Throw and Blow

Collaboration with another artist is always exciting - mixing two medium even more so. The past two weekends Alan Bennett and I joined forces to further an exploration of glass and clay. For the past year we have periodically worked on this idea, but this weekend I started to get really excited about it. Here's how it works... Alan throws a pot with really thick walls and exaggerated throw rings. While it's still wet I blow glass into it, using the clay as a blow mold. Alan holds the sides of the clay giving it another dimension and also keeping it from blowing out the mold. An episiotomy is performed on the clay and the glass comes out with the markings and texture from the inside of the pot.

It's like someone writing half a story and handing it off to you to finish. You have to take what they have written and make it all sum up and make sense. I really got into how to make the foot and lip relate to the body, adding extra glass bits and capturing the liquidity of the glass. I never knew what was I was going to have to work with until it came out of the clay. The real fun then was thinking fast about how to finish the design. There's no time to sketch and plan - it's all very heat of the moment (please forgive the pun).

Not every piece came out. A couple landed on the floor (as usually happens when trying to figure out a new technique) and some weren't exactly what I wanted. But now I've gotten Alan's bug and can't wait for him to come back this way so we can do some more.

A couple are still in the annealer, too hot when I left the studio today to even sneak a peek. The one I liked the best from the whole weekend is in there. As soon as I open the annealer I will take some pictures and post them.