined together, in order to see the bubbles and colours overlap. Once annealed, they are cut and polished to open up the spheres. There will be hundreds of these hung for the exhibition.

Me filing my piece ready to go into the kiln and then be picked up onto another  sphere. 

Some of the other glass blowers all working together to make a large sphere 

The two spheres once they are joined; here they are being heated through to avoid any cracking.

Thanks to every one that was involved for making it such a great day! 

Slices

This week I have been experimenting with cutting and polishing; these are slices of my wood  blown vessels. The orange piece is a straight slice, where as the teal piece is a slightly diagonal cut, this allows you to see more of the texture as well as the organic ring of colour. I am not yet sure of the best way to present these, and will continue to experiment with them, potentially making jewellery or some sort of wall decoration.

Creative and Professional Development

These pieces are carrying on from the personal project, I am focusing on texture in my work, and am continuing to blow into wood moulds, however I am trying to push my practice as a glass maker into a more sculptural form, rather than making vessels. Here I have been experimenting with light and opaque colour to see how the piece reflects the texture. I plan to combine the wood, glass and light elements to create one piece.

'Dialogue'
This week I have been collaborating with Hannah Woodley; another glass student, working on a project where we restricted from using our specialist subjects, and the title we were given was 'dialogue'.  We were thinking about the idea of dialogue and where you might find it; and decided to try and alter the dialogue of a book. We started to think about the way in which we use books and how we interact with them; often this includes comfort; which led us to furniture. 

 Above are some examples of how we were experimenting with the books themselves, creating a dialogue between maker and material. We really loved the "box" composition and began to think about how this could be included into the furniture.  

We drew a rough idea of a small Ottoman on Google Sketchup and then began making. We allowed the materials to lead us; finding fabric to match the colour scheme of the book and using some of the pages from the book to cover the inside of the Ottoman. 

The Final Outcome