Final projects and End of Year One.

I am now into my final project which consists of two projects, one is group work which we have to find a location locally and create an installation for the area and the second is a individual work which we have to go to the British Musuem in London and find a vessel/container which is not made from glass and re-design it in a contemporary way.

It is pretty full on at the moment but i am really enjoying it.

The year has gone way too quickly, but yet it feels like a have been on this course for years, its strange but i have learned so many new skills in glass and is most certainly an area i will keep up when i finish uni. i have mixed emotions about the comming second year, so many people saying it is going to be tough but it will be a challenge and a challege i am willing to take head on. One can only do their best, work hard and learn.

Bring it on!

Salt and Pepper Project

My previous project was to produce a salt and pepper container. I looked into the different types of salt and pepper pots such as, grinders, mills, shakers and ended up looking into salt and pepper pigs/pots. Known as a 'Salt Pig' i combined this concept with salt and pepper pot and produced this final piece above. I looked into the forms of grinded salt and dried pepper corns, simplified the forms and created these two contrasting shapes which i really love. They were made using a kiln forming process called Pate de Verre (Paste of Glass) which i either very fine glass powder or glass pieces mixed with a bonder (wall paper paste) and packed to the walls of a mould. I really enjoyed this process and found it so interesting that it creates this sugary crystal line texture to the surface.

Glass Egg

This is the first colour blown piece i made a few months ago and i love it, it is now sitting proud on the mantle of my mum's house. A piece i am really proud of making. I love the speckled orange and gold speckle over the surface.

Read Read Wine Final Pieces.

Here are my final pieces for the Read Read Wine project which i really enjoyed making. My final pieces are two blown glass forms, both with a different shade of transparent blue colour at the bottom and grit blasted over to give a frosted look, there are then two openings, which the wine bottle can be placed in and taken out from.
The forms are inspired by ice, the fluidity and frosting qualities and clear/ blue colour seen when looking at ice i researched and combined to produce these vessels.

'Read Read Wine' Project.....

This is the proect i am currently in the process of. We are to produce a wine or magazine rack made from glass and using glass blowing, free and mould blown. I have chosen to produce a piece looking into wine racks. The brief was broadened out to look into wine and rack seperately. Whilst researching into wine racks and ways to store and display wine bottles i began to look into ice buckets.

My idea is now to produce a glass ice bucket to chill 200ml wine bottles. I have been looking into ice and frost and will be incorporating this theme with my final piece.

Colour Saturation- Kiln Work....

First kiln piece, we had to look into colour saturation. I used four layers of float glass, and inbetween each layer i sprinkled blue and green coloured powder, showing a graduation in transparency.

You can really see the saturation in the colour as it graduates to each corner, i really like how this has come out, i love the colour and this technique could produce some really interesting pieces.

From the beginning....'Fungi' Project

'Fungi' Project

This was my first project in september, we had to pick a word from a hat which would be the theme we had to communicate in glass, my word was Fungi. Perfect for me as i love organic and natural forms so its was an exciting first project for me.

A couple of pages from my sketchbook showing my research into fungi and mushrooms; their form, structure, colour and pattern, elements of which i wanted to communicate in a glass form.

The research created lead to the making of experiments using Sand Casting; a technique we had to use for this project. Creating a mould out of sand, we experimented with placing coloured powders, metals, coloured frits, and chemicals to look into create different effects.......Experimentation.

These were the first pieces i made in the project. The experimentation with Sand Casting, we had to use geometric shapes and look into including colour and 'things' inbetween each poured layer of glass.

I really like the first piece, the greens, turquiose and blue colours caused by using copper carbonate which reacted with the heat creating different colours. With each layer i using tongs to twist the colour together to create a swirl effect of colour.

The purpose of this project was to experiment with different effects with sand casting.

This lead me to make this experiment, with a more spherical form and using blues, white with gold colour, twisting each layer to create this sprial effect.

In concluding this project i produced several different proposal ideas in communicating the word Fugi which could be made using Sand Casting.