When it comes to fused glass, I mainly concentrate on multi-layer scenes incorporating a hand-painted vitreous enamels, glass powders, glass frit of various sizes, and/or handmade dimensional glass embellishments. These projects are among my most technical and take a considerable amount of planning to achieve the depth I desire in the finished work. I often begin with backgrounds created by sifting multiple colors of powder onto sheet glass.
Next I begin the often multi-layer, multi-firing process of painting and kiln-curing enamels
Each painted layer is fired individually before being stacked. I will often fire the unpainted backgrounds before stacking as well, to make sure I don’t want to make any adjustments. Every kiln firing takes approximately 24 hours to fully run and cool in my hot Florida garage, and then I typically allow the glass to fully reach room temperature throughout for another 24 hours.
Stacking is done carefully. I have done pieces up to five layers of glass thick, using both 2mm and 3mm glass. For anything piece thicker than 6mm, I use dams in the kiln to maintain the correct measurements for the work. Firing these thick pieces requires a careful schedule and very long anneal time to minimize the stress in the glass and prevent cracking. This is the most stressful, most delicate, and most crucial part of the entire process.
Making my dimensional glass embellishments or focal points is a complex and time-consuming process. I often do these in large batches based on the ideas I have in my head so that I can fill and run the kiln less often, but occasionally I will use my smaller kiln instead.
Once everything has been stacked and fired, I can tack on the embellishments carefully, to prevent losing details in the firing. As an alternative, I will often slump pieces without dimensional embellishments, such as this Monstera plate. Whether I’m slumping or tacking, these again go through the kiln with an extremely conservative schedule and long anneal time.
The end result of all this work is a complex, multi-layer piece of art with real cast shadows and depth.