Session 5: Color Me Crazy
So
much fun, it’s insane! Potential projects; enamel spin-art painting, self-portrait
in mosaic, suncatcher, bottle pendant, frit beads and pendants.Campers will work in
our Flame and Flat Shops; see below for a full description of each shop.
The
Flame Shop
In the FLAME SHOP, artists
use a torch to heat up rods, or tubes of glass, that will be manipulated into
different shapes. Flameworking, also called lampwork or torchwork, is a type of
glasswork that uses a gas fueled torch to melt rods and tubes of clear and
colored glass. Once in a molten state, the glass is formed by blowing and
shaping with tools and hand movements. The art form began in the first century
in ancient Syria, then became widely practiced in Murano, Italy, in the 14th
century. Flameworking differs from glassblowing in that glassblowing uses a
blowpipe to inflate a glass blob known as a gob or gather, whereas flameworking
manipulates glass either using tools, gravity or by blowing directly into the
end of a glass tube.
The Flat Shop
In the FLAT SHOP, artists create fused and slumped glass pieces, cast pieces
and mosaics in a process often referred to as warm glass,
or glass art fusion. These firings, in a kiln used to make the glass molten
and to join two or more pieces of glass in a process called kiln-forming, range
from 1,100 to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit. Glass casting, meanwhile, is a process
used since the Egyptian period to cast glass objects by pouring
molten glass into a mold. Modern cast glass is formed by a
variety of processes such as kiln casting, or casting into sand,
graphite or metal molds. Sometimes the process is used to assemble pieces of
glass, stone or other materials to create a mosaic.
