What to do?

One of my Experiments.....

I've been absent, my apologies.

Never fear, I have been working on my art....my glass art and my art jewelry. And I haven't felt I had anything worthy of posting on my glass blog, but then I thought I should share some of what I've been doing with glass that is .... as of yet.... unfinished.

So here it is, one of my experiments, and I definitely consider it unfinished. I mentioned a bit about my experiments back in a January post. I'm not completely satisfied with the result you see here and that is why I have not slumped this piece into one of the sushi plate molds I have. I keep wondering if I should do anything else? It has some imperfections, which I don't think the photo shows (my photo, not one of Dan's), but I can see them. Well, we all know what that's like when our critical eye sees something that isn't right. Maybe I should just set this aside in the small stack of pieces that will be recycled into stringers? As you can tell from all the questions I have about it, I have not decided if I should go through the effort of finishing this or just recycle it.

The inspiration for this piece started with this wonderful book I found at Barnes & Noble prior to Christmas. It was Alponse Mucha Master Works.
I loved the book. The colors, the wonderful art work. Unfortunately, the book is sold out, so I hope you can find a copy if it inspires you too.

Part of what captivated me was Mucha's graceful lines. I wanted to incorporate a bit of that graceful line work in my art, so I tried this little experiment. And ever since I found mica powders, they have taunted me a bit. I know how hard they can be to incorporate into fused glass (at least for me) and so I tried something new. It sort of worked, but not quite. At least I'm not happy with the result.

I used some of my favorite Bullseye Glass, that rich marzipan color I love. And then I used coppery mica powder to form the lines you see, mixed with clear fine frit in my attempt to have the mica fuse to the glass. It sort of did, but not all of it. So I decided I would add a bit of Glassline paint in a rust shade to emphasize the mica a bit more, and then as a contrast I thought it would be nice to have a bit of green in there (provided by a bit-o-frit). Over the top of all of that I added more clear frit to 'seal' the mica in place. After another firing in the kiln, all fused and the mica is in place. But, the surface doesn't look good and I'm back to not being satisfied with the result.

So, I have learned some things with this test and I'm not sure where it will take me. I have other things in the works too, along with shows starting next month, so I will have more to share. I think it helps to know that we all have things that just don't go quite the way we had hoped. All part of the learning process and that's a good thing.

Please feel free to share your thoughts, I always enjoy what my fellow artists think.

Until next time, aspire to be more as an artist and a person.