Tuesday, February 17, 2009

New Work - Hues Of Nature


Over the weekend, as I was waiting for the blue bowl to finish its firing schedule, I started on a new project. I wanted to do something that was more random in pattern that the blue bowl, and this is my latest design. It evolved as I was building it and I wanted to show my progression to this point in its journey.

Tonight, this is in the kiln, firing to a full fuse. I am anxious to see if I did enough to eliminate some of the glass icicles; if not, I know how to fix them.


A week or so ago, I started to play with glass color combinations and kept coming back to this trio. These are the sheets that I cut into strips to use in the construction. As I started, I realized that I had another sheet that would work well as it had a nice white/green combination. All of these are from Bulleye Glass. The final choices were a nice streakie amber, my favorite marzipan, a green streakie, and another green/white/orange streakie.



Here is my initial pile of 1/2" strips. The recent addition of the green with white is in the upper left corner of this picture.


I put my design together, by starting in the center of my 10 3/8" steel ring, which will act as a dam to maintain the 1/2" depth of this piece.

As I got going, I thought it would add interest to use the marzipan and amber pieces in a perpendicular position to the long lines created by the glass strips. I varied the number of each of the amber and marzipan strips used for each of those opposing sections.

Last night I completed the work, finishing up with a square of the marzipan and amber in the upper right corner.

I debated about using stringers as I had in the blue bowl, but in the end, I felt this one should stand on its own with a clean, simple line. I'll find out if I'm happy with the result tomorrow when the fusing is complete. The nice thing is I can always add to this if I want to mix it up more. Right now, I think I'll like the simplicity of the lines.

The randomness of the colors reminds me of Hues of Nature, which I think is what I will call this piece.

4 comments:

Sophie said...

wow, what a great color cobo! I love seeing the different stages of your work

Kathleen Krucoff said...

Thanks!

I'm enjoying capturing the work in progress too. Helps me keep track of what I've done.

:)

Karen said...

Hues of Nature is perfect. This one has such a, I don't know the right word, stately, solid, timeless (?) feel to it. i.e. not whimsically beautiful but seriously beautiful...like nature itself. :)

Kathleen Krucoff said...

Wow. Thanks Karen! You are too kind.

I didn't have a chance to take a picture of it after the fusing process. It came out of the kiln last night and I just love how this one looks. I'll try to get a picture posted this evening.