The Art of Joy Alyssa Day

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 marbles & wine stoppers.

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 rocketship 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 countertops, sinks, doors, etc.

Many of the wine stoppers are now online at http://losturemarbles.com/art-glass-wine-stoppers.html 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 wispies 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!!!

This beautiful green marble now has a home on the east coast. The setting is gorgeous letting the sun come in. We consciously made the choice to have our marbles be translucent, transparent in places rather than solid opaque, so that you could see through to the other side to get more intricate things going on in each, plus the light being able to shine through is just spectacular. I’m so happy this one has such a nice home with such loving people. It’s owned by an amazing artist who has quite a history of doing incredible work – Roy Scarfo and his wife, Carol.

I‘ve worked in other mediums (media?) but have found a strange quirk in myself that is really irritating – I fiddle. Yes, I play the violin, but I also just keep nerdling on things forever. When I work in traditional oils, I would keep going in and redoing things until all I had was just a mess. When I started reverse painting on glass, I was not able to keep fiddling with the work and finally it would be finished.

I don’t get to blow glass very often, so when I do, it’s a real treat.

But wait, if I like it so much, why don’t I do it more often? Well, if I ONLY blew glass, I’d do it every day (or most days…). BJ and I are very diversified though. Along with the glass, we paint, build sculptures (out of the glass we blow), build furniture, websites, 3D modeling and animations, plus lots of other things.