FOXY Fusions Blog

So with a title like that, what the heck is this blog about? It’s about blown glass, of course! (get your mind out of the gutter…will ya?)

Sometimes people think fused glass and blown glass or torchwork are all the same thing. Well…they’re all different types of warm glass, but beyond that, they’re extremely different.

• Fused glass involves flat sheets of glass layered and then heated up in a kiln to melting point. Fused glass can be draped over a form and slumped so that the glass melts down the sides of the form. (sample of slumped dish) And while there are lots of other awesome techniques you can do with fused glass, it all happens inside the kiln.
• Torchworked glass or lampworking involves a torch and rods of glass that are melted by placing the glass into the hottest part of the flame, and then bending the glass over some kind of steel rod or other tool. (read about the History of lampworking…) You’ve likely seen lots of torchworked beads in your time. Here’s some excellent examples from lampworking artist and friend Lindsay Fields. You can “blow glass” with torchwork, but only small pieces. I tried making torchworked beads and made the most horrendously awful misshapen beads that I immediately ran back to my kiln!
• Blown glass is what artists like Chihuli do. The amazingly beautiful glasswork affixed to the ceiling of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas is one installation of Chihuli’s work that takes my breath away. Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves melting glass in an extremely hot open oven, and then inflating the molten glass into a bubble, or parison, with the aid of the blowpipe, or blow tube. This is the most advanced, most difficult kind of warm glass craft, and typically involves several people working together in front of a very, very hot open firepit-like oven.

Because each of these types of glasswork involve tons of practice and experimentation, glass artists usually pick one and stick with it. Fused glass suits my sensibilities, so I’ll probably be crafting with a kiln for a long time to come!

There are so many reasons to buy handmade…..where should I start?  I know…I’ll take some quotes directly from the Buy Handmade website where almost 45,000 people from all over have pledged to buy handmade (and YOU can TOO!)…

“What gift could be more thoughtful and personal than one handmade?”

“Support the creative revolution!”

“Handmade is food for the soul.”

In fact, handmade is such a powerful force in today’s culture that it has supported the birth of a movie called Handmade Nation. You can watch the trailer here…and buy the book here…and read the blog here…

Why is handmade so important to people? The same reason that people are flocking to social media like Facebook and Twitter and Myspace by the droves—we want to be connected with other people. We want to feel a personal connection with the people from whom we buy clothing and jewelry and things for our homes. We’re tired of mass marketing from big companies that don’t know anything about who we are or what we want. We want to feel special.

And we want to have cool, unique things that no one else has. We want one-of-a-kind special things that someone made just for us. At least, that’s what I want. That’s why I surround myself by crafters and artists, and why I pursue fine craft as my career. I love handmade! I hope you do too, and I hope you’ll join me in the handmade revolution!

One of my favorite quotes on success is by Sasha Azevedo, an actress you might have seen in The Notebook. Sasha has an inspiring story of surviving brain surgery at 21 to cure epilepsy (Read more…).

“To believe in yourself and to follow your
dreams, to have goals in life and a drive to
succeed, and to surround yourself with the
things and the people that make you happy -
this is success!”

Another resource that has really inspired me about success is appropriately titled….Success. Edited by Jena Pincott, this little gold book is a goldmine…literally…of quotes by successful people about how they got successful. I keep this little book in my jewelry bag and periodically flip through for some good advice. From the Amazon.com editorial review:

Success is a collection of insights from more than 400 remarkably successful people in all fields – including business, politics, entertainment, and the arts. Here are quotes and passages from J.K. Rowling and Federico Fellini on getting started, and Steve Jobs and Tiger Woods on passion. Here, too, are George Lucas and Bill Clinton on goals, Katie Couric and George Foreman on competition, and Edmund Hillary and Carly Fiorina on leadership.

Have a great Wednesday!

Making fused glass creations takes all kinds of different fusible glass.  Fusible glass is glass that has been pre-tested by the manufacturer for its COE (coefficient) and compatibility with other glasses. Fusible glass typically has a COE of 90 or 96. I use COE 90 glass for my designs because most of the dichroic glass out there is also COE 90.

I like to use Bullseye glass because of its predictable color palette across sheets of glass. Even with Bullseye, the glass sometimes changes color as they change the recipe (darn them!), but it is the most stable.

I use transparent glass, opalescent glass, iridescent glass, and dichroic glass.

Transparent glass is fun to play with because it is not completely solid…you can see other colors through it, and you can create new colors by overlapping layers of glass. That’s fun.  (See a sample)

Opalescent glass provides a strong background for the layers on top and therefore can create some very bold designs. (See a sample)

Iridescent glass is typically transparent glass that has a coating applied to it so that the surface has a rainbow-like coloring on its surface, similar to the effect of oil on water.  (See a sample) Notice in the sample that the left side of the image shows the real color of the glass (typically a transparent glass) and the right side shows the rainbow-like shimmer caused by the iridescent coating on the surface of the glass.

Dichroic glass (di-kro-ik) is a high-tech optical coating to fusible glass which selectively reflects certain wavelengths (colors) of light and allows the remaining wavelengths to transmit through. The word “dichroic” means two colors: transmitted color and reflected color. Most sheets of dichroic glass come in a rainbow pattern from cool colors (greens, teals, blues, purples) to warm colors (yellows, golds, bronzes, oranges).  The rainbow pattern is what makes matching dichroic glass so difficult when customers lose part of a matching set and want a replacement piece…it’s really challenging! (See sample)

Combining all of these glasses together can be very fun with unexpected and exciting results. Especially since the color of dichroic glass, and some other glasses (such as striker glass) changes during firing. It’s these challenges that keep my job interesting and my mind creative and inspired!

Staying inspired is one of the toughest challenges for an artist. There are seemingly endless hurdles to overcome on the way to “success” that it can feel impossible at times. I like to surround myself with inspirational quotes to keep me going…like the one on my coffee mug this morning by Anatole France:

To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe.

Believing in what you’re doing is so important for creativity. It’s easy to get discouraged when you have a “bad show” and it seems like no one appreciates your art. It can make you question your own sanity, wonder if you really know what you’re doing. I guess that’s why so many seasoned artists said to me early on that I needed to get a thick skin. Now that I’ve got several years in the business, I interpret that to mean something like the following:

Do what you do because you love it…forget about what everyone else thinks. Eventually, you’ll find your audience.

So, occasionally I still have a “bad show” where I don’t sell much, and I get a bit down. But now instead of doubting myself or my art, I simply think to myself that this was not my audience, and that I need to try some different shows to find those special people–the ones who “get it”, the ones who love what I create as much as I do. What helps is remembering the awesome shows….like the Houston Bayou Spring show I did last year where I had 5 people waiting in line to purchase something, and at least as many more in the booth looking…..all day! That was so affirming and exciting that it still energizes me.

Thanks for loving FOXY Fusions by the way! You keep me putting one foot in front of the other!

People sometimes ask me how I got started doing fused glass. Well…I have always had some kind of artistic pursuit. Before FOXY Fusions, I did a lot of paintings and pastel drawings. If you’re interested, you can check these out at www.kerrilawnsby.com.

When I moved to the Austin area in 2005, I wanted to try something new. Since I had been known to spend copious amounts of money on dichroic jewelry, I was very excited when I saw an introductory class for glass fusing in the University of Texas Informal Classes listing. Turns out, that class was taught by the Art Glass Fusing Center in Austin (http://www.artglassfusingcenter.com/).  I enjoyed this class very much, and highly recommend instruction at AGFC if you live in Austin and want to find out how to do fused glass. If you don’t live in Austin, you can also check out warmglass.com–it’s a great resource of information about fused and torchwork glass!

After the first couple of classes, I started generating such an inventory of jewelry that my husband asked “What are you going to do with all this stuff?”  So I decided….sell it to pay for my hobby!  After 2 months of making and selling jewelry, I was able to afford my very first kiln–a Paragon Caldera (http://www.paragonweb.com/)–which I still use today for small production and test runs.

I’m so glad I spotted that class! I love fused glass!

Customers are frequently drawn into my booth at craft shows like moths to flame—flaming color that is! Glass is stunning in the array of hues, textures, and patterns it offers the creative vision. “What kind of stone is this?” they’ll ask…. It’s no stone at all; in fact…it’s really glass.

In the technical sense, glass is an inorganic product of fusion which has been cooled through the glass transition to a rigid condition without crystallizing (see Wikipedia). So, in fact, fused glass re-fuses the glass to make the molecules bind in a new and different way.

Fused glass requires fusible glass…that is, glass that can be heated to extreme temperatures (up to 1500 degrees) and can bond successfully to other layers of glass. I buy sheets of fusible glass based on whatever colors resonate with my creative vision. I choose to use Bullseye glass because of its high quality.

To design my pieces, I cut the sheet glass using a glass cutter, position the layers of glass as desired, affix the layers with glue to keep them in place, and then set the ensemble on the kiln shelf. Once I’ve filled the kiln, I start the kiln’s timer to fire the load.

As the load fires, the kiln heats up to whatever temperature is desired to change the composition of the glass so that it melts and binds with adjacent layers of glass. Typically, the fusing temperature is somewhere over 1400 degrees. Once the target temperature is reached, the kiln soaks the glass for a few minutes at this temperature. The longer glass soaks, the more it gets a melted look about it…hard edges become smooth, rectangles left too long become circles.  After soaking, the temperature is decreased by almost half (around 900 degrees) so the glass can anneal. Annealing simply means that the layers of glass adjust their compositional makeup so they more completely fuse together. I imagine the layers of glass as new neighbors…”hey, I think I like you! come closer! stick with me and I’ll show you the ropes!”

Once the temperature in the kiln has returned to normal, the finished fused glass pieces can be removed from the kiln! Voila!

FOXY Fusions (www.foxyfusions.com), created by designer Kerri Lawnsby, is contemporary fused glass jewelry and personal accessories.

I’ve decided to start a blog for FOXY Fusions to keep my foxy friends up-to-date on what’s happening in my little world of fused glass and fashion! My initial plan is to blog about all things fused, fashion as it relates to glass jewelry, and other fun stuff I encounter that I think you’ll also enjoy.

Hope you’ll join me!

Kerri