The plan for these two days in Frome was to
create some new glass piece, designed specifically for this project to afford
specific musical mappings. Scott and Shelley were joined by Sila (Shelley’s
intern) for two days in Sonja's workshop; and Rex Lawson joined us
briefly to see how his pianola rolls would transfer to glass.
We had taken a motif
from a Bach fugue (no.2 in C minor) and sandblasted it onto the surface of a
glass 'embryo'; a basic glass jar shape. This embryo would have more molten
glass added to it so that the sandblasted dots would trap air bubbles under the
glass. The images below show the initial embryo, and a subsequent stage where
it has just been dipped in hot glass.
In preparation for this, Sonja had prepared
some embryos back in July. Shelley had done the painstaking work of
transferring the patterns from the pianola roll onto glass. This involved scanning
and adjusting the chosen designs from the rolls, cutting and re-cutting the
holes to etch the pattern into glass, then sandblasting and cleaning the glass.
As we arrived in Sonja’s workshop, she
showed us the embryos which had been slowly warming up all morning: they warm
up because if glass goes straight from room temperature to kiln temperature (over
1000°C) it would shatter. The plan for the session was to take the
various embryos, coat them in layers of molten glass (by ‘encapsulating’;
dipping into a cauldron of molten glass), and spin them out into flat plates.
In this way the etched patterns around the jar-shaped embryo would become a circular
pattern on a flat plate, captured beneath a layer of clear class that would
trap bubbles where the etched holes were.
Shelley had not done this for nearly two
years because it is so expensive. However, for this project it was perfect, because
the process of heating glass in a cauldron or ‘pot’ creates the most an
extraordinary ‘grain’ in the final object that is only visible with projected
or reflected light. This grant made it possible to create work using this
technique that suited our goals so well.
The scented autumn day finally arrived. Shelley
was was extremely nervous about how this might go. The whole process is almost
impossibly precarious, and made even more so by the thin-ness of the glass we
required. Shelley describes how she has ‘seen so many hours of hopeful effort
crack or fold or fall from the end of a blowing iron’.
And, as it happened, it did almost all go
horribly wrong, by Shelley’s original standards at least.
The first plate came out fine. The simple,
symmetrical pattern of the etched triplets spun out to create a series of
looping curves on the plate. Although clumsy and thick and deeply dipped in the
centre, it was at least in one piece; and round!
We tried a second plate, this time in black
glass. Rather than using black glass itself, the black is applied as a layer
onto clear class. The molten surface of the clear embryo (after dipping in
clear glass) is rolled in grains of black glass, which themselves melt and flow
into a layer. This particular granularity interacts with light in a wonderful
way, revealing a texture that is invisible to the naked eye. The image below
(by Michael Coldwell) was captured at our September session in
Leeds working with improvising musicians.
After these initial successes, our luck
began to run out. The first embryo of Tuesday morning had a complex
encapsulated pattern which threw the material off-centre to make a hopelessly
ridged and wobbly pancake. In the final heating, the edge of the glass caught
the rim of the glory hole to create yet another strange bump. However, under
strong light these imperfections have real charm.
The next embryo cracked and fell into the
pot of molten glass. Lost. Dear Sonja was so upset that her kind face burned
red and her solid assistant Keki stepped in to rake out the bubbly mess.
We started again – this time to make a plate.
In the next attempt the embryo collapsed
but stayed on the iron. Rather than try to retrieve the shape, I asked that we
simply let it be, a random looping stone form with my hard-won fugue pattern veering
around inside. We decided to stop trying for formal
precision and just play. Scott took this opportunity to do some glassworking,
to try and pull the glass into a shape that would respond well to the light.
The glass shape was quite dense, with the hot glass ‘gather’ loose, rolling and
looping like treacle on a spoon, but it was possible to pull the surface to
form some gentle twists, creating a beautiful and subtle ‘rabbit’ form.
For the final embryo we opted for a bubble
with twists. Now that he’d had a chance to get used to the feel of pulling the
soft glass with pliers, he had some specific ideas to try. Scott seemed totally
focused, pressing and pulling the material as it slowly came to rest. Sonja
blew a bubble (a hollow form which responds more easily to pulling) and added ‘prunts’
(handles) for Scott to experiment with twisting and pressing. The end result was
a slightly curved bubble with several twisting ‘knobbles’ on the surface. The
twists are barely visible in the glass itself, but create stunning caustics in
light (image Michael Coldwell).
Shelley’s intern, Sila also made a piece
for herself with patient coaching from Sonja. She has a rare gift for form and
edge and we look forward to seeing where she will go.
It was wonderful to get back to the house that evening and test out the new pieces in light.
Reflecting on the whole day, we see this as
the event where the project took on a life its own, related-to but distinct-from
each of our personal practices. Shelley has described this way of working
together as being a ‘level of vulnerability and support that was both new and extremely
rewarding. Quite a revelation for me.’ Scott also found that after years of
discussing and the ideal, and working together in less than ideal circumstances
(brought about by distance, time, and trying to mould the project’s essence around
our existing practices and works) this activity of making new glass
specifically for the project gives it an independence that has both a
supportive force for both of us as artists, and it gives the project a ‘release’,
unmooring it from many previous concerns. For Scott especially, the act of
pulling and shaping the glass gave him a connection to the project’s materiality
that re-oriented his thinking about the musical possibilities. For both of us,
this new independence allowed us to relax some of our more discipline-specific
concerns about the project. For Shelley especially, the precision and rigour of
her usual practice had to be suspended as we experimented with forms. None of
the pieces we made in this session will be artworks in themselves, but they all
offer something to the project that we couldn’t achieve by using Shelley’s
other pieces. Scott’s discipline-specific concerns were destabilised
(positively!) later when we brought the finished pieces to Leeds to get some
musicians trying them out. More on this in the next blog post.
No comments:
Post a Comment