The first piece I was able to create at The Foundery was a small iron skull (bottom left of first image). The forged piece was shaped using a Picard-style blacksmithing hammer and anvil as well as a round punch and a hand chisel. While obviously not anatomically accurate, variations in the proportions of individual pieces allowed for a great amount of artistic expression.
This particular process centered on the formation of shoulders in the back of the skull (elevation differentials). The mouth, eyes, nose, and cuts were all formed using a round punch and hand cutter.
This particular skull demonstrates what a great artist once said: “There are no mistakes, just happy little accidents.“ One of the more distinct happy little accidents in this particular case is in regards to the crooked “teeth.” While if it were a traditional art piece like a drawing I may have interpreted this as a failure, forging has taught me that just because it isn’t as you’d pictured it, “failures” add dimension and character to the piece.
The metal leaves were considered the next level of blacksmithing after the skulls. As the skulls focused mainly on the practice of creating shoulders, punching holes, and cutting properly, leaves were a drill in creating tapers and, at more advanced levels that I did not have time to achieve, scrolling wire.
Tapers are formed by striking two adjacent sides of a square rod of steel at an incline, using Newton’s Second Law to work all four faces. After repeated strikes, the formerly flat end of the steel will have formed a point. Forming a shoulder slightly below the taper, I then flattened the taper from one of its corners, creating the base leaf form. After any touch ups with the hammer, some pieces were rounded on a piece of cedar wood using a small round hammer. A hand cutter created very elementary “veins” on the leaves to add some depth of realism.
The last leaf forged was brushed with a brass brush that gave the piece a gilded appearance, something that would have been great to add to the rest of the leaves. Every single taper was slightly longer, causing fairly long leaves to form. Originally, they were supposed to be the size and shape of small Poplar leaf but instead they were more akin to Willow leaves.
Arguably the most difficult glass piece I have created, the Graal was originally planned to have a sandblasted design around the outer layer of blue glass. However, the sandblaster was damaged and I could not get adequate pressure to eat away at the surface and create the art deco- inspired design.
The difficulty of the piece stemmed from the transfer from blow hole to bunt while the glass was still molten. In addition, the interior marbled glass is actually the original glass used to construct the frame of the graal, it was cooled then a layer of blue glass was draped over to add character to it. Basic pinching and rolling formed the lip. Due to the complexity of the design, another student maintained the rolling while I blew into the pipe when first forming the basic shape as seen by the final image.
I had the privilege to attend Lily Pad Studios for a week or so. All glass items displayed in this portfolio were created there at the glass studio.
The paperweight was the very first glass piece I formed. It demonstrated the basics of scrolling and how to keep my cool by handling molten glass with nothing but wet newspaper. Sadly, it was destroyed in the cold shop after another artist mistook it for another paperweight the instructor would churn out at an incredible pace and grinded it into another piece for her project. This was the only photo that exists of it.
The Prism was my personal favorite project during my time at the glass studio. It was considered our final project and we were to create anything we wanted with no interference from the instructor. I decided to begin by creating a generic paperweight and take it from there.
After it had cooled in the kiln, the colors inside looked like a dark green and yellow starfish and sparked my imagination. I took to both the proverbial and literal grindstone and ground away the paperweight for over eight hours until a refined rectangular prism remained. My goal was to mimic an arctic excavation fossil in a large slab of ice, often seen in media. Over five of the eight hours was spent using finer and finer grit to hand-grind and create clear faces on every side. However, some opaqueness was maintained as ice would not be entirely clear.
For the most part, the project was a success as the desired effect was achieved. However, two features still bother me after its completion. Some of the smaller faces were not completely level and caused the piece to stand at an angle in some places. In addition, some air bubbles remained on the surfaces of the primary faces, as evidenced by many of the pictures. Finally, such a pristine exterior mean it is extremely fragile: I already have caused multiple chips in it corners because it simply fell on its side. Whether this contributes to its character, it was not as ideal as I personally would have cared for.
