Stupid Sony Imagestation! What's the point of uploading photos if I'm the only that can look at 'em??!!! #$#@%!!!
Okay, so, I've created an album in Yahoo. Try this link and look for the "Embodied Minds" pic:
http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/jekurman/lst ... yahoo.com/
The glass was sprued up like a metal piece with a pot melt suspended above and small vents to get rid of bubble. Cast in a standard plaster/silica mold with no support. They came out OK, except for one that had a bigass bubble in the side because it didn't soak long enough (8 hour soak at 1650F).
Cast glass pieces supported by bent and brazed steel in a wood frame. I've welded bronze around glass before. Kind of nerve-wracking. I set up the glass in a coffee can filled with water and with a clay dam around the bronze frame, and then weld the bronze outside the can. This time I just shaped the steel with my two little simian strength hands to fit the glass and then supported it in a wood frame.
John
Another Cast Glass Piece
Moderator: Brad Walker
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John Kurman
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Wed Apr 23, 2003 8:38 am
- Location: Chicago, IL
- Contact:
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Cynthia
Okee Dokee.
What a range of skills and imagery!!!
Drunken Goblets should be shown after Mechanism of a Dream, Disservice and Atrocity to afford a bit of comic relief. Those other three scare the shit out of me, but man o man are they amazing! Your work appears superior to anything I've seen here yet. In terms of imagery and your art skills...well, These just floor me.
My favorites, are the Hesse Series and Embodied Minds. I respond to these in a less visceral way (than I did to the previous three), but these actually appeal more to my sense of scale, line, texture, balance...Gee, I don't think you've left anything to be desired in these pieces from my perspective, but I'm an abstraction or non representational kinda gal.
The figurative piece, Strategy and Tactics made me laugh. I don't know what your intent was, but it just put me in mind of the power struggles we can engage in with our partners, parents, kids, pets... It made me think. Geez, we aught to find the Buddah within and let him live there to keep us from getting into these situations.
Thanks for sharing such stellar work. Gives me something to shoot for if I could just let go of my scaredy cat ways.
What a range of skills and imagery!!!
Drunken Goblets should be shown after Mechanism of a Dream, Disservice and Atrocity to afford a bit of comic relief. Those other three scare the shit out of me, but man o man are they amazing! Your work appears superior to anything I've seen here yet. In terms of imagery and your art skills...well, These just floor me.
My favorites, are the Hesse Series and Embodied Minds. I respond to these in a less visceral way (than I did to the previous three), but these actually appeal more to my sense of scale, line, texture, balance...Gee, I don't think you've left anything to be desired in these pieces from my perspective, but I'm an abstraction or non representational kinda gal.
The figurative piece, Strategy and Tactics made me laugh. I don't know what your intent was, but it just put me in mind of the power struggles we can engage in with our partners, parents, kids, pets... It made me think. Geez, we aught to find the Buddah within and let him live there to keep us from getting into these situations.
Thanks for sharing such stellar work. Gives me something to shoot for if I could just let go of my scaredy cat ways.
Uh..... WOW..... what else can I say. Some of your imagery is weird, but I like what you do. I think that your Hesse pieces and the Embodied Mind piece are your strongest. The little "pod" shapes are very appealing and give a sense of a metamorphosis happening, as in a sense of tension or anticipation. The texture looks inviting and I want to touch them. In my mind, that is a good thing. Keep it up.
Rob
Rob
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Gale aka artistefem
- Posts: 184
- Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2003 8:14 pm
- Location: MO-on the banks of the Mississippi
- Contact:
You go....John!
Oooooo - good play on the old adage of thinking in/out of the box. You are working so far outside the box that your visual incorporation of the predictable box has taken on a whole new meaning. Good job!
I like your mixed media approach. There's something wonderful/powerful about the interplay of that glowing nugget of glass placed within the context of other medias.
Oooooo - good play on the old adage of thinking in/out of the box. You are working so far outside the box that your visual incorporation of the predictable box has taken on a whole new meaning. Good job!
I like your mixed media approach. There's something wonderful/powerful about the interplay of that glowing nugget of glass placed within the context of other medias.
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Cindy next door
- Posts: 64
- Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2003 12:54 pm
- Location: Mesa, Arizona
Koo Kooie! (That's our family word for very scary things 
You did what I'm sure you wanted to do. Amazing work. You took away from the process and glass and made me focus totally on your subject! WOW, that's hard for me to do in glass since I love it so much!
Kudoos times 10!
Cindy next door
You did what I'm sure you wanted to do. Amazing work. You took away from the process and glass and made me focus totally on your subject! WOW, that's hard for me to do in glass since I love it so much!
Kudoos times 10!
Cindy next door
Cindy next door
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Jon Wunderlich
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John Kurman
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Wed Apr 23, 2003 8:38 am
- Location: Chicago, IL
- Contact:
Well, thanks much for all of your encouraging comments. Believe me, it helps, and helps a lot. I see a lot of work here by talented people, and hearing that I'm sick from people with the same disease seems to be more credible than word from the average street monkey.
Jon asks about molds. I use No. 1 pottery plaster and silica flour. That's it. That's all. Properly cured. For larger pieces, I have made saggar molds out of Hydroperm and silica to support the softer stuff, and occasionally fired ceramic boxes for reinforcement. I also have a large roll of fiberglass mat that I take chunks off of to reinforce the molds (my "pond scum" technique).
From personal experience, I am not a big fan of wire reinforcement. Chicken wire lasts about as long in a kiln as it would on the surface of Venus (read: not long at all), even when covered with mold material. Galvanized hardware wire mesh, aside from the fume problems, is not much better. Stainless steel lasts slightly longer, but still will not prevent cracks from forming and growing. Chopped fiberglass mixed in the investment works much better. Or bunched fiberglasss mixed with investment and covered over the piece. Fiberglass lining the exterior of the mold tends to hold the mold together, but does nothing for cracks formed in the interior. I've been told that cracks travel from the exterior inward. But I have had pieces with cracks directly against the glass with no detectable damage to the exterior surface, so I'm skeptical of this explanation.
I've found that just proper curing of the mold is enough to get by. I generally set a cooking grill on the kiln shelf, and let the mold dry out at 200F overnight. For larger molds, I'll follow the same procedure, then reheat at 400F overnight. This seems to work for me. I rarely get cracks on my pieces, and when I do, it is because I've become impatient. Allowing the molds to airdry is OK, but waiting days or a week is too long for me. But then, this technique applies to "small" pieces of a kilogram of glass or less.
I am limited by the size of the kiln (18" cubic ID) available, and so rarely do anything over 2 kilograms. The largest piece I have cast was a job for a glassblower which involved about 10 kilograms and measured around 20" by 15" by 3" or so. He had a large kiln to do the job, he just never cast anything, and didn't know how to program the kiln. That one was reinforce with "pond scum" laid directly over a splashcoat, and came out with only minor cracks easy enough to grind away with a dremel and a diamond bit.
I've used the ramping schedule from Henry Halem's book with some modifications. At first I considered this schedule as the Word of God, but I've become a little skeptical. Halem's book has been a good intro, and he got the schedule from the Czechs, so who am I to question it? But I'm beginning to suspect that the schedule was developed for very large pieces of tens or hundreds of pounds of glass, and merely "multiplied down" to ounces and inches. I generally add a much longer soak time to the 400F and 1100F soaks, and this works for me. I've done about 50-60 casts of my own and other's works, so I might actually be in a spot relatively near a position to kind of maybe possibly know what I am talking about.
But then, it could all be just something I pulled out of the voodoo firmament.
Jon asks about molds. I use No. 1 pottery plaster and silica flour. That's it. That's all. Properly cured. For larger pieces, I have made saggar molds out of Hydroperm and silica to support the softer stuff, and occasionally fired ceramic boxes for reinforcement. I also have a large roll of fiberglass mat that I take chunks off of to reinforce the molds (my "pond scum" technique).
From personal experience, I am not a big fan of wire reinforcement. Chicken wire lasts about as long in a kiln as it would on the surface of Venus (read: not long at all), even when covered with mold material. Galvanized hardware wire mesh, aside from the fume problems, is not much better. Stainless steel lasts slightly longer, but still will not prevent cracks from forming and growing. Chopped fiberglass mixed in the investment works much better. Or bunched fiberglasss mixed with investment and covered over the piece. Fiberglass lining the exterior of the mold tends to hold the mold together, but does nothing for cracks formed in the interior. I've been told that cracks travel from the exterior inward. But I have had pieces with cracks directly against the glass with no detectable damage to the exterior surface, so I'm skeptical of this explanation.
I've found that just proper curing of the mold is enough to get by. I generally set a cooking grill on the kiln shelf, and let the mold dry out at 200F overnight. For larger molds, I'll follow the same procedure, then reheat at 400F overnight. This seems to work for me. I rarely get cracks on my pieces, and when I do, it is because I've become impatient. Allowing the molds to airdry is OK, but waiting days or a week is too long for me. But then, this technique applies to "small" pieces of a kilogram of glass or less.
I am limited by the size of the kiln (18" cubic ID) available, and so rarely do anything over 2 kilograms. The largest piece I have cast was a job for a glassblower which involved about 10 kilograms and measured around 20" by 15" by 3" or so. He had a large kiln to do the job, he just never cast anything, and didn't know how to program the kiln. That one was reinforce with "pond scum" laid directly over a splashcoat, and came out with only minor cracks easy enough to grind away with a dremel and a diamond bit.
I've used the ramping schedule from Henry Halem's book with some modifications. At first I considered this schedule as the Word of God, but I've become a little skeptical. Halem's book has been a good intro, and he got the schedule from the Czechs, so who am I to question it? But I'm beginning to suspect that the schedule was developed for very large pieces of tens or hundreds of pounds of glass, and merely "multiplied down" to ounces and inches. I generally add a much longer soak time to the 400F and 1100F soaks, and this works for me. I've done about 50-60 casts of my own and other's works, so I might actually be in a spot relatively near a position to kind of maybe possibly know what I am talking about.
But then, it could all be just something I pulled out of the voodoo firmament.