I’m back from a mind blowing 2 weeks at Penland School of Craft learning to work glass with Jessica Jane Julius and Erica Rosenfeld. Our workshop culminated in an edible installation and performance in the hot shop. I had never worked with glass before, and have a whole new appreciation for how complex the medium is. The experience also opened up my eyes to what performance and installation could be. I came home full of ideas and stoked to make new work!
I’m not sure how this will play out in my work yet. I realized while I was there that I was particularly interested in the optical qualities of glass, like making lenses and prisms for example. I’ve played with distortion and blurring of images both in my painting and video work, and I’m curious about how using a glass element could alter something seen through it.
I also wanted to make simple well balanced vessels while I was there, and learned how challenging it is to make elegant shapes with glass. You have to work quickly while it’s hot, with the correct amount of force, and a surprisingly light subtle touch. And it’s the most humbling of materials. It can be impossible to save pieces when things go wrong, and failure is catastrophic. Pieces often deformed beyond repair and/or shattered.
I enjoyed cold working glass – the work you do using shop tools to work the glass after it’s been annealed. The tools felt familiar – they are similar to wood shop tools. The tools use diamond grit to cut and grind, and aren’t as sharp or abrasive as wood tools. Water is used throughout the cold working process to keep the glass cool and to rinse off the silica as it is ground or cut off. It was satisfying to properly finish my pieces or in some cases to alter them completely using these tools.
I loved working in the hot shop. With four furnaces and all sorts of torches constantly running, it was the hottest environment I’ve ever worked in – over 100F during the day – and the work is very physical. The pipes and rods used to gather and heat the glass are long and heavy, and you have to keep rotating them as you work. Working in teams was another highlight – we all depended on each other to make work.
