Marble and Paperweight Issue

Summer 2020 Marble and Paperweight Issue

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Debbie Benninger and Lampworked Glass by Mary Ann Helmond Silver Medal Prize Winner, Metals Jewelry-Making Contest The Flow®/Summer 2020 The Flow® Table of Contents Volume 18 Number 2

6 The Flow® 2020 Marble and Paperweights Gallery Featuring the work of 27 flameworking artists

14 Beyond the Sphere How the Contemporary Marble Movement Changed the Paradigms of Shape by Freddy Faerron

22 The Power of the Flame Transforming the Common into Something Special by Melissa Ayotte

28 The 2019 Michigan Glass Project Helping Young People Find Art by Allison Key

32 Encased Floral Marbles Text and Demonstration by John Kobuki

On the Cover Floral Paperweight by Mayauel Ward. Photo by Rosann Baum Milius. Table of Contents Floral Paperweight by Melissa Ayotte.

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 3 40 Frit Implosion Marble Publisher ~ Maureen James Text and Demonstration by Vicki Schneider Founding Editors ~ Wil Menzies, Jennifer Quaid Copy Editor ~ Darlene Welch Making a Super Simple Marble Pendant Accounting ~ Rhonda Sewell 46 Text and Demonstration by Sara Sally LaGrand Circulation Manager ~ Kathy Gentry Advertising ~ Maureen James Graphic Artists ~ Dave Burnett 50 Daniel “Piper Dan” Benway Mark Waterbury Sharing Techniques for a Nightline Marble Contributing Artists and Writers Text and Demonstration by Daniel Benway Melissa Ayotte, Daniel Benway Freddy Faerron, Allison Key 53 Parallels Between Hot Glass and Human Existance John Kobuki, Sara Sally LaGrand by The Village Iterate Vicki Schneider, Darlene Welch ISSN 74470-28780 is published quarterly by Glass Patterns Quarterly, Inc. 54 Advertisers’ Index 8300 Hidden Valley Road, P.O. Box 69, Westport, KY 40077 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Flow, 8300 Hidden Valley Road, P.O. Box 69, Westport, KY 40077 Telephone: 502-222-5631 Website: www.theflowmagazine.com E-Mail: [email protected] Subscriptions: (4 issues) $28 for one year, $52 for two years, $74 for three years, Kentucky residents, add 6% state sales tax. International Rate $48 one year, $87 two years, $124 three years. All subscriptions must be paid in U.S. dollars with an international money order or with a check drawn on a U.S. bank. Periodicals Postage Paid at Westport, KY 40077 and additional mailing offices. Sample issues U.S. $9, International $13. © 2020 The Flow®. Marble by Editor and staff assume no responsibility Theodore Peterson for the claims of advertisers or their services, Deadlines for Editorial Submissions nor do we endorse any particular business. Fall 2020 Functional The articles reflect the views of the writer, not Due Now necessarily those of the magazine. The Flow® is not responsible for materials such Winter 2020 Women in Glass as photographs and letters, and they will not be September 1, 2020 returned unless accompanied by a self-addressed, Spring 2021 Nature and Mille stamped envelope. All material will be presumed December 1, 2021 to be for publishing and is subject to editing unless Summer Favorite Things otherwise indicated in writing. 2021 My 1 The Flow urges its readers to proceed cautiously in March 1, 202 respect to technical information or If you are interested in becoming a contributing artist for step-by-step articles. Always take proper The Flow®, visit www.theflowmagazine.com for a link to themes of safety precautions when working with glass. upcoming issues, author guidelines, and submission forms.

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6 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com Jon Bowers Instagram @allover_marbles Andrew “Carver B” Brown Instagram @carverbeezkneez Photo by Brian Bowden

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www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 7 Jenifer Drumme www.pacificnorthwestglassblowing.com

Freddy Faerron Instagram @freddyfaerron Photo by Ben Ramsey

Nathan Gorman Instagram @nathangglass

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www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 9 Lisa Howell Instagram @howell_glass Photo by www.GossmanPhotography.com

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Tom Lahue [email protected]

Joshuah Justice [email protected]

10 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com Halina Tayour www.LethalGlass.com Photo by Darren Willis

Erica Perras and Justin Sevey Instagram @arborealsanonymous Instagram @dr.greenglass

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www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 11 Barry Stevens [email protected] Esther Silver Photo by Sarah Stringer, Ark Valley Digital Imaging www.etsy.com/glassmenage

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12 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com Jon Wade Mayauel Ward www.WizardGlass.com www.MayauelGlass.com Photo by Coburn Huff Photo by Rosann Baum Milius THE Flow® © Copyright 2020 by The Flow®. All rights reserved.

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www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 13 How the Contemporary Beyond the Sphere Marble Movement Changed the Paradigms of Shape

Edited by Freddy Faerron

his year marks my 30th as a professional artist. I have enjoyed many crafts during that time, but glass Ttook a strong hold on me some 25 years ago. Marbles have been a particular passion. In many ways they have brought out my inner painter, as well as some of my deepest core artistic expression. Two years ago, I started incorporating other aspects of my creative path into marbles. Exploring the optic qualities through cold working facets entered my study, and I also began to see the backing art and its surface as an invitation to carve, allowing me to relate to my core shape in a new way. Collaborating with good friend Tim Keyzers ignited this drive. His glass journey is a prime example of evolution to “sphere as a canvas.” Other marble makers who have pursued an expand- ing relationship with the sphere include pioneers Daniel “Piper Dan” Benway and Andrew “Carver B” Brown, who both broke the paradigm of the glass sphere as a contemporary collectible and redefined the marble dialog in general. There is no question that this makes a sphere into something else. The geometric term speaks for itself. There is also no question that these marble artists purposely chose to develop further from the sphere as a source just as I am today. This development makes the contemporary marble movement somewhat unique in many ways. The original shape became a source for expression by many artists. This article offers a platform and a voice for “sphere as a canvas” marble artists Daniel “Piper” Benway, Josh “Jubba” Bonnaza, Andrew “Carver B” Brown, Nathan Gorman, collaborators Justin Sevey (marble) and Erica Perras (bio- logical accents and electroforming), and Tim Keyzers. First, however, we have an historical introduction by Brian Bowden of Glass Orbits.

14 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Early History of Art Glass Marbles Thoughts on Dots—and Rules by Brian Bowden, Marble Collector, by Daniel “Piper Dan” Benway Representative, and Historian I’ve never been a big fan of rules—or laws, for that matter—and a lot of The history of art glass marbles traces back to the my motivation for putting raised dot trails on the outside of my marbles was playground marbles of the early 20th century. Most because I was told I couldn’t do it. We were told a lot of things as young bo- early toy marbles were mass-produced with ma- rosilicate glassblowers in the mid ’90s, and most of us had to make our own chines, but a group of German glassblowers decided way with little or no help. to make marbles for children using traditional glass For artistic design purposes, I just thought they had a lot of strong contrast cane building techniques in the furnace. Beautiful and movement—almost like a planet orbiting a sun. They also help to keep twisted cane swirl marbles were handmade, one at a the marbles from rolling off the shelf. time, with gorgeous clean, flowing lines that couldn’t be achieved by machine—and European children were delighted and enthralled. Decades later in 1973, a modern glass artist named Ro Purser decided to mimic those early German “handmades,” and the modern art glass marble movement was born. Ro, along with Richard Marquis, started this journey at a Renaissance Faire in Northern California, creating cane-style marbles in an outdoor furnace as excited fairgoers watched and then purchased the little glass orbs once they’d cooled. Fellow glassblowers who saw the success of these little jewels decided to join the fun and soon were selling furnace-made marbles themselves. Artists like Steven Maslach and Jody Fine would go on to sell thousands of these colorful wonders. Trailblazers like Ro and Photo by Mark Matthews, though, would take this new spheri- Brian Bowden cal art form to much greater heights, creating large, incredibly detailed spheres that tested the limits of what were popularly called “marbles.” The label has stuck for the most part, and that connection back to those early playground delights remains to this day. Art glass marbles from the ’70s and ’80s were made in the traditional style of offhand glassblowing done in the furnace, with canes created on the end of iron blowpipes. A number of artists still make marbles using these methods today. As the ’90s rolled around, however, a new method of marble making began to emerge as artists experimented with torches and lampworking methods to try their hand at the spherical arts. Lampworking methods allow a much greater margin for innovation and technique, and once this new breed of artists got involved, the world of art glass marbles truly exploded. Due to factors such as lower cost of entry and a greater array of techniques, lampworkers soon outnumbered traditional offhand glassblowers, and today we continue to see more lampworkers creating marbles on the torch as opposed to in the furnace. As the new millennium dawned, we witnessed incredible advances in glass sphere creation. Marble pioneers like Kevin O’Grady and John Kobuki paved the way for an upsurge in spherical art glass over the next 20 years, and surely beyond.

Photo by the artist

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 15 The Story in the Sphere by Josh Bonazza

I was lucky to get both my first torch and first lesson from legendary New Mexico artist and teacher Lewis Wilson. He showed me how to fume gold with a quartz rod, then encase it with clear and turn it into a tiny marble. I was ab- solutely fascinated. I later experimented with ways to combine gold and silver fume. Hungry for knowledge, I took a marble-making class at the Eugene Glass School with then artist-in-residence Mike Plane and learned the basics of contemporary marble construction, way beyond the scale of machine-made marbles. I realized that the marble was simply a canvas, a platform, a vehicle for expression that needs just one thing to define it—to be round. Or does it? Each marble tells its own story and represents a moment in time and space. I wanted to be able to have more control over the type of story I could tell with marbles, so I decided to learn cold working techniques that would assist me in this process. That opened up a new world of possibilities for expressing ideas through glass marbles. I started to see them beyond being mere tokens of adoration, but rather as functional tools—something useful, something you can teach with, and something you can learn from.

Lapidary Craft by Andrew “Carver B” Brown Photos by Brian Bowden

My work with glass began in 1999. I’d recently graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design, having focused on illustration, and a friend invited me to check out New Mexico. I fell in love with Southwestern nature and culture and stayed. I was inspired as a kid by glass as an art form while visiting Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, and later seeing glass pipes at Grateful Dead shows. I met Lewis Wilson while checking out a glass bead show. Aside from being a great flameworker, Lewis was the guy who sported shirts with sayings like “A Bead is just a Promiscuous Marble” and knew everyone! He introduced me to the thriving bead and marble show circuit plus tons of artists I had long ad- mired. I called my best friend Bryan Kitson from college to come join me in New Mexico, and together we started KB Glassworks. Lewis introduced us to Dean and Connie Crane of Two Cranes Lapidary who lived south of us in New Mexico. They were extremely gracious and offered to let us try out their equipment. For weeks, Bryan and I drove down in the blazing summer heat to grind anything and everything we could get our hands on. While guiding us so we didn’t screw up his equipment, Dean taught us how to do gemstone faceting and many other techniques. Eventually, he sent us home with an 8-inch lapidary wheel. The marble is a great canvas for cold working. Packing imagery inside the constraints of a perfectly round, handheld sphere is awesome. Then being able to transform the outer marble by removing glass and/or adding texture and playing with optics takes it to another level. I find that my work honors the colors and textures that I see around me here in the High Desert area of Albuquerque. I noticed that when we added marbles to our booth displays at bead shows, we often drew the attention of partners and spouses attending the shows with a bead enthusiast. There’s something about having texture on a marble that compels someone to pick it up and experience the added tactile element. Is it technically a marble if it no longer rolls? Debatable, but it certainly was a marble canvas that allowed me to take it to another place. 16 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com LEARN FROM THE BEST.

● Unlimited Viewing, Anytime Anywhere ● Online Learning Opportunities ● Classes available from these Master Artists

Tsuyoshi Nakamura, Hideaki Hashimoto, & Joe Gregar – ASGS 63rd Symposium Kimmo – Plazmakollab Part 4 Kaleb Folck – Plazmakollab Part 3 Nathan Belmont – Plazmakollab Part 2 Dellene Peralta – Plazmakollab Part 1 Raven Copeland – Double Dichroic Vortex Marble Ben Ramsey – Mini Rig Carmen Lozar – Sculpting Natural Forms from Borosilicate Bob Snodgrass – The Artist’s Background in Boro Shane Fero & Robert Mickelsen – Goblets Miles Parker – Basics for Creating Borosilicate Marbles Eli Mazet – Shot Glass Creation & Decoration James Yaun – Fuming with Different Torches Josh Mazet – Multiple Marble Techniques Lewis Wilson – An Old-School Approach to Sculpting Christian Luginger – Wine Glasses Using Venetian Techniques Steve Bates – Techniques for Piece Construction Berzerker – Dark Matter Clay Mold Making Freddy Ferron with James Yaun – Fume Theory & Implosion Marbles Dellene Peralta – Hollow Head Sculptures Chris Schutz – Pipemaking 101 Preston Hanna – Working with Bunsen Burners Kevin Jordan – Two-Piece Sherlock with Cold Clamp Bandhu Dunham – Creating Marble Runs Big Z – Encasing Opals & Rig Assembly Big Z – Bonus Content Suellen Fowler – Signature Perfume Bottles Chris Schutz – Glassblowing Basics Eusheen – Implosion Marbles Dan Coyle – Iconic Glass Munnys Salt – Issues Affecting the Lampworking World Mr. Gray – Signature Leaves Elbo – Signature Nessy Pieces Berzerker – Breakthrough Techniques for Dichroic Extract Micro – Millefiori from Beginning to End Micro – Millefiori Q&A Matt Eskuche – Hollow Sculpture Salt – The Salt Style Q&A Salt – Fine Frit & Carving, Eyeballs & Horns, and Marketing Tips Robert Mickelsen – Sculpting Hollow Anatomy Robert Mickelsen – Glass Photography for Idiots! Nathan (N8) Miers – Incalmo Dish Techniques Eusheen & Natey – Fillacellos, Wig-Wags, and More Banjo – Banjo’s Latest Work Lisa St. Martin – Dichroic Glass & Metallic Techniques www.TheFlowMagazine.com Wraparound Canvas by Nathan Gorman

Carved spheres comprise the largest portion of my work. I have a fondness for the shape, having grown up playing a variety of sports, where a round ball was the focus, and later studying the cosmos, where so much is happening spherically. Because this most basic shape is so common, I think humans have an innate affinity for it. A 6-inch glass sphere weighs 10 pounds and has 113 square inches of surface area with a good amount of volume to carve through. I carve as many as 40 different depths and add detail at each depth. It would be very difficult to do that with plate glass or hollow forms, such as a vase, unless the wall or plate thickness is great enough. Working with spheres is challenging. When you consider stage-carving around a sphere, it is important to get the first stage measured accurately so that balance and evenness is maintained when working inward from those points. As a blank canvas, a sphere doesn’t offer a starting point or any line to measure from. In my mind, I can assume opposite poles and an equator to gain reference, but when I look at a sphere, I see a wraparound canvas without borders.

Rad Collab by Erica Perras and Justin Sevey

I was a nerdy kid who loved nature and geometry. Everything around us has geometry, but a perfect sphere is something that brilliant mathematicians have spent their whole lives trying to make sense of since at least the fourth century BC. While my interest doesn’t lie in the formulas to apply geometric designs to a sphere, there is something uniquely challenging in trying to apply regular geometric patterns to the surface of a marble in a way that is aesthetically pleasing and aligns with the centerpiece of my work, which is usually an insect. The anatomy of all insects follows harmonic geometric principles, and using glass as a medium, I’ve found a way to blend my passions while being able to highlight the beauty found in nature for people who generally don’t spend time looking at invertebrates. –Erica Perras, Electrosmith Artist

My older brother Raven Copeland introduced me to modern marbles when I was very young, and I was instantly hooked. There is magic in the illusion and tactility of a perfect sphere that is unlike anything else. I knew I needed this to be a part of my life but I couldn’t afford to be a collector, so when my older broth- ers moved away and left me with a torch, I turned to creating. A sphere is the universal symbol of perfection. Each marble represents a world where I can make my visions a reality, and there is something innately satisfying about smoothing out the last punty mark and knowing that I have created a timeless, nearly indestructible universe that all of us can have access to and hold in our hands. – Justin Sevey, Glass Artisan

18 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com Evolution in Thought by Tim Keyzers

I started flameworking borosilicate glass in 2000. I made pipes at first, but by 2003 I realized that I enjoyed creating marbles more than pipes—plus I could sustain myself creatively and financially within this growing market. After working for Frantz Art Glass as a general manager from 2005 until 2009, I returned my full-time attention to marble studies. My focus was deep and clean vortex marbles. I reached a point where I was really happy with the quality of the vortex side of the marble, but the “back” side of the marble seemed to be an unfinished thought. Dot stacks, pinwheels, raked lines, abstract color ways, mille, and murine—all of those, to me, were borrowed from the bead making traditions and not a good fit for the highly contemporary and Americana Vortex effect, so in 2011, I purchased electroforming equipment to put copper onto my marbles.

My first sale covered my investment and fueled my ambition to mix copper with contemporary marbles. At that point, I decided I wanted my work to occupy the space between—manmade and alien, past and future, weapon and toy. I also realized that to make this happen I really need to challenge the idea that there is no “front” or “back” side of a marble. Orbs have a 360-degree intelligence. I used wire, wax, rhinestones, vinyl stickers, circuit board resis- tors, and zippers to build up textures and designs on the marbles. My designs were so unfamiliar, however, that I had to send the work to collectors before they’d agree to purchase it. Marbles are an “in hand” experience and a human connection. After I started sharing my work at shows and collaborating with other marble artists, it became easier to sell online. Even- tually I bought a sandblaster and started carving designs into the surface of the glass instead of just building it up. That was a turning point for my work. A couple of years later, I got a lapidary wheel to cut glass and manipulate the optics of the vortex—a great fit in combination with the carving and copper. I never intended to stretch the boundaries of what is accepted as a contemporary marble. I was just scratching my own itch as a maker. Only when I take the time to really connect with a piece, push those lines back and forth, reevaluate, continue to add and subtract details until it feels in balance— only then do I consider it an actual work of art in my eyes. Everything else to me would be merchandise and unfinished thoughts. A person has to have faith that if he or she makes good work with good intentions, there is a place for it. THE Flow®

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 19 Contributing Artist Bios

Daniel Benway aka Piper Dan, is a marble maker now resid- Erica Perras has a background as a scientist with a deep- ing in the Colorado mountains. Dan spent most of his glassblow- rooted love of both biology and chemistry. It was only natural ing career in Arcata, California, where he was one of the first when gifted with an electrosmithing kit that she allowed her borosilicate marble makers. Originally starting glass in ’95 as passions to flow together to forever preserve the beauty of the a pipe maker, he quickly realized borosilicate marbles were his natural world within copper. future. With almost no examples to go by, he started figuring www.arboreals-anonymous.square.site out some designs and techniques in ’97 and hasn’t looked back. Instagram @arborealsanonymous Twenty-three years later his Murrine Skyline and Castle marbles are some of the most unique in the industry. Instagram @piperdanglass Justin Sevey has been a professional lampworker specializing Facebook “Piper Daniel Benway Collectors group” in borosilicate glass for 16 years. He built a home studio with all of the tools necessary to bring his artistic visions to fruition. Joshua Bonazza of Juba Glass has been working as a bo- Justin’s work fuses traditional methods of glassblowing with rosilicate glass artist since 1996. All of his creations are made modern techniques including cold working and electroforming in his studio located in Eugene, Oregon. During his childhood to create contemporary glass art. Many of his pieces contain in upstate New York, he remembers putting glass bottles into a precious gems and minerals used to create unique colors and campfire so that he could see what would happen to them when seemingly impossible optical illusions. they heated up. That early experience served as a formative Instagram @dr.greenglass event that would pique his artistic curiosities. www.dr-greenglass.square.site In 1995 at the age of 21, he moved to the West Coast and set about studying the art of glass. Always looking to hone his skills and learn new ways of expressing himself, Joshua has As a lifelong maker, Tim Keyzers refined his search for bal- studied with several world-class contemporary glass artists. ance in his works. Since 2003, he has continually developed You can find his works on display in galleries and in private his independent dialog in the collectible marble field. His collections worldwide. revolutionary contributions to the dialog have inspired many Instagram @jubaglass and set a standard in the field while creating amazing 3-D www.ebay.com/str/jubaglasslampworkmarbles landscapes of sculpted marble works. His studies truly express a refined eye in capturing abstract symmetry between negative Andrew Brown is well known for his innovative approach to and positive space. contemporary flameworking and cold working. He specializes Instagram @timkeyzers in unique wearable art, collectible marbles, and paperweights. Andrew began working with glass in 1999 and has been featured in galleries and exhibits around the world as well as in bead and glass art publications. Drawing his inspiration from nature and his surroundings in New Mexico, he works with his wife, Erika, out of their home studio. Freddy Faerron has been a professional craft artist for www.carverb.com over twenty years. His career has encompassed various media Instagram @carverbeezkneez including leather, metal, plate glass, and lampworked glass. Facebook @carverb.glass Freddy has traveled throughout the United States selling his art in open-air markets, craft fairs, and retail stores. His jewelry Nathan Gorman is considered to be one of the top leaders was showcased on the national TV series, Dharma and Greg, in the world in cold working glass spheres. His technique and and worn in concert by Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls. dialog with sphere carving are currently unparalleled in the Freddy began working with borosilicate glass as a lamp- field. Nathan has quickly risen to a level of expression that has worker in the late 1990s. For the past 18 years he has devel- reached mastery status. oped jewelry, marbles, and large-scale borosilicate drinking Artist direct [email protected] vessels, as well as solid and hollow Instagram @nathangglass sculptures. He has also published Glass Orbits www.pbase.com/bkbowden/ngsale various articles and instructional demonstrations. His work is currently on exhibition at the Kobe Lampwork Glass Museum.

Photo by AGeekOnABike Dale Mitchell

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www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 21 The Power of the Flame Transforming the Common into Something Special

by Melissa Ayotte

wish I could write about my work as a glass artist in a linear way, as if I could say something like, “I made the tiger lily by coating orange Effetre glass over yellow and rolling Iit in a powdered brown.” Then I could say with certainty how one piece is flameworked to another and in so doing creates, say, the rose, the leaf, the tendril, but nothing could be further from the truth. Having been brought up among the tool of fire and the gift of nature, I realize that the flame is more than a flame and the natural world does more than enter into the well-domed or roughly hewn sculptures I make. My work is transformation—or as the alchemists called it transmutation—using fire to change glass from solid to fluid states. In that change, form is discovered or created from what was previously a dull rod of red, blue, yellow, or green. Alchemy, a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysteri- ous or impressive way, is a dance at the edge of where the flame meets the supercooled liquid called glass.

(Counterclockwise from top left) Melissa Ayotte, working in the flame. Photo by John W. Hession; Sunflower Rusted Vessel, Narcissus Stone, and Time Capsule. Photos by the artist.

22 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 23 Art in the Moment Life as we know it commonly appears linear. We move through our days accumulating things, experiences, moments as if in a fragmentation, pointing to processes on a timeline that we use to create order and comfort in our lives. We often think of ourselves as working from a check list—this, then that, done, then check, next—but working in the flame, making art from the moment, is a different worldview. The fire to material, the material to the hands, the hands beholden to intention—each aspect is interdependent on the medium. The glass will not obey a schedule or regimen imposed by our limited perception of time. Instead, there is a process, one step following another, until in the creative now this process is dissolved and transmuted. The glass, when touched with heat, converts from a supercooled liquid to a more fluid state. It can be plunged into hotter and hotter parts of the flame, but even then, the application of hotter states only pushes but does not force obedience. The glass obeys its own properties without a thought for itself. It is, after all, only matter. The artist must read the glass by the hand, the flame, and the intention. Flameworkers exist on the edge of this matter—the matter of bending and shaping what is a supercooled solid into malleable liquid. Then they return to sculpt the matter of intention brought into existence with the hand. Art exists on the tip of this intention—the blended state between forming and creating. The great art takes hold of the beholder, sculpts the sculptor, and removes the boundary or distance between each. There is no process in that creative now, and the artist transcends boundaries, falling into a state beyond time.

(Left to right) Melissa Ayotte, Navaho Basket. Photo by the artist; Circulus with Dahlia Bouquet. Photo by Morgan Karanasios.

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716-481-5664 www.ExpressiveGlass.com

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 25 (Left to right) Melissa Ayotte, Man in the Moon and Circulus with Ranun- cular Bouquet. Photos by the artist.

From the Flame through the Hands of the Artist Realizing the Essence of Work The alchemist turns to her medium, her right hand turning the What does the application of force day after day bring in the gas and the left, the oxygen. There is a spark, then the low hum of fire? Moments accumulating into a body of work.Work . The word powered flame. For power and big heat, she gives more oxygen. itself demands to be explored, since it is multilayered. The levels The sword-shaped flame, blue in the center, trails off into the of this measure are commonly put onto something, for example to orange-reds as they dance in the outermost regions of heat. This is apply work, as in rolling a rock up a hill. the working flame. Flameworkers arise with a purpose tied to fire. The morning A translucent rod rises in the hand. The alchemist strikes a piece salutation begins with spark, flitter, and flame, and the day ends in the coolest portion of the flame, then drives it forward into the with a forceful snap of pressure leaving the torch lines. In between, blue heat. Solid begins its relative roll toward liquid. A hand turns they sit married to that which comes before the window of their the rod back and forth. The other side reaches for a yellow, thin lives—lilacs, morning glories, sunflowers, cardinals, orioles, wrens, fiber like a filament of glass. Both hands come together near the turtles, frogs, the gifts of beauty released back into the wild by the fire—right translucent and left the thin, solid yellow—and they are careful application of fire and glass. warmed by the act of creating. She inserts the stamen into the clear The dancing flame reflects off the purple didymium lenses of rod, then again another and so on until the clear is nearly filled with artists who are stilled in the mastery, becoming one with the medium. tiny dots inside. Years are spent praising nature by pressing their own human nature Thinking of and nurturing the intricacy and intimacy of a flower’s toward what it really means to be a flameworker. stamens, the alchemist draws the delicate rows inside the translu- I suppose it could have been something else—a different sub- cency until they appear true to form. She puts down the yellow fiber. ject, another material maybe. I am thus far a daughter of the torch, Pollen that she sees only in the mind’s eye lands on the workbench, a medium myself, plunging the solid into a world not possible to which is where the bees would come to pollinate the field. describe in pure linearity. It brings me back, tied to form from the The artist puts down one rod, picks up the tweezers, reaches other world, untied to the regimens of time. The medium is like into the clear glass, grabs at the end, and pulls it finer. The reach is interstellar space, the dark matter of human consciousness, or cre- asking to get nearer, closer, to what nature shows. The flame flickers ativity. We can only understand or claim to know it by looking at through her breathing. the outcome we have when the work is deemed finished.

26 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com (Left to right) Melissa Ayotte collab with Rick Ayotte, Millefiori. Photo by the artist; portrait of Melissa Ayotte by John W. Hession.

Becoming One with the Medium I see the flameworkers’ gift as forming inside their relationships For Melissa Ayotte, the same curiosities that drew her to the medium. This union is a deep fidelity to process—the atten- artist father Rick Ayotte to glass initially drew her to the tion given to the properties of glass. It is not a delineated step by study of psychology, understanding human motivation, and step, but rather an intuition danced with through the hand—the feel behavior. Her interest in mind sciences led her to become of the glass. The music hits the airways from a series of motions more interested in the arts. While finishing her master’s, made by the musician. We may gaze upon those chords, the sheet Melissa began to assist her father in his studio and realized music, break down the how to, but what ignites us is the sound. that she had found her true interest. In 2000 she spent time The flameworkers mastery shows in sculptures attentively placed assisting at Stankard Studio and began working full time at in a collector’s home, encapsulating the experience rendered at the Ayotte Glass Studio, where she continues to create glass art. tip of intention. According to Melissa, “The spherical shape of the pa- As the artist and poet Rose Slivka wrote, “The craftspeople perweight provides a structure from which I can evolve my and artists are poets transcending, reaching inside and beyond the own sense of creativity, ultimately aiming to evolve the art physical nature of the object.” As I grow as a human being, so does of paperweight making.” The artist aims to push the limits my ability to work with glass. Sculptures originally viewed as a of the paperweight, creating novel pieces that reflect her paperweight turn into stones, native baskets, cairns, and now the sense of Nature—earthly, human, and divine. Circulus. The bottom line is that the creative life multiplies by one’s willingness to sit at the tip of that intention—to develop, to grow, and to explore the inner reaches of the inspired flame. ® THE Flow® © Copyright 2020 by The Flow . www.ayotteglassart.com All rights reserved. www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 27 The 2019 Michigan Glass Project Helping Young People Find Art

Drew Kups x Annealed Innovations collaboration sold in Silent Auction. Photo by Alex Reyna.

Torches lit in the 2019 Event Space. Photo by Bang Le. by Allison Key

embers of The Michigan Glass Project (MGP) live by the slogan, “Teamwork makes the dream work!” In 2019 MGP Mdelivered $130,000, its largest check to date, bringing the total amount donated to $511,000 since the group’s inception in 2012.

An Amazing Arts Community The community of artists, sponsors, vendors, musicians, and supporters of all kinds who have joined together to make MGP successful is astounding. When we created our nonprofit, we had no idea the waves that we were going to be able to make together. One of the greatest lessons we have learned during this adventure is what can happen when thousands of people join together for a common cause. The 2019 donation is not only huge on its own, but it pushed us into an exciting place with our numbers. We have now raised over a half a million dollars, $475,000 of which has been given to Art Road, a nonprofit organization that is helping to bring art back into Detroit, Michigan, schools. Art Road, in turn, has used the dona- Foster Glass showing off his freshly finished tions to support the art class curriculum for thousands of students. donation piece. Photo by Bang Le.

28 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com Continued Success Whether you were in attendance or not, if you touched The The sky is the limit, and the MGP event has grown into its own Michigan Glass Project in some way, you have made a difference magical beast. It has a strong, dedicated team, a massive amount in a child’s life. Your part, in whatever aspect, was an integral part of backing, and a heart and soul all its own. The more we spread of every check we have written. Over the past eight years, we have the word, the more people we can reach and the greater our unified been able to donate $511,000 to benefit causes in Detroit and our body of givers becomes. Thank you for making our wildest dreams community. Take a moment to thank yourself today for being a part come true and for showing the world what a dedicated group of of something special—something that created an effect that is felt people with a common focus can accomplish. in the children’s hearts when they step into the Belle Isle Aquarium or as they pick up a crayon or a paint brush in their art classes. You have a made a difference in their lives and ours, and we thank you! The only way to combat darkness and negativity in this world is to be light and to be love. We are humbled and grateful to be facilita- tors for the space we shared in 2019. We hope you have been able to take some of it with you out into to the world as you go along. You are the facilitator of love in your world, and you can make a difference in the lives of those around you.

(Clockwise from bottom left) Eusheen, Robert Mickelsen, & Banjo putting the finishing touches on the 2019Devi and MGP Sponsor & Vendor, The Blast Shield. Photos by Adam Welch; Mike Shelbo x Chunk Glass Ice Cream Cone collaboration. Photo by Alex Reyna.

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 29 Quasar Glass working on his donation piece. Photo by Bang Le.

Liquid Glass Arts 2019 donation piece made live at the event. Photo by Alex Reyna.

Looking Ahead The MGP family was looking forward to creating more magic with you in July 2020. It is with deep responsibility for our community, however, that we have made the tough decision to cancel the 2020 Michigan Glass Project. There are many factors at play. With the ever-evolving pandemic and the uncertainty of each passing Allison Key showing off an Eskuche x Calm day, we feel that the event’s success will be compromised. We must collaboration during the Live Auction. also make the health and safety of our patrons, artists, musicians, Photo by Adam Welch. sponsors, and vendors traveling from all parts of the country our top priority. We share your heartbreak over this news, and it was not an easy Our greatest hope is that everyone is self-isolating, self-dis- choice for us. We are confident, however, that it is in everyone’s covering, and taking excellent care of themselves during this time. best interest. Our team is diligently working out offerings online Remember this: Big change opens new doors. Although the new for 2020 that will still allow us to cut a check to Art Road, even normal may not be what we are used to, it allows for growth, expan- though the main event isn’t happening. Stay tuned on Instagram to sion, and new beginnings. Thank you all for your loving support get in on daily auctions that will resume soon. Art Road has gotten and understanding and for being such a special part of MGP. Let’s creative during this time and launched Art Now to provide online join forces and make history! art lessons and in-home art projects for students while they are not THE Flow® in school. Art Road’s mission remains the same, and so does ours. If you have already purchased a ticket for the 2020 event, it will Visit www.themichiganglassproject.com to learn more about be valid for next year, which happens to be the tenth anniversary of the MGP and its mission, plans for upcoming events, and how to MGP. We cannot wait to light those torches, hug, dance, and create become a member. with you in celebration of a decade of giving back to the community. © Copyright 2020 by The Flow®. Join us July 16–18, 2021—same space, same heart, same love. All rights reserved. 30 The Flow ® • Summer2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com Be Creative! Be Creative! If we STAINED GLASS FUSING MOSAICS JEWELRY SUPPLIES don’t have it, we can BEE make it. Chill

www.weaverind.comwww.weaverind.comwww.WeaverInd.com Everything we produce is made with pride by craftsman in the United States.

www.clintonfsmith.com Artist: Val Oswalt-De Waard

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 31 Encased Floral Marbles

John Kobuki� is known for making marbles with the compression Text and Demonstration by John Kobuki technique. In this Encased Flower Marble tutorial, originally presented as a Live Stream Studio Demonstration at The Corning Mu- e’re going to be making a lily today using Cadmium with a seum of Glass on August 9, 2017, the artist shares the process plus veil of Turbo Cobalt over it as the main body of the flower. tips and techniques for creating a beautiful encased floral marble. WBe sure to clean up the glass if there are any dots or specks on it. I Visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj1Oy0W3CbE to watch want to keep the top part of this clean, because that’s going to be the demo on The Corning Museum of Glass YouTube Channel. the bottom of my maria when I flatten it out. Normally I use a little bit thicker rod and use a shorter piece, but this will work.

32 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com I’m just going to gather it down to about 1 inch of thick neck. The most important thing is that you’ve got a nice smooth transition between the neck and that gather, so when you flatten it out you’ve got a nice transition with the neck into the maria.

I always pull a center point. I want to remove glass, not add glass. It’s just the reference point.

Now I’m going to go do a nice soft flame when I lay down the design. The first set of petals is going to be a series of basically three V-shaped petals. You’ll notice that I always clean the tip and the end point. So that’s the first layer of petals, and I’m going to get those embedded.

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 33 Next I’m going to start to tool the petal lines. I’ve also got a little bit of a bubble that I need to take care of.

I’m going to go back and push up the point. I want that point on each of the petals to be a little bit higher. We also need to add some white dots in the center.

So that’s the first layer of petals. Now I’m going to wrap this glass around and get them embedded or get them kind of raised up in the glass before I do my second layer. Get that to concave and the pattern starts to condense, compress. Then do a little bit more to bring the design kind of flush to the surface before you do anything else.

It’s time for the second set of lines for the petals, but actually, I’m going to go a little bit more. It’s not quite condensed enough for my liking, so one more concave, condense, compress. I was just able to remove a little bit of that residual glass once I was able to pop that line off.

34 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com Subscribe to The Flow ® Digital Edition OR Buy Print-on-Demand Copies

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www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 35 So that’s it with the petals. Once I get them tooled, I’m going to bring them all the way down to a termination point. put in a stem, then I’ll put in the leaves.

I want to get these embedded, so I’m going to tool them just like I did the first layer and give them a series of creases, one on top and two on either side. I’ll push that top one, because I want it a little bit further up. Then I make sure to go back and give that top one a little bit of extra push with the pick.

That’s the lily. I’m going to bring it all down to a point.

You can see that start to concave. That’s when I start playing with the balance or the angle toward gravity. I really want it to move—lift up the back end—but I don’t want it to move so much. It should go a little more parallel toward gravity. I’m concentrating right on the hip of that maria, because I want the design to condense, just kind of pinch it. Before it gets too drastic, check it on the graphite.

36 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com It will start to get smaller. The maria will start to get bigger now, because I don’t want to just keep flattening it. I want the integrity of the flower to still come up. If I spend too much time flattening it, the neck coming down and into that maria is going to force all of the petals out toward the equator. You slowly want to let this start to grow as you get toward the end of your flower.

I’m barely pushing. It’s almost its own weight that’s pushing it down.

When you’re working with color, it’s a little bit stiffer. It’s really easy to get that concave a little bit too deep where you can’t get it, so you have to be mindful of that.

Now I’m going to start to terminate this point. It looks like I got a good termination on that, but once I get it in the flame, I can see that I need to remove a little bit more.

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 37 Now it’s time to add the stem and a pair of leaves.

I want to get those leaves embedded, then I’m going to push them with a pick and give them a point.

I’m going to give the stem a little push and the leaves a little push. You have to be careful. It’s starting to get a little deep. We’ll definitely have to go in and grab that stem.

There’s stuff flying everywhere, so that should be everything. Now it’s time to clean off the marble and shape it in the mold.

Let’s try to bring a little more glass down around the leaves so they’re a little bit more pronounced.

Now I’ll start my punties.

Next fire-cut the handle and clean up some of the leftover stuff on the glass.

38 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com One punty goes on the top. It always works best if you’ve got that punty nice and centered and flush to the connection point.

The other punty goes on the bottom, and that should do it. I always like a nice fresh kind of punty. That way I can do a really strong, light contact.

It’s time to tap off the punty and flame-polish the punty mark. Go a little bit off center from where that stem is. Sometimes right where that stem is, if you punty up to it, it kind of leaves a stubborn punty mark.

There’s the lily. The last punty is usually straight up, then I point the torch down. It looks good from that angle. Voilà! THE Flow® [email protected]

John Kobuki has been working with glass since 1995 and is known for making marbles using the compression technique. He won first place at the Eugene Glass School Flame-Off competition for marbles and has been published in 100 Lampworkers and Glass Line Special Edition. Jon has taught, demonstrated, and exhibited in the United States and Japan and teaches internationally. “I enjoy the challenge of creating something new with a finite shape and infinite design possibilities.” Visit www.cmog.org/live to see the full upcoming live stream demo schedule.

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 39 Frit Frit Implosion Technique Marble Implosion Marble

Text and Demonstration by Vicki Schneider Effetre Glass 006 Super Clear Rod, 9–13 mm any beadmakers want to learn how to make implosion marbles, 408 Yellow Frit Mbut they may find the process a bit intimidating. Implosions 432 Red Frit are magical and lots of fun! The design starts on the outside of the Additional Glass glass and winds up inside. Clear Boro Rod for Punty This tutorial is one of the easiest ones for you to start with. It will Tools and Materials show you how to take little chips of glass called frit and implode Graphite Pad Pencil them into a beautiful soft glass marble. I am left-handed, so you will 1" Round Template need to reverse the pictured hand positions if you are right-handed. Tweezers Knife Once you learn the technique, you can experiment with your own 3/4" or 1" Graphite Marble Mold frit designs. You can use dots or murrine instead of frit and even Respirator Mask turn your marble into a pendant by adding a glass or metal loop.

40 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com To begin, draw two circles 1 4 about 3/4" in diameter each on a graphite pad with a pencil using any round shape as a guide.

Use a knife or your tweezers to arrange the frit so that the red frit is evenly distributed around Place a few 2 the yellow frit. chips of yellow frit in the center Make sure to leave a margin between your red frit and the of one of the edge of the circle. You can try different designs and see what you circles. like best. In this demonstration, I’ve just used two colors, and I left a little hole in the center. You’ll see how that comes out later.

You can either use commercially prepared frit or make frit yourself. Use the appropriate safety procedures/equipment to ensure that you are not inhaling any glass particles.

Surround the 3 yellow frit with a little bit of the red frit.

Dot and Simple Murrine Implosion Marble

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 41 Continually rotate your rod. You may turn it toward you or away from you. If you are doing it correctly, the glass will start to look 5 like a mushroom cap at the end of your rod. 8

Trim the borosilicate rod into a point.

You will use the rod later on to support your marble. That’s going Once your gather is quite hot, create to be your punty, which is another name for handle. If you don’t a maria inside the empty circle you have boro, you can use soft glass or a clean steel rod as a punty. I previously drew on the graphite pad. prefer using boro, because it’s more stable. Point the cold part of the rod toward the ceiling and let the hot glass flow down onto the graphite pad. Follow the hot glass down toward the graphite pad with your rod. Make sure you keep the rod Slowly introduce 6 in the center of the circular maria you are creating. A maria looks the large diameter sort of like a large nail head. Do not push the rod down. You do not Effetre 006 glass rod want to embed the rod into the maria. into the back of If your maria doesn’t fill the circle, reheat the glass, add more to the flame. your gather, and repeat the process of creating the maria. If your rod is off center, reheat the gather and create the maria again. You won’t be able to get a round marble unless your rod is right in the center. I use Effetre Super Clear 006, but any quality clear rod will work. I prefer to use the large diameter rod, because it provides more support. Take your time warming up the clear rod so it doesn’t crack. As an added precaution, make sure you point the rod at a 45-degree angle toward your bench. That way, if it cracks or pops, the falling glass will hit your bench and not anyone or anything around you. 7 Create a gather or a blob of glass.

You’ll notice that my rod is angled slightly up at this point. That gives the hot glass something to rest on as it melts and forms a gather.

Dot Implosion Marble

42 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com Dot Implosion Marble

Heat the 9 bottom of the maria until it’s glowing.

Hold the bottom of the maria so it’s facing into the flame. The top of the rod will be pointing away from you at an angle like one leg of a V. Continue to rotate the rod until the entire bottom of the maria glows. 10 Pick up the pieces of frit with the maria. 12 Periodically Place the glowing maria on top of the frit. Wait a few seconds tap the glass to let the glass flow down around the individual little pieces of down onto the frit. If the glass was hot enough, you shouldn’t have to push the graphite pad. rod down. When you pick up the maria, the frit design should be embedded into the bottom of the maria. If a lot of frit is still left on the graphite, reheat the bottom of the maria and repeat the process As you rotate and heat the maria and the glass starts to move, the to pick up the remaining frit. center of the maria will indent and look like a divot or an “inny” belly button. When this happens, gently tap the maria on your graphite pad with the rod facing the ceiling. This will free up some clear glass around the design so you can continue your implosion. Don’t push your rod into the glass. Let the heat do the work. 11 If the bottom center rounds out like a little hill, you are not heating in the right place or you are tilting your maria toward the bench as you’re heating. If this happens, gently tap the maria in your graphite pad and continue as above. Remember not to push the rod into the glass or you will be pushing your hot design up against cold glass, which will smudge Start the implosion. your design.

Continue to How you hold and rotate the maria in the flame is the most im- heat the edge 13 portant part of creating an implosion. Think of the maria as a tire. of the maria to You want to heat the edge of the tire, the part that would be the help more clear tire treads. When the rotating glass gets hot, it wants to melt into glass move down a sphere. When you heat the edge of the maria, it starts thickening until you totally up on the side trying to become a sphere. As it does that, the design encase the design. gets imploded—that is, condensed or compressed—into the glass. For the best results, make sure you are holding the rod parallel to You can see it here in this side view. your bench and are continually rotating it as you heat.

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 43 Use the 14 18 marble mold to shape 3/4 of the marble.

Shown here is what’s called a marble mold. It’s really just a Remove any excess glass. shaping tool. Pick one of the circular indentations on the marble mold that’s slightly smaller than the size of the marble, then swirl the marble around in the mold to help refine its shape. Make sure If there is some excess glass where the rod was removed, you the skin of the marble is a little cool before you start shaping it. You can either melt that glass in, if there’s not too much, or you can use don’t want to shape it when it’s really hot, or you can easily create your tweezers to trim it off. If you decide to trim the glass, take a gouges in the marble from the edges of the mold. little at a time.

15 Heat up the 19 Inspect the top half of the marble to make marble, then let it sure there are no cool down a bit gouges or bumps. before shaping it as described above

Hold the marble up to the light. Examine how the light reflects so you can discover any indentations or imperfections. Repeat the heating and shaping process until the marble looks round and Lay and smooth. Rotate the shaped part in the flame and quickly flame-polish spin the any tool marks created by the mold. marble in the20 marble mold starting at the cool side of the marble, which is the Take the 16 part closest to boro punty the punty. and create a cold seal.

Spin the 21 Get the tip of the boro nice and hot, then touch it very gently to marble in the center bottom of the warm marble. Do not push the boro into all directions so the marble. A very tiny attachment point is all that’s needed to hold that you’re covering it in place. the entire marble. 17 Remember to flash 22 (give insurance heat) where the borosilicate is touching the marble. Flame-cut (use heat) to remove the large soft glass rod that you We do that because we run the risk of the borosilicate breaking have been using up to this point. away from the soft glass marble, since they have different coef- ficients of expansion. 44 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com 23 Remove the marble from the punty.

Place the marble into one of the larger indentations on the marble mold with the punty pointing toward the ceiling. Now chill the spot between the marble and the borosilicate by running your knife around the connection point. Use the side of your knife to tap the borosilicate rod about half way up the rod, and the boro punty should break right off the marble. If it doesn’t come off easily, you may have to use some heat.

Check to make sure 24 there is no boro left in the marble.

It’s critically important that no boro is left in the soft glass marble Dot or it will crack the marble. Use a small flame to heat up the spot Implosion Marble where the boro may be left in the marble and examine it carefully. If there is any boro left, it’s going to look like a tiny island floating in the soft glass. Touch the “island” with the tip of your boro rod and lift out the residue. Gently and quickly flame-polish the place you just worked on, then place the marble in the kiln to anneal. If you have a mold with a handle as I do, tip the mold into your kiln and let the marble roll onto the kiln floor. If your mold doesn’t have a handle, you will need Photo by Doug Baldwin another tool to grab the marble and place it in the kiln. Be careful Vicki Schneider is a highly respect- not to add blemishes to the marble with your tool. ed soft glass artist, instructor, author, It’s been a pleasure showing you how to create this implosion and studio owner. Her best known marble. The accompanying video demonstration for making this body of work is Mama’s Garden. This marble can be found at https://youtu.be/ ADmTtTG_qKA on my extensive array of lifelike blown and YouTube channel. I have several other videos that you might also solid floral sculptures are enjoyed by want to look at that have different marbles and other sculptural glass collectors and enthusiasts alike. pieces that you can learn from. Please share this video with your Vicki has been teaching something to someone since friends and subscribe to my channel. I would love to hear from you. the age of four. In 2009, she opened Expressive Glass, a Also feel free to send me your comments and questions. nine-torch teaching studio in Buffalo, New York, to share THE Flow® her passion for glass with novice and skilled glassworkers. Embracing technology, Schneider introduced her Virtual Instagram @vickischneiderglass Coaching program in 2019, which enables her to work one- on-one with individual students from all over the world in real time. Learn more about Vicki’s work and her studio at www.expressiveglass.com.

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 45 Making a Super Simple Marble Pendant

Text and Demonstration by Sara Sally LaGrand Make or purchase the 1 I always enjoy making beautiful things out of glass, and the tutorial premade design for this marble pendant, which is intended for artists with at least murrine for the an intermediate skill level, is certainly no exception. It will make flower design a great addition to your collection of glass art accessories. As fall and preheat it rolls around and you begin to think of holiday time, you might even in the kiln. want to make one for a special someone. Let’s get started. A premade flower murrina is used for the design inside the marble. I make my own, but there are several places you can buy them. Begin by preheating the murrine in the kiln, hot plate, or other warmer. It needs at least 15 minutes to become hot enough. For this Effetre Glass Rod design, I used a 1/2" piece. 591212 Opaque Pea Green 591214 Opaque Green Nile 591064 Black While the 591020 Transparent Grass Green murrine is 2 592204 Black Filigrana preheating, gather 591006 Super Clear the green, black, and Additional Glass clear glass rods for Premade Murrine making the complex Tools and Materials striped leaf cane. Toothless Tweezers Marble Mold Desired Size Mandrels Bead Release You’ll also need to sharpen two 1/8" mandrels to a point to Brass or Graphite Paddle use as punties. Punty is short for the Italian word pontillo, which Stainless Steel Punty means little bridge. Check out Emilio Santini’s facebook page for Flameworking Torch Setup more great Italian words that pertain to the glass art industry. You can find the mandrels at oxygen supply/welding stores as well as various flameworking supply stores.

46 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com Warm up Make a about 1" of the 3 simple little 7 Green Nile rod— spacer bead not molten, just out of the clear warm—and “paint” rod and garage a stripe of Black on it in the kiln. 3 sides of the rod.

You can’t put hot glass on cold glass. It needs to be warm enough This will become the bail for your pendent. to accept the glass.

Add a Encase 8 stripe of Pea 4 one of the Green on top of murrine slices the black, then with the Super encase the entire Clear rod. inch with the Grass Green transparent. Heat up a rod of Super Clear and after removing the cut end, The transparent rod gives a nice color shift and also holds the pick up the hot piece of murrine from the kiln or hot plate. Encase colors in place so they won’t run or smear. The other colors are the murrine sides only with another rod of Super Clear. much softer than the transparent and have a tendency to smear when heated. Pull 2 or 3 stringers and set them aside. Remember that you don’t Heat the want to put a hot stringer down on top of a cold stringer, since you encased murrine 9 will get a shock at the point where they touch each other. That could until the lines make it break just at the place where it touches while trying to use it start to implode, and ruin your design! (Thanks to Uncle Al Janelle for that timely tip.) then pull off the end with your tweezers.

Next, pull 5 This sharp point is pulling all of the petals together to a point about 5 or 6 and will look like a flower. Black Filigrana stringers and set them aside. Use the 10 encased leaf cane to add leaves at the bottom of Heat the the flower. end of the 6 Super Clear rods and remove Heat the cane until you get a ball and swipe it downward from the row of bubbles the tip to about the center of the murrina. that will form on the end of the rod.

The bubbles will look like pond scum in your glass if you leave Add leaves 11 them. all the way around the bottom of the flower, then pull to another point.

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 47 Add swirls 12 Once the 17 of the Black seal is made Filigrana to and the punty the bottom of is on center, remove the flower. the glass punty.

Leave a little extra glass to superheat and push in with your brass paddle to make the flower bloom. It’s best to get that whole area melted in before you try to push the glass and make the flower Encase the 13 bloom. If you do it too soon, bubbles will form. flower in clear and pull to a point again. 18 Add extra Super Clear to form the marble. 14 Start adding I often pass the marble between the two punties for shaping. the clear to You have to shape a marble one half at a time, being careful not to form the base apply too much heat to the punty itself. If at any time you get the of the marble. punty off center, go back and correct it. It is impossible to make a round marble without the punty being centered.

Once the marble is 19 15 shaped into Round up a perfect sphere, the bottom check the lens to of the marble make sure there are in the mold. no imperfections.

Pull out any metal or scum you see, reshape, and get ready to add your spacer that is sitting in the kiln.

Punty up 16 Join the 20 with the spacer bead to stainless the marble to steel punty. create the bail for the pendant.

To use stainless steel punties, heat the end of the punty until Take the spacer bead out of the kiln and warm the spot where it glows orange. Do not heat the marble. You want the punty to you plan to join it to the marble. Remember not to put too much pierce the cooler glass and create a bond. If the marble is too hot, pressure on it, since it will break the bead release and you will have you won’t get a good seal. a real mess.

48 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com Make sure If you have questions, or would like coaching via Skype, con- that the spacer tact Sara at [email protected]. Public Glassworks, bead and the 21 which is owned by Sara, is a full-service glass studio in Kansas marble are both City, Missouri. “juicy,” that is, a THE Flow™ little orange, so they will bond www.sarasallylagrand.com together.

Check the joint and heal it properly.

Sara Sally LaGrand, award-winning artist and author, has had the great fortune 22 to study glassmaking with many gifted Remove teachers, both in America and Italy. She the metal holds a BA in Glass Formation from Park punty. University, Parkville, Missouri. Honors include awards from Art Westport, State of the Arts, The Bead Museum of Washington, D.C., Fine Line Gallery, Images Art Gallery, and the Kansas City Artists Coalition. Superheat just the punty, not the marble, until it glows orange LaGrand has taught flameworking all over the world and and remove it gently. Put the hot punty in water to cool it. has work published in many books and magazines. Her work can also be found in international public and private collec- 23 tions. Visit www.sarasallylagrand.com to view her glass art. Heal the pontil mark © Copyright 2020 by The Flow®. All rights reserved. where the punty was attached until it’s smooth.

Place the marble pendant in the hot kiln after it stops glowing www.glasshouse.de orange. Anneal the pendant on a regular bead program. When the annealing is done, enjoy your beautiful new pendant.

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 49 Daniel “Piper Dan” Benway Sharing Techniques for a Nightline Marble

Torch Talk presented a series of demos and performances at Essential Prep Work the 2017 GAS Conference in Norfolk, Virginia. In this demonstra- What I have here is some clear that’s been prestripped. It’s really tion, renowned flameworking artist, Daniel Benway, shared his important to get the outer edge off of the glass, so I take a big solid techniques for creating a marble with multiple layers of murrine. chunk of 44 mm clear, heat it up, and strip off about 4 mm of the surface. That exposes better quality clear on the inside. I’ve noticed you get a much better looking marble that way. y goal today is to share some tips and techniques for creating I have some really large murrine slices in the kiln that are pre- this Nightline Marble that has a three-dimensional look cre- warming. Each one has a skyline on it, and each one will be one Mated by using multiple layers of murrine. If you have any questions layer of the marble. Hopefully my little scooper here won’t break. as we go along, feel free to ask me. This murrina slice shows the background buildings that will be in the center of the marble. I just noticed that my patty isn’t quite wide enough, so I’ve got to push on it a little bit more.

50 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com How many sections are in the murrine Comparing Boro to Soft Glass you are working with? The thing I notice with boro as opposed to soft glass is that That’s a good question, actually. I just keep multiplying until I everything is done in a lot of tiny little moves. It’s never one big have sections of 64 murrine. Then I start putting those together, so spectacular move. You’ve got to do a bunch of little moves very there are hundreds, probably, once I get it all stretched out. I just slowly and carefully. keep putting squares together until I get a bunch of them, then I I get the murrine on there, then I just go around the edge very throw more of those together. slowly trying not to disturb the surface. I try to get the edges all These background buildings are interesting, because they’re melted in without smearing it. That is where this little guy, my just little tiny white dots when you look at them from far away. small hand torch, helps. Right now, we need to put this murrina But if you look at them up close, it’s kind of a random pattern. I try slice back in the kiln. to keep a little randomness in the windows, and that’s what takes most of the time.

Daniel Benway, Nightline Marble seen from four different angles. Photos by the artist. Still photos of the flameworking process captured from the Torch Talk 2017 GAS Conference video taken by Mike Mason.

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 51 How long have you been using a GTT? torch Sometimes, depending on what colors I’m using, I’ll have to stop Pretty much since they came out. I like them very much, but I just at this point and cool the marble, cold work it the next day, then recently got a Herbert Arnold. I like those, too. I use those more for heat it up again when I put my clear on. I’m trying to use simpler the hollow stuff, and I like the GTTs for the marbles. Herbies go a colors lately so that I don’t have to do that. little slow when I’m trying to heat up something solid. Man, though, I love those torches. At home I have a Cobra, which is a three stage. Do you cold work the marble? The challenge with these sections is basically just putting things Sometimes. If I use a really critical color that boils when I do on straight. These are the middle-ground buildings. They’re a little this, I’ll have to cool it, get it to 600 grit in the morning, then heat more detailed and have characters in the windows. This is where I it up again and put some clear on. That adds way too much time. pray a little bit. It needs to go on straight. Do you use a lap grinder for that? Planning the Details Yes, I’ve got a 16" lap. I end up doing a lot of cold working with Here’s where I would put in an opal moon of some sort. I usually this technique. Certain colors just boil very easily. have a couple of premade opals in the kiln that are moon shaped. Right now I’ve got to pin on a tiny moon that’s been premade It’s also a good time to put in stars or planets and to get rid of any by my buddy Harry. This one needs to be melted in a little more. air bubbles that I just noticed. I’m just trying to get all of the edges melted in without disrupting This is just a little 2 mm opal sphere that will act as a moon, the base too much. and it’s already been encased in clear. The way you do it is to drop I should have melted that slice in a little better. I caught a little it into a tube that’s closed up on the end, then close the tube in on bit of an air bubble. It’s pretty deep, so I don’t think I can pull it out. the opal. That will infuse it in clear without damaging the surface. But that is a part of this. If I were going a little bit slower, I probably would have melted the edges in a little bit better. Finishing the Interior Here is the final layer of buildings that we’re going to use for An air bubble has been trapped on the edge of the murrine. We the foreground. I’m going to try to melt it in all the way so I don’t need to deal with it by picking it away and reworking the edge catch any more bubbles. before proceeding with the next layer of clear and detaching the marble from the 44 mm rod.

52 The Flow ® • Summer 2020 www.TheFlowMagazine.com This slice has a little bit of a flaw in the way it was polished, so I’ve got to rip that part off around the edge. I need to put another purple opal moon on, too, at this point. This slice I just put on is kind of small, so I’ve still got a lot of sky to work with. It is actually cres- cent moon shaped, so we’ll have a couple of different ones in there. This opal has a little bit too much sphere on it, so I have to pull some off. I’ve got them melted in better this time, so it should go on without a hitch. Famous last words.

Shaping the Marble When I’m shaping the marble, I try to get it as round as I can with the flame and use the marble mold as little as possible. That way I get less stress lines. Using the marble mold to push in the humps and stuff like that will give you a lot of marks that you’re going to see later, so I try to use the flame for as much of it as I can. I’ve got a smaller mold on the other side that I use to get the roundness tightened up a little bit. I take the mold on one side for general shaping. Then I flip it over, and it seems to get me a better roundness. While I’m doing that, I look at the reflection of the lighting in the marble. That’s the best way to see if you have any imperfections on the surface. If I really want it perfectly round, I switch access two or three times and do both sides. Parallels Between Hot Glass Looks like I’ve got a little cleanup job on the end there, but I think it’s getting pretty close and looking almost round. You need to give the marble a little bit of time to cool, too. Now it’s time to & Human Existence apply the tongs, detach the punty, and flame-polish the end of the marble. All that’s left is to place the marble in the kiln to anneal. The Village Iterate THE Flow™ • Each color from each maker has its own set of characteris- tics, personality if you will, that must be deeply understood Instagram @piperdanglass in order to incorporate it successfully into your working vocabulary. • When I begin using a new color or technique, I do it to death for a year or two until I am then able to use it just when it actually best suits the need. I get the initial infatuation out of my system. Using it that much also exhausts the old images and patterns into which I may have incorporated it. That allows the new material or technique to begin to talk on its own and suggest new uses, ideas, and images that were unused or undeveloped until that point. • I’ll begin using a new color in place of an older one, making the same pieces in the new hues. After a time when the color has had a chance to sit around on my workbench and insinuate itself into my consciousness and subconsciousness through peripheral vision, it begins to develop its own voice and leads me into a new vocabulary. • If you’re making too much effort, you’re doing something wrong. Daniel Benway, aka “Piper Dan,” has been a pioneer • If you don’t work hard enough, you won’t get anything in the underground glass pipe scene since 1995. One of the done and certainly won’t break any new ground. first borosilicate murrine makers, he has paved the way for • If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not really trying. today’s functional murrine artists. He has won numerous • The secret is continuous application of the seat of the glass competitions and was the founder of the Arcata Glass pants to a chair. That is, unless you work standing up. You School. Benway was also one of the first borosilicate marble get the idea. makers, and his original designs are a major influence in the THE Flow® borosilicate marble industry. His intricate city skyline marbles can be found in collections worldwide. Excerpted from the book Parallels Between Hot Glass and Human Existence © Copyright 2020 by The Flow®. © Copyright 2020 by The Flow®. All rights reserved. All rights reserved.

www.TheFlowMagazine.com The Flow ® • Summer 2020 53 Advertisers' Index ® Glass Expert Webinars Advertiser Page Live Two-Hour, Interactive Web Workshops with Renowned Glass Artists Clinton Smith www.ClintonFSmith.com 31 Link to Class Recording Never Expires! Corning Museum of Glass, The www.CMOG.org 9

Corina Tettinger The Magic of Encasing Covington Engineering Corp. www.Covington-Engineering.com 9 July 9 Gil Reynolds Delphi Glass www.DelphiGlass.com 31 Fused Glass Breakthroughs July 14 FAM www.FAMGlassShow.com 35 Dennis Brady Mica Magic July 16 Fire Mountain Gems www.FireMountainGems.com 2 Henry Halem Glass Compatibility and COE, Flow®, The www.TheFlowMagazine.com 35 What Does It Mean? Lecture July 23 Flow® Webinars, The www.TheFlowMagazine.com 17 Rick Silas The Art of Ice Glass Tiles Frantz Art Glass & Supply www.FrantzArtGlass.com 13 July 30 New Susan McGarry GLASHAUS www.GlassHouse.de 49 Kaleidoscope Pattern Bar Adventure 101 ® August 13 Glass Art www.GlassArtMagazine.com 21

Dennis Brady Glass Expert Webinars® www.GlassPatterns.com 54 Simply Super Sandblasting August 18 Glass.Vegas Glass.Vegas 55 Gil Reynolds glass.vegas Four Ways to Shape Glass in a Kiln Lecture Griffin Glass Tools www.GriffinGlass.com 9 August 20

Tony Glander His Glassworks, Inc. www.HisGlassworks.com 35 Make Your Own Frit New August 25 Hot Glass Color & Supply www.HotGlassColor.com 21 Lisa Vogt Fused Glass Sinks ISGB International Society of Glass Beadmakers www.ISGB.org 25 August 27

Peggy Pettigrew Stewart Lampwork Etc. www.LampworkEtc.com 35 Verre Églomisé Float Dichroic and PaintsNew Nortel Manufacturing www.NortelGlass.com 21 September 8 Dennis Brady Northstar Glassworks, Inc. www.NorthstarGlass.com 25 Kiln Sculpture September 10 Skutt Glass Kilns www.Skutt.com 5/56 Visit the Glass Expert Webinars® link under “What’s New” at www.GlassArtMagazine.com Vicki Schneider www.expressiveglass.com 25 for more details and local times. Weaver Industries www.WeaverInd.com 31

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