EyeCandy - Kilnformed and Torchworked Glass Information Site

I put up my first web site well over ten years ago using Microsoft FrontPage. The focus of the site was my adventures in glass fusing, and teaching various glass fusing techniques. I did this for a number of years and almost made a go of it. But for various reasons decided it was time to move onto other things. I posted a blog post here a few months ago on the Elements of Design in Glass Art, and it has been one of the most popular posts. Because of that I've decided to point glass enthusiasts to my old site which has tons of information on glass fusing.

You can find EyeCandy at http://www.jimbolesdesigns.com/eyeCandy/index.html

There are lots of informative pages and links spread throughout. It was going to be the contact place for my students at the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center in Minneapolis, and for my community education classes.

You will also find a lot of glass fusing information at this blog, if you go back to 2010 and before (see links at the left panel) .

Hope you find the information useful. Enjoy!
 

Bird Feeder Bling

Every now and then you must surrender to your inner craftsperson. I think anyone visiting recent craft fairs and farmers markets has seen bird feeders constructed from found glass objects. I call them Bling Feeders! Most of them are made from old Mason jars which hold the seed and the jar's threads fit poultry feeders that can bought at serveral online retailers, or, if you have a Fleet & Farm nearby you'll find them there.

The images above show my construction using old glass stuff I had left over from my closed studio. The beads were experiments in color I did when learning torch working using Bullseye glass. The large glass shade was found on Ebay. It is supposedly an Art Deco period piece... who knows, I just thought it was cool.

Here is a close up of the beads. It was fun making them just to see what glass does under extreme heat. The color, texture and shape combinations are endless.

Talk about an experience of pure color! I loved the flowing molten glass and its endless potentiality. The vividness of the colors and the translucence of glass have such a sparkle that is only second to gems and polished stone.

A lot of my glass adventures ended in realizing the critical limitation of scale when working with glass. Large scale glass is technically complicated, extremely expensive, and is a team effort.

I just was not satisfied in working in miniature was my conclusion.

Here is another Bling Feeder I did after we moved into our new house in Iowa. This ceiling fixture was too nice to throw away so I added the same type of Mason jar, drilled a hole in the jar for the supporting hardware, and used silicon to glue the jar to the light shade.

The fancy top was a glass base for a candle. It also had to be drilled in order for the hardware to support the whole structure.

Construction of either was fairly easy. If anyone wants info on the process then just put a comment on the blog post and I'll respond the best I can.

In the image below you can see crimps used to secure the bead string to the glass light fixture of the first Bling Feeder shown above.

Glass Powder Painting Revisited

I did these glass panels several years ago and only now have gotten around to framing them. These were created through the process of applying glass powders to a sheet of glass, then tack fusing it in a kiln. The glass is heated just enough that the powder sticks to the glass sheet base.

I closed my glass studio over two years ago now. I don't miss it much. Glass work is expensive, very labor intensive, dangerous to some extent, and not very forgiving. The glass powders are very harmful to your lungs. Unlike painting or using Photoshop on images when doing glass working it is very difficult to redo or correct your work. Once the glass is baked there is no going back. If you are a control freak like me you are never happy on the first try, and you end up with a lot glass that is basically scrap.

There are all kinds of styles and approaches when working with glass of course. My explorations drifted towards powder painting because of the control you have over how the colors are placed. As time progressed Bullseye, the company that makes the glass, began to produce an increasing number of the colors as striker colors. Striker colors are those that only show their true color intensity after they are fired. Before firing they are very pale or even near white. As you can imagine it is impossible to powder paint if several colors you are using are not their true color when arranging the powders. Couple this complication with the inability to continually adjust the colors and their arrangement when 'painting', and you have a medium that is not very easy to work with.

As you can tell from my prior post I love to work with texture. In this close up you can see how the powder is laid down, creating a surface that makes you want to run your finger into it. Powder painting is a lot like the sand paintings done by Tibetan monks. In the image below a mandala is being created. As far as I know no one has as of yet used glass powder and a kiln to make the mandala permanent. Then again, maybe that would break some sort of rule or symbolism such as the impermanence of all things. Some day maybe I'll get back into glass and create a mandala as a fundraiser.

Elements & Principles of Design in Glass Art (Image Making Series - Part 5)

I taught glass fusing for several years, and was often asked how to turn little bits of glass (frit) into an image. Students were often at a lose how anyone could do images with just little bits of glass. I believe this to be true in any medium if (as mentioned in a prior post) the student is only allowed to work with one or two of the elements of design. For example, to create an image using only point, it is as though you told them to speak but only use verbs, no nouns, but yet the whole graphic style of stippling is just that. This image by Gregory Colbert is done using only dots/points.

I gave them frit, but also glass powders, stringer (spaghetti-like pieces), rods of glass, shards, and large pieces of glass of many colors. Nonetheless, even with these options how to construct a whole image from pieces posed to them the same problem as photography or design student often has when ask to mentally deconstruct a photograph into its constituent elements of design.

I created the poster below as a teaching aid. In each cell is an image of a glass art piece, and each cell represents the intersection of an element of design (on the left) and a principle of design (across the top).

This is a 40x30 inch poster so it will be hard to see detail here. If anyone wants a copy ($25 plus shipping) then let me know. 

Let's take a few examples of how it works. Follow the  tone/value row over three cells from the left. That is the intersection of tone with emphasis/contrast. In that cell the image of little cubes of glass are arranged so that there is a tonal emphasis. Simple but effective. A common Professional Photographer's Association rule is to have the highlight or brightest part of an image be on the subject, thereby drawing attention where you want it... on the subject.The last two cells of the tone/value row are the intersection of the proportion and balance principles. The bird is balanced in the composition by the island on the left, and also the bird's proportion is used effectively, giving visual clues that the bird is close while the island is far. All of that is done with black glass powder sprinkled very meticulously on a white sheet of glass.

We take proportion/scale for granted. Of course, you might think, the bird is close and the island far. However this is a learned perception. Learning to interpret distance by scale of objects occurs when you are very young. An example of this is the story of an Amazon explorer and a forest dwelling native. The native had very little experience seeing objects at a great distance, having lived in the dense forest all his life. The explorer took the native to an open plain and showed him cattle roaming on the plain at a far distance. The native's response to seeing the cattle was something to the effect of "look at those flies over there".  

The principles of design exists simply because they help us create images which take advantage of innate or learned modes of perception, enabling quick understanding and appreciation, and avoiding visual confusion.  

In the last two cells on the right of the color row is the intersection for repetition/rhythm cell. Here color and patterns/shapes give rise to the principle of repetition or rhythm. This glass dish was done by cutting  colored patterns out of glass sheets and then arranging them in an order creating rhythm. Repeating pattern is something that the human eye-brain looks for to create a sense of order and understanding which is higher order function of perception.

In a well known experiment by Blasdel et al. a cat was raised in an environment where it could only see vertical bar patterns. The results where that when released from this environment is had difficulty seeing other bar patterns.

Design elements then, are sensations and the design principles are components of our cognition. Thought of in this way an image's visual strength depends on one or more of the principles being present and complementary to the subject. If you want to strengthen the image, then the elements composing the dominant principle(s) should be used to further strengthen the composition. This is the blueprint for construction of any image.

For example, in the color row's third cell from left the subject is the wolf and moon. Contrasting colors where used to emphasize the subject as well as the elements of direction, line and shape which serve to draw us into the subject. It is the contrasting colors however that create emphasis on the subject and ultimately tells us what the subject is. If the dog and moon were aqua, then they would be reduced to yet another pattern/shape and would be equal to the other shapes in the visual hierarchy.

Creating a visual hierarchy is key to any composition.

The elements of design make one or more of the principles dominant, severing the ultimate purpose of bringing our focus on the intended subject of the image.

When a visual hierarchy is absent or weak, then the viewer's response to the image is simply to turn the page so-to-speak. It is the strength of the hierarchy that draws the viewer in, giving the image a sense of visual gravity. Even before the viewer is aware (cognition) the eye-brain preprocessing of sensations has already decided for you that the perception is not worth moving forward to full consciousness (your full attention). Without a visual hierarchy an image is boring, typical, messy, or disorganized and your response to this stimulus is to turn the page.

There are always exceptions to any rule, and sometimes breaking the rules can also create a sense of visual gravity as in a Jackson Pollock painting. Breaking the rules is sometimes the point if only to be contrary, pretentious, or leading edge. Human perception and cognition however have taken several eons to develop. We all see things a certain way which is more-or-less held in common. For the image maker, learning to capitalize on that programmed in way of seeing is what the principles of design are about.

Fall & Time For Reflection

Oh...Boy. We are starting Winter already here in frozen Minnesota. We had our first snow last night and today it was below freezing most of the day. At this rate the pumpkins won't even make it to Halloween.

I took this picture of our cat Mia and her friend last year. The biggest event for me this year was quiting my IT job and now I'm working three times as hard as I ever did... but loving it!

Jean (my wife) and I returned from our yearly visit to the same Vermilion lake cabin that we have gone to for over 10 years. This is always a time of refection for both of us, and as a couple. Since we are "trapped" together for 5 days in a cabin with not much else to do we mull over may things that we don't regularly have time for.

This year we talked a bit about my adventures and we agreed that it is too early to really know how things will turn out, and that we are both willing to let "things play out" for a while... and boy are there things that need a bit of time to play out.

Art glass commissions, project collaborations, consignment arrangements, several Designs For Good projects (and more to come), becoming a kilnformed glass teacher in a big way, expanding my marketing efforts, and then there is the whole commercial side of my art glass that I will be exploring over the next few weeks.

God knows what will come of any one of these efforts. The teaching direction has really taken on a life of its own and shows great potential. I have a friend helping me out, and continually reminds me of the things I take for granted, because I've been doing kilnformed glass for over a decade. Simple things that are second nature to me can ruin a project if not done properly.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.... even if that means providing a complete step by step project plan for those students who will need it... and as my friend is pointing out more will need it than I think.

To the right is an image of one of the first items I made as a project example. It is a belt buckle with dichroic glass. It is hard to go wrong with dichroic glass. It is soooo glitzy.

I completely stayed away from dichroic when I was doing my art glass series, so it is now fun to indulge.

Everyday starts a new challenge in the multiple paths I'm pursuing. It will indeed be interesting to see where the paths lead.

Those That Can't Do Teach?

Not sure how true the truism in the title is.

As part of my many splendid ventures to survive as an artist and designer I've decided to take on teaching as one income stream.

Have kiln will travel.... I bought six of these little buggers to the left, and I'll be teaching the basics of kilnformed glass to anyone who cares to listen.

Right now I'm working with two community education programs and I hope to expand that to a half dozen sites and multiple classes per semester. The initial startup cost is less than $3000 so I might actually make a profit in my life time.

Glass Marketing Weekend

These pics are of our room at the hotelVetro in Iowa City. The Sheraton was full and my potential glass commission client was at the Vetro... so why not stay there. There are 220 reasons per night why not, but it was so convenient we had to do it.

It was decked out in post-modern decor as you can see by the pictures at the left. The top image is of the tube and the door to the bathroom is to the left. It was a huge hunk of frosted and tempered glass measuring at least 6x7 feet. It was hung on a track with wheels which you pulled closed kind of like a barn door. Not elegant, but definitely minimalist.

Concrete floors a flat platform sink and monochrome color scheme. There was absolutely no color per say. The whole room was desaturated hues. Interesting, but I wouldn't recommend it unless your into that sort of thing. The furniture was Ikea quality. OK, but nothing to really recommend it.

Our dinner was very nice though and we had a good time talking over the glass project, the site, pets, and life in general.

The next step is to put together a proposal for the project which I"m looking forward to. It will be approximately 40 sq feet of glass, and the design will be fun to execute.

The design will be based on a lose interpretation of the mountain environment of the cabin in the California mountains. Since the cabin is of contemporary design this gives me a lot of freedom.

I also had the opportunity to deliver a set of small Fritflower panels to a customer in Iowa and left a few panels behind to be sold in a flower shop. This will be a bit of test marketing. I'm glad to find someone who is willing to help me explore the correct combination of price and design.