Loving astronomy, and becoming a glassblower, it was only a matter of time before we would try re-creating the planets and Sun in blown glass. It is an interesting challenge to figure out the right mix of colors, the density of the colors and how big or small the chips of color (frit) need to be so that they will mix and swirl together and look like whichever planet's atmosphere.

Some planets are easier than others. Venus is pretty homogenous in color, as is Neptune. Yes, there are some mild variations, but no wild storms, no oceans and land masses and certainly no rings! OK, yes, Neptune and Uranus have some thin rings, but for the purpose of re-creating the planet in various sculptural form, their rings are usually, but not always, omitted.

But the rings of Saturn.... You just can't omit those, or it just isn't Saturn! But creating those rings when you're working in blown glass is a definite challenge. Since we want to make our Saturn sculptures more scientifically accurate, we couldn't go with just the basic gestalt of rings that comes from trying to do them from molten glass in a big blowy furnace. The way we decided would be best to showcase the planetary storms and the patterns of the rings was to do the planet itself as a blown glass piece, but to do the rings from sheet glass, using carving and etching to detail the pattern of the rings, shape and relative size.

First we decide how big we need to make the planet section of Saturn. Currently, I'm building three of these sculptures. The planet size needs to be just under 4.5". So we go out and blown the glass pieces, measuring when they're blowing larger and larger until we get the piece to be the 4.5" wide. Since Saturn itself is a bit oblate (squished), the glass piece we blow will be 4.5" wide, but a touch less tall, instead of perfectly spherical.

Here is a photo of one of the blown glass pieces that will become a Saturn sculpture:

Blown Glass Saturn without the rings

Then we work on the rings. First, we have to figure out how big to make the rings. We know from science that Saturn's rings are about 2 1/4 times the diameter of the planet, so if the planet is 4.5", then the rings will be 10" across! So we cut flat sheet glass in a 10 inch circle and then, using a ring saw (appropriate don't you think?), cut out the center 4.5" so that the blown planet that we made will juuuuust barely slide all the way into the hole.

Using a saw to Cut Saturn's Rings and center hole

We then use a vertical lathe and an etching tool, along with research data from the Cassini mission, to carve the ringplane as accurately as we can. We use the Cassini imagery so we know where to place the rings, the gaps, how far away from the planet to start the first ring, etc.

Saturn Rings with ring detail etched

When the rings have been etched, and the planet and rings have been all cleaned up and polished, we go about setting the two together. Hopefully, if the ring carving has been done right, the rings will slide over the planet and just touch and hang at the planet's equator. I know I've done my job right if the rings will sit there by themselves, but any touching will cause them to fall through. I then brace the rings at the spot where they just touch and apply a type of glue that when it cures is actually stronger than the glass! After two weeks, the rings will be forever attached to the Saturn planet and the sculpture will be complete!

Testing the fit of the rings to the Saturn

Now it just needs to sit on a lighted base to truly make it shine!

Dobby gives Saturn the Sniff Test

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Recently, we ran a Kickstarter program. Kickstarter.com is a place for creatives to post a project they're trying to raise money for. There are art projects, films, books, inventions... all kinds of really cool things on there, all trying to get funding so that they can be created. The artists/writers/inventors/whatevers post a story about the project they want to do and offer "rewards" to anyone who will donate to their cause. It can be as little as one dollar, or as much as the supporter wants to give.

With ours, it wasn't so much a donation as the people supporting us were buying our artwork on sale. We offered a better piece of art than the going rate if they supported our project NOW rather than waiting until Christmas to buy or whatever. We get the much needed funding to travel and exhibit our glass art at the Space Symposium and they get a wonderful piece of art on sale. It's a total win all the way around.

I hadn't run a Kickstarter program before, so had no idea if it would work, what all I needed to do to get it going and what would have to be done to get it to completion. What I found was that it wasn't so much that the Kickstarter website promoted us to a range of people that hadn't seen our work before. I had no idea of course, but thought that the pledges would come from new people. What I wasn't expecting was that nearly all of the pledges came from our circle of friends and supporters. People stepped out of the woodwork to help us. It was amazing.

We reached our goal and could travel to the show and display our glass art knowing that we had the money to pay for the shipping, hotel and travel expenses. When you're an artist, working day to day and on such a random income, knowing that the funds would be there was such a relief to us. We could work on putting up a fantastic show without the stomach churning stress.

The thing that became most clear to me is that I have the greatest group of friends and supporters. The money was of course a huge help, but what actually hit me harder was that people close to me and those I didn't know well had been watching our progress and wanted to help us succeed. The emotionally impact of that realization is/was tremendous.

Here is how our booth turned out, with many examples of our wonderful artworks.

From left to right in the real booth you can see the 1/3 scale model of the Ascending Stars Lifetime Space Achievement Award Master Sculpture on a turntable atop the cabinet, our display case holding bottle stoppers, small dishes, a Red Velvet glass cupcake and atop the cabinet one of the Steampunk Rockets. On the counter next to the cabinet are some small awards, our cards and a tower to accept business cards from visitors to the booth. When they drop a card in, they receive a glass pendant necklace as a gift.

Along the back wall at left center, on its own turntable, is the Ascending Stars Lifetime Space Achievement Individual Award sculpture that was presented on Wednesday to Dr. Charles Elachi, Director of JPL, the HD monitor running our Impact Movie, a Rising Earth sculpture, a 13" Fused Glass Galaxy Platter, an 11" Fused Glass Rose Nebula Platter, a 10" Blown Glass Jupiter, the Ascending Stars Lifetime Space Achievement Individual Award prototype, our illustration portfolio book and, on its own pedestal, the Planetary Society Cosmos Award spare; its twin Blown Glass Saturn sculpture now residing in Stephen Hawking's office at Cambridge.

On the table against the right wall are what's left of 200 A New Ocean prints that BJ signed and gave away as our tribute to the Space Shuttle program; soon to come to a close.

We have nearly finished creating the artwork rewards, just a few to go. Now to think up the next Kickstarter project!

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Each year, we travel to Colorado Springs to attend the National Space Symposium. Actually, we don't *attend*, we work. First off, we move the giant glass sculpture from it's home at the Space Foundation corporate headquarters to where the conference is. When we're done moving and setting it back up, we spend the rest of the week exhibiting our work in a booth in the exhibit hall with all the Big Space Companies.

The sculpture gets moved three more times during the week for the luncheon and then back to the headquarters, so along with running the booth space, it's a long, long week! But it is a lot of fun to see people and to show off our glass work. Most of the people that attend are high military and serious space professionals - they certainly aren't hanging around art fairs being familiar with blown glass! But they're an intelligent set, so we can really get into the nitty-gritty of explaining what we do and how we do it, which is loads of fun.

But it's an expensive endeavour, to ship this heavy glass work, fly there, set it all up and stay for the week doing the exhibition. So I've set up a Kickstarter project at http://www.kickstarter.com/ to help finance this trip. With your support, we can take some exquisite glass art and introduce a whole lot of people to how art can make their lives richer. And what do you get out of it? Oh... I'm so glad you asked!! You get some of the very exquisite art that I'm talking about! Blown glass, cast glass, carved glass.... ooh, it's all so wonderful, and hand-made by myself and my partner, right here in the good ole US of A. If you help us, you'll love the glass art you get in reward, and of course the warm fuzzy feeling of encouraging and directly supporting an artist to show off our creations.

Just go here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joyalyssaday/blown-glass-space-art-exhibit-and-you-get-some-art and pledge as much as you can. Maybe bump up to the next level and have some of your Christmas shopping taken care of!

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Over the past several months, I've gotten the love bug for cupcakes. My mom got me a book for Christmas that was all about cupcakes with different recipes and decorations and then my friend, Sandra Salamony, sent me her wonderful book, 1,000 Ideas for Decorating Cupcakes, Cookies & Cakes with glorious pictures of all sorts of different decorating ideas. Of course, I wanted to make them all in food form, but what I *really* wanted to do was to make them out of blown glass. Wouldn't that be spectacular??

Of course, I had a number of other jobs going on at the time and couldn't get to thinking about figuring out how to make cupcakes out of glass for a while, but finally, I had a little bit of free time with the kilns, so gave myself permission to give it a try. I didn't know if I could even make anything decent looking, but I wanted to know, yes or no. I gave myself two days to play with different techniques to see what could be done.

I decided the best course was a blown glass cake section and then swirl on solid glass for the icing. Making solid cupcakes will come about soon too, but since the first ones I was trying were the "jumbo" size, making them solid would use a lot of glass and weigh a ton. As it is, the blown glass ones, with the solid icing still weigh over a pound each. I first made a clear one, just to try out the techniques and see what worked best. Then, let it cool overnight and see if it actually looked good.

When I saw it the next morning, I knew I was in love! I progressed right away into making colored cupcakes. After a few days of different colors, I'm finding which colors work best with the techniques I'm using and also moving into trying some other color combinations, including translucent bright colors. Here is a trio of Chocolate with pastel sprinkles:

I really love the sprinkles! But the chocolate is dark dark, so the next day, I tried to make a lighter one. I succeeded in a darned fine Red Velvet with CreamCheese frosting:

With red sprinkles. Then the following day, my partner suggested the crystal colors, so I made several each of a few bright, but very see-through colors, so that the refraction of the glass can be seen and appreciated instead of being solid. That was just yesterday and here is how those turned out:

I must say that I just *love* making these glass cupcakes! With sprinkles! What do you think? Do you like them? Have suggestions? Please leave a comment!

Peace, Joy

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I love it when things work out just right.

Ten days ago, I got a call from a lady who had seen our Baptismal Bowls website and wanted to know if we could do a custom piece for her church. The bowls on the website are large - 18 inches diameter by 5 inches deep. She needed one that was about 12 inches across by 4 inches deep. "Oh, yes!" I told her, "I can make that for you!" Here is the bowl they liked:

Within a few days, she had gotten the go-ahead from her committee and they fedexed me a check for the deposit. The bowl design they liked was one I liked and had all of the right colors for, so I didn't have to spend any time ordering glass or digging for the appropriate equipment. They were building the font to match the bowl, so I didn't have to worry about trying to make sure it would fit into a strange shape like the weird sink I tried before.

Since over that weekend, my large kiln was available, I went ahead and started the casting process on the bowl. I hadn't received their deposit check yet, but I had a good feeling about them and could certainly post the bowl elsewhere if they never came through. By the time I got their deposit check, I'd already cast the bowl and done the subsequent firings on it to get the pattern and correct shape. The day after I got the deposit, the molding of the bowl was complete. I hadn't even cashed their check yet!

I brought the bowl in and cleaned it up, set it on the counter and waited for it to dry. There were no cracks, no problem spots, no weirdnesses, no spikes on the edges.... It came out perfect, and beautiful. Yes! This is the way things ought to work. They should just *work*! Here is the final piece:

Now I can write them and tell them their bowl is already finished and they'll be delighted! Yayy!!! I love happy clients!!! Then I'll ship it down to Texas to its new home!

I love it when things just work. It's like they were meant to be. Now! On to the next project!

Peace, Joy

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A really fun part of my job is the first contact I get with a new client and they say "We're thinking of something, but we don't know what. Is that possible?" and then from there, based on their budget, the use and how wild they want to be, I get to design and create a piece of artwork that is new and truly unique.

A little bit ago, a company contacted me and wanted an award that would reflect their work in the aerospace industry. They really liked the "Earth from Space" type of awards I have created before, so we went from there and I designed this piece:

Initial design for Barrios Award

Usually I design a piece without knowing for sure how to make it or if it will actually work. Then go about the process of figuring out how to make what I've seen in my head. Of course, I keep physics in mind and know basically what is and isn't possible, so don't design floating, rotating heads or anything (although that would be fun...).

With this piece, the Earth section, I've made before for a different award, so I knew how to create that part, but the pillar it sits on was a bit of a challenge. I finally decided that the best way was to use a drop mold with a triple thickness plate. Theoretically, this would drop down the appropriate amount, and be thick enough to strongly hold up the Earth section. The Earth is a 6 inch plate, 4 layers thick and then molded into the chord section, so it is pretty heavy. They wanted the entire piece to be about 8 inches tall, so I set out to make the base.

The rough part was to get the piece to drop the appropriate amount, and be able to reproduce it nearly exactly for the second award they'd ordered. I ended up with a number of samples that went in the heat too long, so they puddled at the bottom instead of making a smooth dome. Or, they went in the heat too short of a time and didn't get enough of a pillar on them to reach the 8 inch height requirement. Putting a short one back in to heat it up a bit more doesn't work well, as the glass is then uneven, so doesn't stretch uniformly. And there is no way to shorten one that is too long.

After a number of trials, I finally got one that was Just Right! Then I set out to make the second one. It took a few tries, but finally a second one came out very similar. It was about a half inch shorter, but that's ok.

Initially, the company engraving was to be on the extended part of the pillar. After working with the samples, I was concerned because that is the thinnest part of the whole piece. To engrave into that just seemed to be asking for trouble, so I made the decision to put the engraving on the base instead. I think it looks fantastic! Here's the final result:

Barrios Award Final Glass

Barrios Award Final Glass

I shipped the two awards to their new home in Houston. I'm proud of them. I hope they're loved.

Joy

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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!

With our works, they're beautiful, but they also WORK! There is "Science" involved! The solar system mobile spins in orbits and the planets are blown glass made to relative scale with each other. It's a work of art, but also has quite a lot of knowledge and engineering behind it. The orrery that we build has the blown glass planets in their correct orbits, relative scale to each other and they actually rotate the correct direction and correctly scaled to each other as well! It's an impressive work of engineering, *and* a beautiful structure as well.

Then we were commissioned to build a table base. The client likes Chihuly art, so I endeavored to design something beautiful and strong enough to support her enormous tabletop. The design I came up with was this:

The Deep Sea Anemone Table

And it is beautiful. The structure of the support tubes and cross linked arms are what support the tabletop. The glass work on the structure is purely art. There is no engineering function to the glass at all. It is a conglomeration of beautiful smaller pieces that combine to make a dazzling whole. And I like it. That isn't to say that I'm going to switch and only make these random mashups from now on and drop my whole engineering background, but it was very nice to not have to construct computer drives, gearing, swivels and such in this piece. I could just focus on the beauty of the individual pieces. "Looks like Chihuly"? Thank you. I'll go raise my prices now.

Peace, Joy

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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.

*Her* sinks had to be made extra thick in sections, a little wider on this part, flat over here, dropped straight down on this side, curved on this other side, etc...... I wasn't allowed to alter her old 70's countertop at all. It wasn't even a particularly *nice* countertop, she just didn't want to futz with anything more than what was obviously (to her) a very simple project of going back to my studio, picking two matching bowls out of the perfectly sized bowls from my huge selection of stock, quickly popping the drain and faucet holes into them, and dropping them into her counter, sealed and ready for use! Should have taken me maybe a week at the most, according to her.

When I'm not faced with these insurmountable restrictions, I'm quite able to make large scale bowls that are gorgeous and would work wonderfully as sinks.

This one uses a great "splashy" technique which looks like the color is boiling up through the glass. Makes for a great looking sun! It's 18" in diameter, 5" deep.

I think this one would be a divine sink - the colors are gorgeous and the shape is shallow, wide and elegant. This one uses the splashy technique too. I like the look of it, as it's not the standard. It takes more time and effort, but for the client who doesn't want to buy off the shelf at home depot, this uniqueness is well worth it. It's also 18" in diameter, but 4 1/2" deep.

This bowl is beautiful. The gentle pink background with the blues and purples dancing through are mesmerizing. Put in a white bathroom, with accents of the matching blue and pink would be spectacular. 18" in diameter, 5" deep. Of course, any of these don't *have* to be sinks at all. They make perfect bowls already, just... you know... wanted to show that I *CAN* make sinks

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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.

It was difficult. Each attempt took 6-10 days to heat up each section, cool it back down and then move on to the next step. After each step, I would brace myself to go out to look in the kiln. Most of the time, the piece would be perfect until the final forming step and then have a catastrophic failure from unknown causes. I was spiraling down into serious depression, questioning my ability and even if I wanted to continue as an artist at all.

When she canceled, you'd think that I would be crestfallen, more depressed, but in fact the exact opposite happened. I was relieved, reborn and re-ignited with hope, creativity and enthusiasm. My mind started bubbling with all the projects that had been on hold for so long. New projects burst into my head. I was ready to fire the kiln up again.

And when I did... Fear struck. What if I actually *HAD* lost my ability? What if all the previous good stuff was flukes and I was out of ideas and luck? I took deep breaths and hit the on switch.

As I peaked in to check after the final firing, I burst into insane giggling, smiling from ear to ear. A success, yes, but what a beauty as well.

13 Inch Fused Glass Galaxy Platter

13 Inch Fused Glass Galaxy Platter - Oblique

Getting this gorgeous piece to come out, with it's beautiful colors, it's perfect shape and nary a problem in sight has given me a giddiness that I haven't felt in a loooong time. I've plunged back in to actively marketing our works, and also in creating more different types of pieces for a wider audience. I would love to hear your comments on this piece, or the process. Please leave a comment.

Now, on to more pieces!!!

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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.

With these bottle stoppers, first they had to be solid glass so that they would be heavy and strong enough to endure handling, dropping, tipping over, etc. Then, they had to be decorated while they were small, but then didn't get blown larger. The details had to remain small and still be clear about what they were. That's where the hard part came in.

It took us a number of days and a number of failures before we finally came up with a good way to decorate the tiny little molten blobs of glass. What we finally were able to start making, though, were just spectacular.

Dense Clouds Earth Wine Stopper

These will make fantastic Christmas gifts, as they're small, less expensive and quite unique. The stoppers themselves are stainless steel, so won't corrode, rust or pit. And since each one is handmade by myself and my partner, they're original, signed works of art, each being completely unique in the universe.

So far we've created Earth, Mars and Venus.

Planetary Mars Wine Stopper

Planetary Venus Wine Stopper

We will most likely also make Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus for Christmas gifts. Saturn will take a bit more work til I'm comfortable with making durable rings, but.. How hard can it be? so those will come too.

Do you like these? Would you like to get some as gifts? They're on our website - Planetary Bottle Stoppers or contact me directly for special orders or quantities.

And, as always, let me know your thoughts about these or other works of ours. We can only grow as artists if we know what YOU like.

Peace, Joy

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