Did I mention the scatterbrain syndrome, I suffer from? This might look like another symptom. Yesterday I finally pulled out all the mis-casts of glass, castings that have in one way or another gone wrong, sketches, kiln misfiring etc. and I took all 50+ kg to a big industrial sandblasting facility, where they very kindly and for a small fee, let me blast all the surface clean so I can re-use the glass in new castings. This one above is not a castaway, it is a sketch moving forward from these and though I like where it is going, it wasn't perfect and there is just too much good glass in that, to not use. The sketch lives on in digital life, tomorrow I am remelting all the good reclaimed glass.

In the middle of producing for the Auckland Art and Craft Fair, while doing a bit of sorting and cleaning up in what could be the worlds messiest workshop - I am a scatterbrain - I found a pile of old sketches.

I am having a lot of fun playing with forms build up by modules the last week. Working towards glass vases.

Lots of tests and experimenting with dipping in wax. I need bigger balloons, but have a top tip for trying this at home; when the balloon is dipped in the hot wax the air inside the balloon will expand and depending on how hard it has been blown up, how quick it is dipped and how hot the wax is, there is a real risk of the balloon exploding. My experience now tells me, that the wax is distributed well and evenly over the entire 2-3 meter radius surrounding the pot. The good news is though that the tiny droplets of wax set cold flying in air and one can clean it of easier than wax melted on to a surface.

The kiln has not been empty, even when I have been quiet for a while. I am still working with dipping plaster positives in wax and building up forms layer by layer. This came out last week. It is only the size of a hand, but I have ready to go in the heat, a bigger one.

More work and different stages of my current fascination with card board and wax. These are still very much sketches and I am starting to see some directions I want to go in. As in building openings into the forms and bigger contrasts between areas of big solids and trails of in to smaller busy blocks. Also learning as I go, that pouring the wax into the hollow card board form is best done not too hot, at the stage just before it starts setting. And the seams and corners needs to be well sealed with tape.

Husband thinks they are very Star Trek.. I am not worried yet, I have plans with the glass stage, but he could end up being right.

It has taken me over a month from getting back from Europe, full with inspiration and keen to make, till I have actually made it into the workshop. Friday I kick-started work by sitting up till 1.30 AM cutting and sticky-taping card board pieces together into form. I am sure there is an easier process for making this form, but I love the growing of it this way. Just like when I have build before in clay upside down on a convex base, I am a little removed from the end result and can let go of the controls, so forms develop. It is hollow and I have now poured hot wax in the inside and peeled the card board of. Ready for casting plaster and melting the wax out. This is my first time working with lost wax and glass - I know the theory behind but ..

One of my favourite books is by Haruki Murakami
It made me start working on something like this





but I haven't been able to cast this type of shape
without it cracking. I guess there is a lot of tension with the corners.
I have to try a trick, mixing paper pulp in the plaster/silica mould.
That should make the mould more flexible and maybe leave room for the glass
to contract in the annealing?

I want to use this spotted look again and again
and I am working on smaller things with a hint of use





in two days my kiln will be cooled down and ready to open
for some more spotted tests in a different shape to come out..

It's all about the setting-up exercises