It was a cool enough day yesterday to do a little torchwork at my jewelry bench. I don't get a chance very often, because it takes a good number of hours that have to be completely uninterrupted once I light that torch. It also has to be cool and breezy so that I don't burst into flames or fill the place up with propane fumes. As it is, my partner sometimes gets a headache from the fumes. I keep trying to open enough windows and turn on enough fans, but his desk is directly downstream from my workbench, so... sigh...

This is my torch setup:

Torch

I've been playing with the torch in adding different colors together and swirling them in the glass so that it's more impressionistic than just a solid color next to a solid color. I have to admit that it is great fun! At first, I was trying to make very specific things, but then quickly realized that I much preferred the freeform, with the swirls going where I placed them and pulling shapes from what was coming out. Yesterday's session involved making teardrop pendant earrings in multiple colors. I think they came out great. What do you think???

Yellow Drip Earrings

Blue Drip Earrings

And these are for sale in my ArtFire Store - http://GlassSculptureOrg.artfire.com/

Peace, Joy

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New ways to enjoy my artwork, and they're fun for me to make too. When I started getting my art pieces listed on Etsy and ArtFire, of course I drove around to see what else was selling and at what prices. I found these Scrabble tiles with various images plastered on the front. And immediately I thought "I can do better than that!!!"

Pelagia, by BJ Johnson

So I started experimenting with some little pieces of glass to see what shapes and sizes would make the best little tiles. I heated up several batches over a number of days in my little blueboy kiln, each time, taking them out, wrinkling my forehead and giving them weird, thoughtful faces and then going to cut some more little pieces of glass. Yes, I found the best combination. Makes a beautiful, crystal clear tile, with a few ever-so-tiny bubbles encased, with nice roundy courners and a perfect flat back for an image.

New Horizon, by me and BJ Johnson

Of course, I was fully stocked with great images, having so many paintings I could choose from, from my collection and my partner's. Plus, with the image tile being so small at just one inch, I could zoom in on my paintings and make multiple tiles from each painting. And each one would be it's own little world.

First Kiss

Please take a look at more, and maybe buy one or two... or three! http://glasssculptureorg.artfire.com/

What do you think? Do you like them? Have other ideas? Something different? Something better?

Peace, Joy

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Recently I was asked to produce visible light spectrum pendant necklaces. The lady who asked runs a wonderful scientific website called ScienceMall and she had been selling pendants that claimed to be spectrum, but didn't have the entire visible spectrum in them. When she called and talked with the sellers, they didn't understand what she meant. They were not scientists, not educated about visible light spectrum versus simple rainbow or color charts.

It's a pretty cool thing, really, and I'm honored to help spread the word and teach the difference.

As an artist, I'm very familiar with the color charts showing the 3 primary colors - Red, Yellow, Blue, and the 3 secondary colors - Orange, Green, Purple.  And even the charts that go into the tertiary colors like this one:

Color Wheel

But in the visible light spectrum, it's common to use the memory game Roy G. Biv to indicate the colors of the different wavelengths of visible light. This stands for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. This originally came from Aristotle, who charted out the colors to explain color mixing from primaries to achieve every other color. His first color charts only had five colors, but he later added Orange and Indigo (Blue-Violet in the above color wheel).

The mnemonic RoyGBiv kept the distinction of Indigo alive, so when I was asked to produce a full spectrum pendant, I knew what she was asking for.

Roy G Biv Visible Light Spectrum

Finding suitable colors in our glass shop took a little bit of testing but we came up with a wonderful spectrum of gorgeous colors and I began to swirl them together into one pendant, with red at one end and violet at the other, just like how the light wavelengths are.

Since I'm just not much of one for strict lines and exact shapes, I developed this spectrum of colors into a wonderful organic shape for a pendant:

Spectrum WiggleWorm

It reminded me of a gummy worm, so I named it a WiggleWorm, but was unsure if anyone would actually be interested in it, since it was a worm after all...  I kept it on my desk for a few days thinking about the shape, the color, the feel of it. I finally noticed that I kept holding it, running my fingers over it. If I was wearing it as a pendant, I would absolutely love the sleek feel of the glass and the gentle curving. I also loved the way the colors blended into each other, making the spectrum truly like visible light as there was no clear defining line between the colors.

I decided I loved it.  I hope you do to.

Peace,
Joy

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I grew up watching my dad making all kinds of wonderful things down in our basement. He was (and still is) a magnificent silversmith. He would take the odd rocks that he'd find and break and polish them into beautiful gems and then mount them for rings, pendants, and bracelets.  The basement cave where he had his soldering iron and all the various parts and pieces set up was a mystical treat for me when I was so young.  I'm sure the interest I had is part of what built in me to be confident enough to build and create all the nifty stuff I do.

As I got into artwork though, painting is what took over. Of course, I had always had a "sculptural" bug creating my costumes and such. But with the glass paintings, it was all very flat, but the sculptural element kept creeping into the back of my mind. Then the opportunity to create our first glass sculpture came up. WooHooOOOoo!! I was all over it like cheap polyester, cutting the glass pieces to fit, getting the kiln and learning how to mold glass... Ahhh.....

Our first sculpture was an enormous piece - the Lifetime Achievement Sculpture for the Space Foundation. 7.5' (2.3m) tall, 345 lbs. (156.5kg).

"THAT was your first sculpture???!?!?!??" Yes, it was. I always start big. My first forward painting (I reverse paint on glass, normally) was a 26' (7.92m) x 4' (1.22m) mural (boy, was THAT hard to get my mind used to...). It just happens that way. A client will say "Can you do **THIS**?" and I/we say "You Bet!!!" and then go about how to do it. And, really, I figure if I start out doing something huge and impossible, then everything else is going to be easy after that, right?

But I digress....  So I've been doing these large glass sculpture pieces, but never really anything sculptural and small, until recently. Getting into the jewelry has been a lot of fun, and very interesting and educational. I don't actually wear jewelry. I don't have any piercings and rings drive me nuts, not to mention that I'm quite often getting my hands coated with grease, sawdust, shavings, kiln wash, or other toxic materials that rings would not like. If I go out, I may wear a necklace or watch, but usually I forget, and I don't go out much anyways.  So I never really thought about making any, because jewelry just isn't much on my mind.

The pieces, though, have been a lot of fun. Getting the color and little swirls and such into smaller pieces has been a challenge, and I really like that! I've never been one to be able to keep making the same thing over and over again. I don't have the attention span for it. But each of these has their own little combinations, their own personalities and their own little quirks as they get made.

And working small also has the advantage of testing new techniques without blowing through a lot of glass if it fails.

Of course, you hardly ever hear about failures from artists (from us, anyway), but they do exist and I've been trying to be more outgoing about both the good and the bad. I would love my clients to really get to know me and the processes we go through.

Again, I digress.... I have been quite fortunate to have had a good amount of praise and good wishes for the new jewelry line, and who knew I would be enjoying it so much? I always figured I'd be working big, big, big. These little gems are perfect to let the other parts of my brain work and fill in little gaps of time, and I continue to be struck by the beauty held in each piece.

I guess my dad always knew about the fun of making jewelry, and I'm glad to have found out.  And I'm only just beginning... so many more techniques to try!

What do you think? Do you like them? Do you have suggestions? Comments? What would you like to see? What kind of jewelry do you wear? Help me to learn, please?

Peace, Joy

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Recently, and from multiple sources, I've gotten urged to use our glass work in jewelry. So I did a little research online to see what type of glass jewelry was already out there. We don't particularly like doing the same thing that hoards of others are doing. We like having our work be unique. I found a lot of various necklaces, etc, but none of it really looked like the type of designs that we would/have come up with.

I quite enjoy mixing little pieces in when I'm working on huge projects. They let my brain rest from the big stuff and I can really dive into myself and enjoy the process of each, big and little, much better when I'm bouncing from one to the other.

Of course, the huge project we're just finishing is the Blown Glass and Carbon Fiber Orrery. While I like to bounce to and from project, the main  ingredients usually stay similar or the same. We decided to keep with the Planet theme as we moved into the jewelry. What came out? Planetary Pendants!

Using the blown glass techniques we used to make the gorgeous little micro planets, we made the first in a continuing series of necklaces of the solar system.

We have a lot of practice with blowing Micro Earths, with BJ doing the majority of the work, so we chose this as our first piece, and was very proud of how it turned out:

Earth Blown Glass Pendant Necklace - 1.5" (3.81cm)

We are also very keen on making a Mars, a wonderful inspiration for many artists. We don't work on as many of those for our clients, so it was more of a challenge, but it came out beautiful:

Mars Blown Glass Pendant Necklace - 1.38" (3.49cm)

With the success of these two, we moved into some of the other planets. None of the other ones have quite the distinction of features as these two, but instead lend themselves to more of an impressionistic feel with swirls of cloud patterns and storms. The first was Venus. Subtle and lovely:

Venus Blown Glass Pendant Necklace - 1.75" (4.44cm)

And we also did a version of Uranus but with more artistic license as to the storms and clouds. It turned out exceptionally well and already has a new loving owner:

Uranus Blown Glass Pendant Necklace - 2.75" (6.98cm)

I don't think that Mercury will be much to look at, but Saturn, with its pale storms and Jupiter with its rugged storms will be very fun for us to work on. Those will wait for a future post.

If you're interested in showing your love for your favorite planet by owning one of these beauties, please drop me a note. They will soon be posted on Glass Sculpture.org, but as they're so very new, they're not there yet. They are all in the $35-$65 range. Very affordable, unique and gorgeous.

Peace,

Joy

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