Here's another picture of it.
The first picture I photoshopped with a kind of sepia tone to it. The second picture is unmodified, unvarnished under fluorescent lights.
The frame is stained poplar wood. The metal armature is sand-cast aluminum. The pattern for the casting was made from pink insulation foam, which I picked off pieces of the foam with my fingernails to give it the stippled texture. The aluminum is unfinished, basically untouched from the freshly cast state. I rather like the rough, crude look of the aluminum.
The cast glass heart I am particularly proud of. It may be hard to see, but the surface is very fine. Unblemished, free of hairline cracks and bubbles. One of the better glass castings I've done. The mold was a champ. Not a single crack in it when it came out of the kiln. Here's a picture of the glass and mold in the kiln. There was a flower pot on top of the mold which I removed once the glass had dropped down into the mold. That explains the haphazard kiln stilts.
People always ask if I am going to put a light behind it. As I've said before, since this seems an obvious thing to do, I resist it. However, details of the glass heart didn't see to pop out with a dark interior of the box, and so I put a mirror behind the glass. That seems to work, and provides a complementary material look between the glass and aluminum.
This going with my standard material heuristic of formal, or semi-formal wood frame, metal armature internal frame, and glass object. It seems to work for me, and I plan on continuing to use this presentation of materials well into the future.
I've played with glass color, but lately I'm really enjoying just regular old translucent clear glass. (This is also a pragmatic choice, as I've run out of colored glass, but have plenty of clear cullet left). I'll make a few more before heading back into the cast bronze figurative realm.
Oh, the tentative title? "Por Vida". I'm not married to that. I'm open to suggestions.
The glass is still hot enough to be orange and you have opened the kiln wide enough and long enough to take a picture. I'm amazed that there wasn't some thermal shock in the mold an/or the glass. What did you use for mold material?
ReplyDelete2 parts 200 mesh silica flour to 1 part #1 pottery plaster, then 2 parts powder to 1 part water. The firing schedule going up was soak to dry at 400F (24 hr), then climb at 50F/hr to 950F, then 100F/hr to 1625F.
ReplyDeleteRemember a certain idiot from Oregon that made molds about 10 times more complicated than they needed to be? Yeah, he's an idiot.
What kind of cullet are you using?
ReplyDeleteI used Bullseye Clear. The fusible sheet, not the casting billets.
ReplyDelete