Stretching Myself - Sculpture

Its the start of a new year and traditionally the time when we make resolutions to change something or create a new habit for the coming year. Every year since I got married I’ve resolved to lose weight. Some years I do, some years I don’t but every year I have the same old boring resolution.

This year I decided to change things a bit and decided that one of my resolutions would be to make at least one sculptural piece each time I sit down at the torch. I love sculptural beads and have dabbled in them a bit but never really made a concerted effort at them.

Sculpture is posing interesting challenges for me. I have a hard time driving it into my head that insurance heat is a good thing. This means that while I’m working on a piece I have the occasional failure and suddenly I’ll find myself dodging Cupid’s foot as it explodes because I’ve let it get too cool. I also have issues with melting features in all the way so that I have to redo them while trying to keep other features from melting in. Then I make other parts too thin so the bead breaks while I remove it from the mandrel.

Despite these issues, each bead teaches me something about the art of hot glass sculpture. If I can stick to my resolution I am confident that someday I will make cute sculptures that people would love to buy.

Above are three of my attempts at sculpture. You’ll notice that my cupid is missing his foot (it landed in my lap). The butterfly has a chip at the bottom that came off when I took it off the mandrel. And my poor cat (Letting the Cat our of the Bag) had his paws melted in while I was giving him a face.

Oh, and I did still resolve to loose weight

Heather blogs from her home in Watertown, Wisconsin. If you would like to see more of her work you can go to her site here.