Wallum Glass Earrings

Yummy new silver and glass sandblast-resist earrings depicting sundews, clouds, leptospermum and scribbly gum by Rebecca and Shannon - Launching at Botanical Gardens, Mt Coot-tha 17- 18 September.

Sun Infusion

Since the opening of Swamp Cartography at Gympie in February we have been busy sending work around the country. These sunset lit Wallum Glass Pendants are resist painted and diamond point engraved by Shannon Garson and depict delicate Leptospermum flowers and Forked Sundews on our subtle palette of recycled and new sandblasted glass. The colours change throughout the day and into the night as we laminated 2 different layers of colour and softened the edges in a kiln.We've now stocked Pomme in Victoria, Sturt in NSW and Artisan in QLD with the glass pieces and I've also sent out new cuttlefish cast and etched silver pieces to these places.

I stopped on the way back from an early morning airport drop-off at the beautiful Ewan Maddock dam at the bottom of the hill where I live and found a landscaped wallumy garden and system of lagoons. Unlike many dams in our area vegetation had been permitted to grow right to the very edge of the water and even beyond in a swampy lush edge that was difficult to define. While it has the misfortune to parallell the highway, this did not deter the whitetailed water rats that I saw frolicking in the reeds. After the rain there was an explosion of coral ferns
and the scribbly gums had just shed their scrolls of writings on the past season of inundations. The pouched coral fern was thick and scratchy and I was able to get some new photos for etching.

All ready for me to use in new jewels for Swamp Cartography at Brisbane Mt Cootha Botanical Gardens 17-18 September.

Materiality

First day at Canberra Glassworks I was very nervous. I had to work with glassblower Annette Blair to make the "swamp bubbles" for the Swamp Cartography exhibition. I've never worked with glass before and, as I labored over my sketchbook only to produce some very basic drawings I realize how much I rely on touching my materials to make my work. I make thousands of little decisions when I'm making, from the very moment I cut the bag of clay open right up until deciding how slowly to dry the piece out I'm tweaking and adjusting to what the materials are telling me they can do. Designing a piece in a hands off way is a totally different mindset.
I'm so used to working in contact with the materials that in some ways I can't even tell what the piece is like until I touch it. You see this in crafts of all types from the way bakers touch the dough through to the way mechanics cradle engine parts in their hands. The touch is what's telling them about the object. Entering a process where there is no touch literally felt like being blind, weirdly panicky and uncertain.
But...Annette did a fabulous job. It turned out that we liked the same colours and when I said "Brownish /purple" she really knew what I meant. This was instantly reassuring! Here is what she blew...swamp bubbles
Aren't they beautiful?

The wonders of the Canberra Glassworks

engraving, originally uploaded by rebeccathewrecker.

Rebecca the Wrecker and I have just spent 3 days at Canberra Glassworks doing a masterclass with glass artist and teacher extraordinaire Kirstie Rea. We had an amazing, inspiring time.

Canberra Glassworks is a state of the art facility based in an old power station. There are so many workshops covering different aspects of glass forming that we didn't get to see them all, the cold shop, the mold making room and the sandblasters were the ones we concentrated on. Once again we came back to our impressions from the wallum as the source of inspiration and made molds for glass using these.

I was particularly interested in the sandblasting which combines a painterly approach as the resist used is PVA glue. For these little pieces I sandblasted brushbox blossom silhouettes onto the back of "float" glass (common window glass) and used a diamond stylise to etch a drawing into the glass on the opposite side.

Glass engraving is such an immediate way of mark making, the scratchiness of the drawing echoes the twiggy scratchiness of wallum vegetation. I really liked using the window glass as the everyday nature of this material creates a subconscious visual reference linking the glass drawing to windows and all that they represent. The automatic assumption with a window being to look through or out of it, hopefully the viewer of this type of piece would be inexorably drawn towards the drawing to looking closely at and through it!

While we were in Canberra we did a talk for the ceramics students at the Australian National university Ceramics Department. Rebecca and I were struck by the vibrant, international diversity at both ANU and the Glassworks. The place is buzzing with international artists coming and going, Australian artists and students are constantly encouraged to make international connections in terms of residencies and, entering competitions and other professional development programs. It is very exciting for studio artists to be in the hustle and bustle of a creative, institutional atmosphere and I highly recommend anyone thinking of coming to Australia to consider doing a residency or a degree at Canberra Glassworks or ANU.

Canberra Glassworks

Shannon Garson and Kirstie Rea

We have just returned from the most wonderful and inspiring 3day intensive class at Canberra Glassworks with a wonderful artist, Kirstie Rea. We were so lucky to have such an experienced and enthusiastic teacher who seemed to understand immediately what we were doing! Kirstie showed us many different kilnforming, sandblasting, wet grinding and diamond engraving techniques so that we were exposed to a broad range of possibilities working with glass. It was fantastic having Kirstie all to ourselves.

Preparation for sandblasting- Shannon painting PVA on window glass.

There were some overlaps between Shannon's ceramics and glass and my coldworking techniques but I found it really beneficial to learn the proper ways of doing things in a glass workshop and loved learning about fusing glass.

Pulling apart moulds from the kiln

My favorite technique involved making impressions cast from plaster moulds using botanical specimens and moulds made from silpression and silver/copper. We filled the cavities using pate de verre (glass paste made from tiny grains of glass), glass powder and sheets cut to size. It was quite a magical process with pieces of non-descript plaster and greyish glass granules disappearing in the kiln overnight to emerge in the morning, melted flat and brightly coloured. Of course firing schedules were carefully planned and numerous technical and safety procedures observed but there were some truly magic moments breaking the glass from the plaster.

The massive turbine room in the Glassworks- a converted powerstation.

The glassworks was a wonderful place to learn- well set up, organised and plenty of friendly and dedicated workers and artists to learn from. We hope to return there later this year to further develop our work for Swamp Cartography.