Glass Collaboration: Learning in the Process

Remember when I told you that Cleopatra was being a pain in the neck? Well, she was my part of a collaborative project with another glass artist, Michael Mangiafico of FiG Studios. The idea for this first FiGalina ( a FiG + a Beadalina= a FiGalina) was for me to create a very regal Cleopatra to be adorned with a very real looking scarab by FiG. This is a great idea! This is also an idea that has forced me to learn new skills in order to do my part to bring it to life! I have to admit to whining about learning most of these new skills, too, because they are things I had happily avoided until now. Since I’m confessing that much to you, I might as well own up in a little more detail, huh?

First, there is the matter of “practice, practice, practice” and the way it relates to being able to re-create beads on demand. I hate practicing, I really do. I formed this opinion as a beginner, after reading that lampworker’s adage that you should make 100 spacers before you move on to other things. Egads! How boring! Honestly, I am terrible at spacers, so I probably should make 100 of them someday and get that behind me.

The problem I faced with this project is that I would need to re-create sculptures as we worked on bringing our sketches to life. Michael would have to make some of the smallest scarabs ever, and I would have to make some of the largest torsos and heads ever, if all the components were going to fit together.

Before the Cleopatra idea took over, we started another idea. For that particular theme (I’ll show it to you when we get back to it), I made at least three different torsos with the same look to them but in progressively bigger sizes. I breathed a sigh of relief after I finally got one that should be a big enough palette for FiG to use. Then the Cleopatra and scarab idea took over. The bobble head Cleopatra (yes, I really did that out of proportion one into a bobble head, I was so frustrated) was only the beginning– I had to make her at least three times after all was said and done. Talk about practice, practice, practice!

The second hurdle I had to jump in order to do this project was learning to reheat a tiny component and then attach it to the sculpture I’m torching at the time. I know that many of you have done this, and I know it shouldn’t have scared me. However, I had a long list of excuses for not trying it: my kiln is on the left, I’m clumsy, what if I set my hair on fire leaning across the flame to get something out of the kiln, yada, yada, yada. I even included this list of excuses and a request that Michael be the one to do any attaching components in one of my first emails to him about this project.

All was going according to my plan. I mailed Cleopatras to FiG Studios. Michael quickly returned them to me, along with some spectacular dichro scarabs. Notice I said all “was” going according to my plan. . . until the evening my clumsiness forced me to learn to attach a component to a bead. I let a Cleo head roll off a pile of tissue paper and collide with a torso and scarab Michael had made. I think I actually cried because I’d let my clutziness break someone else’s hard work. Then, I turned on the kiln, and I practiced. Carefully following the written instructions Michael had emailed me, I attached three broken pieces of rod to three quickly melted globs of glass. For each one, I carefully pulled the warmed up pieces out of the kiln, heated the underside, attached it to the big glob, and then drew on stringer legs. Practice, practice, practice.

Then, the moment of truth came, and I actually attached that scarab body and drew on legs. Whew. Here’s a view of the practice lumps still on the mandrels. You can see more of the finished sculpture in the FiGalina Collaboration page of my BeadArtists.org gallery.

Angie Garren, aka AngelinaBeadalina, melts glass and avoids practicing spacers in her home in southern Illinois. You can see more of her work in her gallery at BeadArtists.org, and you can purchase her work at Etsy (or by email at angelinabeadalina@yahoo.com if something that isn’t in the Etsy shop strikes your interest).

Japanese Kinari Glass

It’s always an adventure trying a new brand of glass. It can be fun, frustrating and challenging. It takes practice to learn how a new kind of glass reacts to the flame and to other colors and metal foils. I’ve really come to love some of the colors from ASK104, Messy Color, and Double Helix now that I’ve worked with them for a while.

Feeling adventurous again, I recently bought a sample pack of Japanese Kinari glass. The colors have a beautiful soft look, like Effetre Alabastro and Opalino glass. Most of the Kinari colors are in the purple-blue-green range and there aren’t any reds or yellows yet from what I’ve seen. Also, some of the transparent rods are very densely pigmented and look black. Because many of the Japanese-style beads use millefiori, I think the transparents are dense so that when the glass is pulled out to a thin cane it will still hold its color. Here is a photo of some of the normal-colored rods, they’re hand-pulled and some of them have an interesting texture:

Like the better-known Japanese Satake glass, Kinari is very, very soft (it melts like butter in the flame) and it has a COE in the 120’s. Because it’s so soft, some people say it should be used with a cooler torch like the Hot Head or the Japanese-style upright air-burning torch. I haven’t had a problem with it on my Minor burner as long as I keep the flame small. The glass is much softer than what I’m used to though, so it’s like learning how to make beads all over again.

I know the annealing schedule for Kinari is different from a 104 COE schedule, but I don’t know what the exact temperatures should be. I’m going to try the Satake schedule and see how that works. Since I haven’t programmed my kiln for Japanese glass yet, I’m just putting my experimental Kinari beads into a fiber blanket to cool and accepting the fact that they’re going to crack. Here are my first test beads:

The Kinari I’m using is version “C.” I’ve heard that the earlier versions “A” and “B” did not work well for people because some of the colors would devitrify. I’m finding occasional devit with some colors in my version “C” beads, but not too bad.

In the next post I write on Kinari glass, I hope to have some annealed beads to show you.