18 December 2017

Glass test pieces

I've been experimenting with fusing glass test pieces in the kiln.  There's still some tweaking to do, but I'm happy with how it's coming on...





At night the sculpture will be illuminated internally, which is good, as back lit glass looks gorgeous.  But if you think of a church stained glass window, the colours don't show up from the outside, so I have had to come up with a system that works during the day when the glass is not illuminated.

I have tested layering up different types of translucent white glass with the coloured and clear glass so some colour and the etched images are clear when not back lit... 





It's not straightforward, as some of the colours are much more opaque than others (e.g. the green above), and some of the white glass changes the hue of the colour.  For example, opal glass is wonderful on reds/yellows, but makes blue glass appear brown when backlit! 

In the finished sculpture, the etched glass circles will form a coloured pattern based on a section of the Cosmic Microwave Background








15 November 2017

GEMS workshop

I spent a day with a year 3 pupils at GEMS Primary Academy on Great Western Park.

There will be hundreds of smaller glass circles in the final sculpture, and so I asked the children to make simple designs based on the elements (there are 118 known elements at the time of writing).

Here are a few of their element designs:











The school was doing a project on "metals" so I also ran a project with children making plaster casts of various different metal components.








The children then painted their plaster casts using a dry-brush technique with metallic paint, producing a lovely effect:



17 October 2017

Circle designs at Aureus

The whole school participated in art workshops over four days to make circle designs for the finished sculpture.





Here's a selection of their work:
























11 October 2017

Circle designs at UTC

Art workshop with students at UTC Oxfordshire drawing designs based on locally sourced science images.  Their designs will be etched into the glass circles in the finished sculpture.



















20 June 2017

Café Scientifique

I gave a short talk about the Reach public art project for the Café Scientifique group at Cornerstone. 

The main presentation was "Origami and Its Engineering Applications" by Professor Zhong You from the University of Oxford's Department of Engineering Science.




Wonderful stuff, and you can find more info here:
http://www.didcotfirst.org.uk/article-cafe_scientifique_origami_and_its_engineering_applications__20th_june_2017.html