Drawing the horizon

I'm still plugging away, firing more and more glass strips.  I laid out all the ones I'd done so far this morning.

It's getting there, but not quite what I want yet.  I lined them all up a bit better and added the prints for the next sets of strips to the end and it began to look a bit more like it...

Laying the strips nice and straight rather than a bit haphazard made quite a difference; it's something I'm going to have to take into consideration when I'm fixing them all together.

(Apologies for the poor photographs, it's not easy to find the space to lay them all out, impossible to find somewhere with good lighting as well!)

Today's post is brought to you by the letter R

In June I will be taking part in the de-junk, re-junk! exhibition of art made from... junk, of course! The exhibition brings together a variety of work from Merseyside based artists and this year it is at the Willliamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead.

The exhibitors are busy making new signs for the exhibition and I have been allocated the letter 'r'. I have to make 2 'r's, one 'subtle' one, and one 'bright' one; there is not much time left so this weekend I decided I really needed to get on with them.

This morning I took my first r out of the kiln...

It is made from strips cut from a stack of old picture frame glass and I'm really rather pleased with the way it has come out; it was worth all the cleaning!  Glass has to be scrupulously clean when it goes into the kiln and using old glass which has been knocking around in someone's loft or garage for a while does mean an awful lot of cleaning.  Now I just need to figure out how I am going to attach it to a backing board...

So that's my 'subtle' r; this afternoon I made a start on my 'bright' r using plastic carrier bag strips.

It's a bit further on now but it will certainly be keeping me occupied for the next few evenings!

Something completely different...

Towards the end of April, as part of our course, the final year students will be creating a pop-up gallery/shop in Wrexham, and we are tasked with stocking it with lovely things at affordable prices.  Since the glass  pieces I have been working on are somewhat experimental I wasn't sure that they would be suitable (or finished!) so I have gone back to my first love, textiles, and combined it with my second love, printmaking.

I've used various scraps of trim and edgings, some vintage, some reclaimed and some just 'spare', to make a series of collagraph plates.  It's a great way to use pieces that are too small for much else, and even pieces that are falling apart; they can be 'repaired' when they are glued to the  plate.  All you need to remember when you're making the plates is that you can ignore the colour and just concentrate on the texture.

My idea was to create printed backgrounds from the trims onto which I could add 'real' pieces of trim.  I originally thought I would ink the plates in a brown colour to give that vintage feel, but I didn't really like the results, even the palest colour seemed to overpower the delicate pattern and texture.

So I decided to stick to blind embossing, which is a much quicker and cleaner process without the ink, better all round!  I've been having fun 'auditioning' buttons from my button tin and scraps of trim from my ribbon box and I have finally made some decisions and sewn a few on...  I'm struggling to decide which is my favourite.  What do you think?

The paper size for these prints is just under A5; I think the size works well with the scale of the elements.  I am wondering whether to do some A4 sized ones as well or whether the extra 'bits and pieces' needed to fill the space will make them look too cluttered.

When I'm embossing I nearly always have a few disasters where either the plate or the paper moves and the whole thing ends up crooked.  There's nothing really that can be done with those prints except tear them up, which is ideal for making cards.

I was so pleased with these cards that I made a couple more prints on scraps of paper just so I could make some extra for my Etsy shop; I'll be listing them just as soon as I get some decent photographs.

And if you're anywhere near Wrexham during the week 22nd to 26th April, do pop along to the People's Market to see what other lovely things we have on show.

A beautiful day for a walk

After the snow, the weather has been cold and so bright it has given me a headache.  Today I remembered to take my sunglasses when we went out and felt much better.  The light was so bright and clear that all the colours seemed saturated; I haven't done anything to the colours of these photos.  Apologies if you're getting bored of pictures of the beach!

Progress and Setbacks

Since I posted about finding a technique I wanted to explore, I had a bit of a setback.  I did a series of experiments and made various samples and, all of a sudden, it stopped working.  Cue a mild attack of panic and a series of unsuccessful experiments, followed by a quiet afternoon trying to remember what on earth, what tiny, seemingly insignificant thing, I had done differently before. Fortunately it dawned on me, I had an anxious day waiting for the test kiln firing to finish, but it worked... phew!

So I've been putting together some little glass-and-wire fences.  Or maybe trees.

The next issue to sort out was the wire; the first one I used broke when it was twisted tightly. The next one was a bit flimsy;  although I do want to channel broken down fences, not so much that I can't get the thing to stand up at all...

On to the next wire; this one is quite a bit thicker and I did think it might be too thick, but I'm pleased with the way it has turned out.  The pieces have a nice sturdy feel to them and I do like the black colour of the wire.  Although I might attack it with a little salt and vinegar and see what happens...

And so, on to the next challenge, to sort out the image printed on the glass.  Currently it's a bit too 'all over' for my liking.

Icicles

Unusually we have been hit by the recent snowy weather too (snow doesn't usually bother with this little corner, surrounded as we are by so much water).  Not far away there is a lane that often floods; and the combination of the chilly weather and the flooded lane have given us this:

Every time a car drives through the puddle the hedge is sprayed with water; it had a few more soakings as we watched.  Isn't it lovely?

Finding my way

Isn't it funny how trying just one thing can suddenly make everything fall into place? And about time too you might say, as I am very nearly at the end of my degree course.

In the first year of the course I fell in love with collagraph printing. Creating the plates; the way the ink echoed the texture of the plate and the unpredictability of the print itself; the variations in the strength of the marks; everything.

Ever since then I have, sometimes consciously and sometimes not, been trying to replicate that effect in glass.

First I tried copying the images I had created from the collagraphs and screenprinting them onto the glass.  That worked, up to a point, but for me the screenprinting process meant that the images lost the essential sense of texture that they had as prints on paper.  They were just too definite, too clean.

Then I tried creating plaster moulds in the same way that I create collagraph plates and casting the glass in these moulds.

So far the results of this have been somewhat unpredictable. I dare say if I pursue it, eventually I will get it to work as I want, but it is a time consuming process, and also one which uses a lot of expensive glass frit.  I have also realised that to do this I will have to get used to using more robust materials to create my textures; both to stand up to the mould making process and to create definite enough marks on the glass; and I'm not sure that I want to change my materials so much.

But then the other day I had one of those 'I haven't tried that' moments and these little printed strips were the result.

They may not look much but I am very excited about them.  The print on the back of the glass was taken from one of my collagraph prints; the glass was laid on top of it in the kiln and has 'picked up' the image, but in a much more interesting and sketchy way than a direct screenprint.  There is just enough texture on the back of the glass; I can see endless possibilities in these two little strips of glass...