It's the singular quote we hear more often from people who see our larger pieces of artwork. "Wow, it's just like Chihuly!" I used to get a little miffed at that comment, because our works are NOT just like Chihuly. Our works are our own and usually meant to depict something in particular, like the Solar System. From the many pieces I've seen of his works, they're a conglomeration of lots of littler pieces into a giant swirly piece. It's the sheer magnitude of all the pieces put together that makes it so dramatic. And *he* doesn't even do all the work himself. We do all our own work!
I got to thinking that for the past several months, I've been discussing the failures with that sink job, both on here and on my Facebook/Twitter accounts. I've gotten comments that maybe I shouldn't spend my time making sinks. Well, it isn't that I *can't* make sinks, it's that I couldn't make *those* sinks as they had to fit a very precise position in the client's countertop.
After working for a number of months, in vain, trying to create two matching cast glass sinks for a client, that would fit into her already made countertop, she canceled the project. I was having failure after failure with those darned sinks - getting the colors to match what she wanted, then trying to get the cast piece to drop through a mold to the right shape for her countertop, faucet and knobs.
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glass Tags:
blown,
bottle,
Christmas,
Earth,
Gift,
glass,
mars,
Present,
stopper,
venus,
wine
It was only a matter of time before our skills producing the blown glass planets for our mobiles, orrery, sculptures and ornaments would join up with our new line of wine bottle stoppers.
We decided to couple the two and make Planetary Wine Bottle Stoppers. We figured the techniques would be pretty much identical, so it would be a breeze! Wrong! The various planetary glass pieces we've blown before were hollow, and blown out much bigger. We had to decorate the pieces while they were still fairly small, but then as they blew out, the details would get larger and look like what it was supposed to look like.
The new jewelry line came about fairly rapidly, but the website for them took a little longer (isn't that always the case?). The site is now LIVE! - http://glasssculpture.org/artglass/jewelry/
We decided to add it to our Glass Sculpture site, since the technique doesn't match up with my Reverse Glass painting, nor does it follow the techniques used in the art glass marbles & paperweights.
We're branching out so much even we get confused sometimes! 
But it's all good. So far, we have wondrous pendants:
Iris Pendant
and captivating Earrings:
Grass Earrings
As we continue our orrery project, it is time to blow the glass planets. As the whole piece is only 6 feet in diameter, that means we have less than 3 feet to fit in 8 planets (they didn't want Pluto). To get the planets to fit, be relative scale (impossible to be "actual" scale), and not clunk into each other, the inner planets need to be fairly small.
I wanted to experiment with my sandblasting and deep carving on glass. My cast glass pieces are usually in the 3/8-1/2 inch thick range, with the colors swirling through the entire depth of the piece. This would make for some great carving, as some of the colors would be opened up, while others would remain untouched.
Since I was getting ready for a space conference, I decided to go with a spacey design. I had a section of glass that for all the world looks like boiling fire, so chose to carve a rocket ship taking off into the front of it. This would be just a display piece, as an example of the type of work we can do on counter tops, sinks, doors, etc.
Many of the wine stoppers are now online on GlassSculpture.org. I have still about 30 of the "Classical" style to polish and then photograph, but there are some real beauties already up. It seemed to take longer to put together the photography and website than it did to blow the glass pieces in the first place, but I guess that's probably because the blowing part was fun and went so quickly. The above wine stopper is in my favorite colors - Violet, Lavender, and Purple! The violet interior adds sparkles to the whole thing. I love it!
OK. How much fun are these???? This one is one of my favorites today. It's on the larger side, nearly 2 1/2 inches wide, with blues, creams and some whispies of purple floating through. It's just outright gorgeous under a light or in the sun. Wow!
This one is fun too. I asked a friend what her favorite colors were and she said "Purple, purple and more purple!" Oooh, those are three of MY favorite colors too! So I had fun with this one, incorporating an opal lilac, lavender and a rich violet. MMmmm. Yummy!
I threw my shoulder out this past week. I have pulled muscles before, but this was just excruciating. Still not quite sure what exactly I did, but wow was it sore! I couldn't raise my arm, nor turn my head and my entire right side was aching with a splitting axe going through my right eyeball.
So, I was on codeine (and now vicodin!) for this past week. The trouble is that we have been blowing glass bottle stoppers for the past two weeks and it's now up to me to do the cleanup so that we can photograph them. But doing the cleanup is so painful right now!!! OUCH!!!
