We make our art pieces primarily using glass, occasionally incorporating other materials like metal. Our collaborative process begins with creating a design for a piece, choosing colors and composition, sometimes making cardboard or paper patterns if necessary, and gathering the materials to be used. The materials variously include sheets of colored glass, small fragments and sand-like grains called “frit”, extruded pieces of glass (resembling linguini) called “noodles”, and ”stringers” (glass extruded into a thin spaghetti-like pieces) and glass extruded into thin rods.
Once we have finalized our design and selected the materials, we cut the glass to match the design. Cutting is done with a glass cutting tool that scores the glass on one side allowing the pieces to break along the score. It is possible to cut fairly complex shapes using the glass-cutter, but if the design requires more intricacy, we cut sheets of glass using a diamond-bladed saw.
After we have cut all the necessary parts of the design, we assemble them like a puzzle, sometimes ‘painting” on the piece with frit and or small pieces of glass. We then put the entire composition into a kiln, baking the piece for many hours to allow the parts of glass to fuse together as a whole.
Allowing time for the glass to cool after it has finished baking, we often use ”cold-working” techniques to further shape or alter the piece. Cold-working can include cutting with a saw, drilling, grinding, sanding, and polishing. After we have shaped the piece as needed for the design, we usually put it back into the kiln to “slump” it into its final form, such as a bowl shape. To “slump” means to heat the piece to a high enough temperature to make the glass soften so that it takes the form of whatever heat-resistant object is placed beneath it.
Again allowing the glass to cool after baking, we sometimes do additional cold-working like grinding and polishing to finish the piece according to our aesthetic judgment. The finished art piece often influences our next design because we learn as we produce new work.