UNPREDICTABLE BUT NICE SURPRISES IN GLASS

I have found that working with glass is challenging in a very different way to anything I have worked with before...I have to work in collaboration with a kiln, as I used to do with my enamelled copper bowls, which sadly, I can no longer make as it is not safe for me to take red-hot copper out of a kiln balanced unsteadily on a trivet!  

However, working with enamel brought me to glass;   glass responds to the heat in the kiln in unusual ways and is NOT easy to control.  I guess someone with a better memory than I have, and who is more organised and keeps careful notes, would cope rather better than I do.   I have to look up kiln schedules, and set kiln programmes, and I have to double-check every time.  Getting older certainly does not help, and when the weather is hot and humid, as it is this September after a long, cool July and August, my head starts to spin!

That all said, I decided to try some experimental glass work this week, and  although I am  hot ,sticky and tired from a bout of Covid which has reared its ugly head this week, I thought I would share the results so far, to show you how magical glass can be as it melts and reforms inside the kiln.  This piece really cheered me enormously.  I achieved thanks to information and inspiration from Val Cox's group on Facebook, "Val Cox's Fusing Frit workshop",  together with information from Melissa Penic's book "Remarkable Recycling Techniques for fused glass"- her technique is called "Stack and Slide"..... plus a bit of guesswork, prayer and finger-crossing on my part!  I used all Bullseye glass.

Here is a lay-up of glass - several sheets of glass, topped with glass pieces, glass powder and glass "confetti", in the hope that I might achieve an interesting and unusual free-form piece, to be used at a later date.

I knew this would gradually melt, slide outwards, and form a "patty" of glass with an abstract design on it.  I had no idea what kind of shapes I would get....the kiln decides for me!  My only control was with the colours I chose, and I decided to go with "complementary colour" from the colour wheel.

This is the resulting sheet of glass which gave me a "WOW" moment when I opened the kiln:

and here are a few close-ups of certain areas, as this is much bigger in real life than this photo, and I just love the way that the glass has spread,  behaved and taken on a life and shapes of its own:

Here, you can see how the glass has "flowed" and created washes of colour, and beautiful watercolour-effect shapes.  Amazing.

Here, the glass has formed "cells" of colour...or rather, empty cells surrounded by colour

There is a lovely feeling of movement in this section, and a beautiful variety of both small and large shapes and linear movements....it is almost like some kind of abstract landscape. AND.... I cannot help but wonder what it would look like seen upside down............

Now that really is an abstract landscape. Squint your eyes, you too may see it as I do.....

I do so love being given gifts like this, creative surprises which make me see the world in new ways.  Watch this space....next I have to make it into something lovely........

Jackie Simmonds