Ars Vitraria Experimentalis

New year, new workshops at nanopod: Hybrid Studio

Friday, January 11th saw the start up of a new glass casting workshop-course.
An introduction took place from 6-8:30pm where we discussed the outline, expectations, materials, and options for the next three weekends in January.
The course will take students through recycling glass bottles, sculpting two dimensional models, mixing and pouring investment, curing the molds, packing the molds with their glass and firing them in the kiln. Annealing schedules will be discussed, cold working of their cast pieces will take place over the last weekend.
The second day of the course students will create other models for Pâté de Verre using Bullseye glass. Frit tinting will be discussed.
Over the second weekend three dimensional models will be constructed/molded out of wax, shell molds will be built and the wax steamed out of the investment molds. Gaffer crystal will be used for casting.
At this point students can create a final work to be cast using any of the methods taught.
Inclusions such as, steel, brass or copper nails, wire, chain may be added to the models, or within the packed glass.

Saturday, January 12th
The first thing that had to happen after everyone cleaned their bottles (for recycling) was to break them into small chunks that could fit easily into their eventual molds. Once everyone had successfully smashed their bottles they were keen to start on their models!
Everyone grabbed their clay of choice and began sculpting, forming , drawing and planning models for their first open-face mold.

Brian started working on a series of faces: Fox, deer and wolf. Each face will be modeled using a different clay in order to get a feel for the differences between them. Klean Klay was used for the fox (above).

Super Sculpey was used for the deer, and plasticine medium was used for the wolf.

Paige wants to keep things simple. she decided to make blocks of glass that will act as candle holders. The holes will hold steel rods with tea candle mounts on the ends.

She intends to add copper chain to the larger slab.
Kris works with bronze and is a bit more familiar with the lost wax casting process however, this was her first time working with Sculpey.

Once everyone’s models were completed we double checked for undercuts. Undercuts are a mega issue when working with clay as it will not be burned or steamed out of the investment molds, plus it’s super tedious trying to delicately remove hidden bits of clay!
There were undercuts. Though everyone successfully removed the clay from their Castalot molds! Woo hoo!

Sunday everyone worked on their next batch of open-face molds. Models were sculpted, Castalot mixed and poured. I forgot to take pictures of everything!
Here’s a shot of one of Kris’ molds from Sunday.

Nudibranchia snowflake coral!