Gaffer Girls: Casting Couch

Evidence of Lost Wax Casting

2011-11-02T14:46:00.000-07:00

Instructions for Casting Gaffer® Opaline #300

2011-11-02T11:14:00.000-07:00

Opaline #300
Opaline #300 is a striking colour much like Gold Ruby #221, except that instead of developing larger metallic gold agglomerations when heat treated at a certain temperature range, the particles created are lead phosphate droplets. As they grow in size and number they interfere with transparency. The outcome is varying degrees of a white semi-translucency or dense opacity.

We provide the raw material in a transparent state where the opacity potential is latent. It is doped with a very small amount of Neodymium oxide so that we can differentiate it from Clear #210. It requires heat treatment at a certain time and temperature to develop degrees of opacity.

Run the glass into the mold at the usual temperature as the rest of the casting range i.e. 800-850oC (1470-1580oF). Then lower the temperature to 620-650oC (1150-1200oF). Hold at that temperature for at least 15-30 minutes. It is difficult to give an exact prescription of holding times and temperatures because of the individual parameters of the kiln, thermocouple position, thermocouple accuracy, and mold thickness. It is a good idea to experiment on a small scale to begin with –ideally with samples that can be withdrawn from the kiln at striking temperatures and visually examined. Opaline effects can be achieved ranging from translucence (much like the look of Lalique) through to a dense white opal, depending on time and temperature. There will be different response times depending on whether you are using billets or frit.

There will be a limit at which the Opaline/Opal phenomenon can be achieved by watering down the glass with other colours. Try no more than 3 parts Opaline to one with any other colour when mixing in a reservoir.

Instructions for casting Gaffer® Gold Ruby #221 & Gold Amethyst #276

2011-11-02T11:05:00.000-07:00

Gold Amethyst #276

Gold Ruby #221

Instructions for casting Gaffer® Gold Ruby #221 & Gold Amethyst #276

Gold Ruby belongs to a group of glasses where the coloration depends on reheating the glass to a certain viscosity in order to cause the metal atoms to form a colloid and at a certain particle size transmit color. Copper and Silver are other noble metals that exhibit the same behavior as Gold. The color development process is called “striking”

Our Gold Ruby #221 and Gold Amethyst #276 casting crystal is specially designed to be “struck” under casting conditions. Gold ruby #221 comes in a very pale pink state. (It is doped with a small amount of Erbium to distinguish the glass from Clear #210). The Gold amethyst #276 shows the amount of cobalt blue in the glass that will turn the ruby into an amethyst. If we struck the glass before on selling it, then it would become “overstruck” under the extra heating regime of casting.

This glass requires a reasonable amount of observation and control by the end user to achieve the right shade. Conditions will vary between different kilns, molds, and the shape and size of the work. It is recommended that small-scale experiments are carried out until confidence is gained to make larger scale work.

The ideal ruby color is attained when many small gold particles are formed, being neither too small, nor too large. The evidence is in the color. A very small number and size of gold particles will color the glass firstly a pale brown and then with time, the brown gives way to a purple shade. Continued heating slowly increases the size and number until a ruby eventuates. If the Gold Amethyst is arrested at the purple stage the color may be too deep a purple. Longer firing will lighten the hue. If the heat is too high, or too prolonged, then a color phenomenon results called Sapphirin. This has a livery brown aspect on the surface in reflected light. The ruby then has been spoiled because the many small colloidal particles of gold have adhered to each other and grown too large.

Our recommendation is to heat the ruby up from cold either in the mold or in a reservoir. The best rubies like slow heating. Charging the mold with cold cullet at casting temps of 750-850^oC (1380-1560^oF) will encourage the growth of a few large particles rather than many small ones, and the result will be liverish.

Do not fire the crystal as hot as you might with the other colors. Try running the glass in at around 780^oC (1450^oF) and when you are satisfied the glass is fully melted into the mold, drop the temperature to around 700-710^oC (1290-1310^oF). Hold it there for about 3-4 hours before dropping down to the annealing temperature range. It is a good idea to have a small sample you can take out of the kiln and inspect while you are firing to be sure the color progression is moving through the purple range and into ruby. This also guards against overfiring the piece as well. Try to avoid the surface of the glass being exposed to direct radiation from the electric elements as this may cause the surface to become overheated and become livery.

Be prepared for the intensity and hue of the ruby to change from firing to firing unless firing times and temperatures are strictly repeated. Dilution with clear or mixing with other colors may change striking rates.

There is a limit as to how much the ruby can be watered down by clear. Don’t attempt more than 50/50.

Also the ruby is very sensitive to reduction agents that may be present in other colors. Unpredictable results may come from mixing it with #’s 220, 230, 240, 242, 245.

Meet the Artist - Paul Marioni

2011-11-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

Community Artists Program Event 11.11.11

2011-11-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

Connecting artists and buyers at an evening of art demonstrations, wine and food, and an opportunity to meet 11 local artists.

You are invited to join us for an evening of art, artist demonstrations, a short film about the community artists program, wine and food, and an opportunity to meet 11 local artists and purchase their work. One night only! Space is limited.

Carol Milne is a featured Artist .. & a good friend ..

congratulations ..

Community Artists Program . com

11 featured Artists
Layne Cook
Mark Dahn
Kendal Detrick
Marilyn Charlat Dix
Lise Graham
Clare Johnson
Anne Lancaster
Maxine Mattson
Carol Milne
Chris Moench
Sandy Nelson

Casting & Fusing. from NZ to Murano

2011-03-03T14:06:00.000-08:00

Fresh Fusing & Casting

from

New Zealand to Murano

Abate Zanetti Glass School

Hartwick College Glass Casting 2008

2011-03-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

Gaffer Glass USA

19622 70th ave. South bay #4 Kent, Wa . 93032

buy your 92coe casting color direct

M-F .. 8-4 pst 877.395.7600

outside US email: manager@gafferglassusa.com

Ladle Casting Glass

2011-03-03T13:23:00.000-08:00

Gaffer Glass USA
92coe glass casting color billet or cullet frit

buy direct M-F .. 8-4 pst
19622 70th ave. South bay #4 Kent, Wa 98032
877-395-7600
outside US email: manager@gafferglassusa.com

Anna Boothe on GLASS CASTING

2010-05-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

ANNA BOOTHE

May, 2010

Q: Could you briefly describe the glass casting process?

The process is anything but brief, but I’ll give it a try. I use several variations of what is a basic kiln-casting process using glass frit. I begin with a positive form, i.e. what I wish to turn into glass, made from either wax and/or clay. The clay is modeled and the wax is either direct-carved or cast in a rubber or alginate mold that has been fabricated from another wax or found object. Next, the positive is invested in a plaster/silica-based refractory mold. The clay is dug-out and/or the wax is removed by steaming. The resulting mold cavity is filled with crushed glass, either randomly or by placing the glass particles specifically. Then, the packed mold is heated slowly until the glass melts. More glass is added gradually at the peak temperature until the glass no longer “shrinks.” When the mold is full and the glass is fully melted, the kiln is programmed to cool slowly in a specific manner relative to the glass type, its thickness and other variables.

When the glass is completely cool, the mold is removed and the cold-working begins!

Of course, I have left out quite a few details.

Q: How did you discover your talent for art/ casting? (When did you do your first cast?)

I’m sure you’re not referring to my crayon and Playdoh period, but I did know that I wanted to be an artist by the time I was 5 when I began taking art lessons at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

In terms of casting, I started doing that in graduate school (Tyler School of Art) in the mid-1980s. Before that, I remember being curious about the process when I saw students doing it in the late 70s at RISD, where I was majoring in sculpture.

There was no-one teaching kiln-casting at Tyler when I was there. So, what I learned came from my own crude attempts and from some information I gleaned from a former graduate student whose work partially focused on exploring the techniques.

It’s amazing that as little as 20 years ago, kiln-casting in the US was still in its naissance. Obviously, lots of it had been done earlier in the century, predominately in France under the moniker of the pate de verre movement. But, little had been attempted under the guise of the young studio glass movement, which up until then had its attention directed almost solely on blowing.

Q: Have you attended art school or an art programs or apprenticeship?

As mentioned above, I attended Rhode Island School of Design and received a BFA in Sculpture in 1981. In 1988, I completed my MFA in Crafts/Glass at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia.

Q: What artists inspire you?

Many! Most of the artists who inspire me are not glass artists. Although, the glass work that most interests me is that made by artists who make me think. I certainly admire and respect the prettiness of much glass art, but inspiration, for me, comes from a deeper place. Those glass artists who often inspire, or have inspired, me include Jack Wax, Michael Scheiner, Bonnie Biggs, Michael Rogers, Judith Schaecter, and Susan Holland,….to name just a few. Honestly, sometimes I am most intrigued by the artists themselves, more than by their work.

Among other visual artists who have influenced my work are Remedios Varo, Francesco Clemente, Kiki Smith, Frida Kahlo, and Kathe Kollwitz, not to mention many writers, filmmakers and musicians, etc.!

Q: How has your art evolved since you first began?

This question is hard and the answer too complex for a short answer. But, if I can mark when I began as being when I seriously began making work professionally and showing it in galleries, then I might be able to make a short stab at the answer.

I see the evolution of my work as being both linear and circular. In other words, much of what I think about now does resonate with thoughts and objects I made 20-30 years ago. Now, however, I am more proficient at process and my work perhaps appears more “polished” and well crafted. Nevertheless, my early work had a raw quality that I still enjoy.

In terms of process evolution, my early sculpture was baked. Much of the work was constructed from bread that I had made myself or purchased as ready-made objects. I discovered that there are other uses for foundry burnout kilns! (As a sidebar, I later spent many years making a living as a pastry chef.) Later, because bread tends to disintegrate, I transferred my baking passion to something more permanent.

Relative to my subject matter, the figure has always been, and continues to be important. Currently, I am interested in using segmented portions of the figure as metaphor.

Q: Has being a woman in the industry influenced your work? If so how?

Yes and no. It’s hard to ignore that I’ve grown into a field that has spent many years being dominated by men, in the studio and educational venues. I have watched that dynamic change, however, through a shifting balance of male and female glass artists moving freely across, artificial but clearly perceived, former technical access boundaries.

That said, I think I would’ve pursued what I wanted regardless of this dynamic. In hindsight, perhaps it was just luck that I chose to follow a process that was less popular among male glass artists at the time. So, I never felt thwarted or cast aside by what else was going on in the movement.

I used to make work that critics tended to label as “feminist.” However, from my perspective, I was just expressing myself from an artist-in-a-woman’s-body vantage point, without any overt political reference or intention. What I did notice, though, was that that type of labeling had the effect of being dismissive and, in some venues, felt like it relegated my work to a lesser category.

Q: What motivates/inspires you?

I suppose my answer depends on what day it is. My itinerant moods and general interactions with others motivate what I create as much as what I read, where I travel and my daily activities.

Without meaning to skirt specifics, I describe my work as a response to any of the above aspects of my life. So, for example, if I want to comment on a type of interpersonal interaction, I may create an object that emblemizes how I wish to (better) handle a future such situation.

Q: Did your upbringing influence your work?

Absolutely. Probably what influenced me most were the objects and books with which I was surrounded. By avocation, my father was an armchair scholar of ancient Middle Eastern art and history, specifically that of Egypt. So, I spent lots of time looking at books about Egyptian art as I was growing up. Also, he collected antique American glass bottles and paperweights. His mother had gone to University of the Arts (formerly, Philadelphia College of Art) in the 1920s and her paintings hung on our walls. Her father, my great grandfather, was a talented painter and woodcarver.

My mother, and other women in her immediate family, either by avocation or vocation, were or are great interior designers, cooks and seamstresses.

I’m sure all of these propensities are gene related, so I imagine that I was more or less destined to become a maker.

Q: What’s your favorite piece to date? Why? ~Add pics

My favorite piece is entitled “Growth.” I made it in 1988 while I was still in graduate school. It’s one of the pieces I will never sell. Ironically enough, even though it is 22 years old, Urban Glass recently used it for the cover of their Spring Course Catalogue.

The sculpture presents a composite female-screw form (a metaphor for a self-anchoring device). The figure is cast from highway beads that, when melted, left the form pulled and stretched, as if by gravity. It is attached, as if growing from it, to a large vertically mounted cast rock of the same pale grey-blue color. When installed in the ideal space, the piece gets affixed to a twenty foot wide wall, painted the same hue, and is lit softly. For me, the piece is about serenity. It’s timeless.

Q: What is your favorite or most exciting thing about Casting?

It’s a toss-up between pushing the wax around while I watch old movies, and getting suited-up in silver clothing and ill-fitting gloves to masochistically risk losing my eyelashes while I add glass to small openings in my molds. Yesterday, I fired a kiln with 26 small molds, each of which had to be charged with a different color of glass over about a 5-hour period. I add frit with a small bent (so as to create a spout) mandarin orange can and reach into the kiln each time. Casting can get tedious. You have to love it!

Q: What are you working on now, and what are your plans for the future?

Right now I have a bunch of balls in the air that all add up to trying to make a living in this economy through diversifying my efforts. After deriving my primary income from teaching for 20 years straight, it’s been pretty exciting and humbling trying to make it solely as a freelance artist for the past year.

I parse my time between making several different bodies of work (from decorative one-of-a-kind objects to more complex sculptural forms), doing commissions, teaching short workshops and traveling to do stints as a visiting artist.

Currently, I’m concentrating on making work for a New Mexico exhibit that opens in July.

Q: What is your average day like?

Because my studio is in a barn on the property where I live with my family, my average days are an ebb and flow amalgam of working in the studio and promoting my art or soliciting work through correspondence, etc., coupled with chores, animal attention, tending the gardens and exercising.

Q: Where can your castings pieces be seen?

Presently, my smaller decorative work can be seen at Leo Kaplan, Ltd. (NY), the Corning Museum of Glass (Glass Market), the Toledo Museum of Art (Collectors’ Corner), Kittrell-Riffkind Art Glass (Dallas), the Society for Contemporary Craft (Pittsburgh), the Liberty Museum Shop (Philadelphia), and the Works Gallery (Philadelphia). Currently, my sculpture is being shown privately by Judy Youens in Santa Fe, periodically by the Snyderman Gallery in Philadelphia and in a variety of intermittent group shows.

Q: Has the recession affected your work/process?

The recession has affected the decisions I make about scale (i.e. cost to make) and the type of designs I pursue. In the past year, I have been making smaller pieces that are “prettier” and less concept-driven. Lower ticket-priced work tends to sell more easily! The larger, more challenging pieces tend to remain on the shelf longer. But, that’s always been true.

Q: What advice can you give to beginning casters?

My advice would be simply to cultivate patience and to enjoy the learning that comes with perceived failure.

Gaffer Q: What’s your favorite Gaffer Color?

I have several current favorites: Chardonnay, Pale Copper, and Hyacinth.

Gaffer Q: What is your favorite thing about using gaffer color?

I enjoy the clarity and brilliance of the lead crystal and the ease with which it polishes.

Bonus Q: Tell us one of your favorite quotes?

Two quotes:

(Posted in my studio) Garrison Keillor: “The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.”
Yehuda Amichai: “Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding.”

thanks Anna ... beyond wonderful ....

GAFFER GLASS USA

PROGRESS SEQUENCE.. THE SKULL

2009-06-20T07:42:00.000-07:00

this is a great overview of kiln casting

we are looking for gaffer glass casting work ..

casting artists we would love to interview you

and post some of your favorite work ..

be seen on the casting couch ........

contact ... mona at

gaffergirls@gmail.com

we look forward to sharing your work with our friends ...

thanks mona & the gaffer girls