At any rate, while working with Newy Fagan in her studio, I experimented with combing glass. This technique involved raking warm glass with a combing tool (similar to a metal chopstick for reference).
Combing proved to be more difficult for me than I thought it would be. First of all, I didn't expect the heat of the kiln to be as intense as it was. I had never had a hot kiln open more than a few seconds to look at the progress of my work. Also, the glass was not as fluid as I had imagined it to be. The only experience I had at this point with hot glass was working with molten glass during glass blowing.
In building the glass tile to comb, I used rod pieces that made small circles as well as some string, curly glass pieces that Newy made by pouring molten glass on a piece of sheet metal.
I combed the piece the best I could and then Newy took a go at it. It turns out, the small round pieces of color were really too small to get much of a design out of with the combing technique.
The piece was left in the kiln to anneal. The next morning, when we opened the kiln to look at it, the tile had cracked in 3 pieces. But I loved it. Why? because it reminded me of the work of Joan Miro.
I brought the pieces home and resurrected the tile by adding a few more colored circles and black curly pieces then firing to a full fuse.
This is what I got. To many of you, it won't look like much, but to me, I get a good feeling looking at it because of its resemblance to the work of one of my favorite artists. Joan Miro created work on an entirely different level than this, but the elements are there.
I plan on tac fusing it to a piece of 8x8 clear glass and framing it in black to hang as wall art. the colored pieces that look like they are dripping are the parts that were combed while in the kiln. Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder!
Joan Miro:
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