finally done so on to the next

We had one brief shower Thursday, one of those that happens while the sun is shining. We were moderately busy at SHARE which I suppose means President Biden's policies of helping people recover from the pandemic and reducing child poverty is having some effect. When I wasn't filling baskets, I was restocking my shelves and when I wasn't doing either of those I chatted with some of the volunteers or flattened cardboard boxes for taking to the recycling center which I do on my way home. My first day, when we went back to Thursdays last fall, towards closing, the Elders (two young men, and by young I mean 20ish, from the Mormon church here doing their volunteer work, they load the carts of food into the client's cars) had thrown all the cardboard into the dumpster. The next week I told them don't do that, I'll take it to the recycling center. It just astounds me that even now with the planet warming up, landfills full up, the planet running out of resources that people, especially young people, don't think to recycle, even the one thing that is most easily recycled, cardboard.

I managed to get another hour and a half in before yoga Thursday night. I finished all around the feather, once again building up the white or black, so no more fussiness.

Some of y'all have asked how I learned this. We are self-taught as there was no instruction in this technique when I first decided I wanted to do this type of glass casting back in 1995 (and hardly any now either though there is a wide range of glass art now being made as pate de verre but it's far different than what I do). I had seen some pictures of the work produced by the handful of 19^th century French artists, all of whom were very secretive of their processes and to this day there is some uncertainty about how they actually did what they did. My favorite is Almeric Walter but Argy Rousseau's family released some (but not all) of his workbooks on his technique and we bought the book on his work that included this information. Then it was trial and error gleaning pertinent information from jewelry making and bronze casting and ceramics, buying books as they became available with any information by other artists on their own efforts and glass casting in general. We experimented with different plasters and formulas for mold making. There was already an industry for making rubber or silicon reproduction molds. We had a lot of failures but slowly, eventually our failure rate declined and we started producing a series of sculpted small bowls (2 part mold) then larger ones, then a cup form (3 part mold) and then finally now I mostly stick to the easier open face molds. I'm not that interested in pushing the boundaries anymore.

Anyway, I've written about it before so I'm going to refer you to an old post about early days and a link to my website about the technique and our process.

This is a link to the last in a series of posts I did about becoming a glass artist and it explains how we started in this technique.  There's also a link to all 13 of the posts in the very first paragraph.

This is a link to the technique page on my website that shows the step by step process of making one of my little sculptures or wall pieces.  Also on that page in the upper left hand corner is a link to a page with the history of this ancient form of glass casting.

Two and a half hours on Friday before lunch and all the rocks are done.

Two hours after lunch and I'm done. I decided at the last minute not to use the black sand mix as I put the color sample next to one of the big rocks in the mold and decided there wouldn't be enough definition between the two, that they would just all blend together and I spent too much damn time on those rocks to have them disappear so I chose the next darkest sand color (it will darken after it's fired). Of course last night in the middle of the night I'm kicking myself for not adding in a small percentage of black. Now it goes in the kiln.

And I am glad to be finally getting done with this series, four 10” x 10” and six small ones of various dimensions. I made all the models 4 years ago in 2017 right before Harvey and the house flooding. The six little ones and one big one got cast before the end of that year. In 2018 another of the big ones got cast, in 2019 the third big one got cast, and finally now the last one in 2021. Of course those years after Harvey I was dealing with getting the house fixed and then the pandemic and getting Pam's house set up which just took the wind out of my sails.

After this last one is cast and finished I'll post all 10 pictures.

I'll probably take the weekend off though I'll have to go over and clean up and put away all the mold filling tools and materials so that I can get out all the model making stuff and start on the models for the two angel trumpet plaques.