The Merkel Circle

2006-09-21T18:16:00.000-04:00

Matt's Intro to Glass Casting
These are photos of some of the pieces I made during a one-week intensive art class at Penland School of Crafts in glass casting, taught by Junichiro Baba, master glass artist from Japan. The photos were taken by my good friend, the talented and oh-so-charming Jon Silla. He succeeded in making my humble experiments look like true art. Keep in mind that this was my first exposure to working with glass in any form – all these pieces, plus more not shown were produced in less than one week and all were created as a means to learn the medium and various casting techniques. Ideally, I would have spent more time per piece… some I hope to recreate with more attention to detail. But overall, I'm pleased with my first attempts.

The first two images are of the very first set of pieces I produced. These were sand-cast, a technique where an impression is made into dampened sand (mixed with a small amount of Bentonite clay for formability) and then filled with molten glass scooped from the furnace and poured with a cast iron ladle. I used a textured kiln brick to create the impressions. Once the glass was annealed (heat-soaked to relieve it of stress) and cooled, the two bricks were cut on the diagonal using a diamond circular saw. Then the cut surfaces and bases of each piece were ground and polished smooth. Pretty elegant result, considering how simple the process was.

The piece in the following two images was also sand-cast following a technique demonstrated by Junichiro. I created a rough trough in the sand and poured a narrow strip of hot glass into it. When the glass began to cool (but while still pliable), I manipulated it by hand – wearing heavily insulated fireproof gloves, of course. A wooden stick helped in the sculpting process, although it was constantly set on fire from contact with the hot glass which is up to 2200° F. One must work quickly but delicately to create the manipulated form – once it sets into shape, it must be immediately loaded into the annealing kiln. The first piece I created this way actually broke as it was loaded because it had cooled too much.

The statuette was made using a kiln-casting method. The figure was first sculpted in clay, then plaster was poured over it and allowed to set to create a mold. The clay was then removed and the mold cleaned and prepared for firing. Cut glass (cullet, frit or powder) was measured and weighed to the amount needed, then filled into the mold. I used orange-tinted cullet (chunks) for this figure, which resulted in a high degree of transparency. Frit is a granulated consistency and results in more trapped air between the particles, creating a more opaque glass. This piece is still unfinished - the excess glass around the edges still needs to be ground off and the surfaces finished.

The last set of images show a series of sand-cast pieces I call my "Autumn Leaves" series. I learned from Junichiro that glass and copper share a similar thermal coefficient of expansion, meaning the materials can be safely combined together while hot — as they cool, the copper will not stress and crack the glass like other metals or materials might (at least in theory, there are many variable that come into play and nothing, I'm learning, is guaranteed when it comes to glass). The leaves are hand-cut and stamped from 24 mil sheet copper and are modeled after leaves gathered on Penland's campus. I used a wood block and kiln grate cut to size to create the textured casting molds. The casting process for each piece involved a 3-step process. First, a half inch or so of molten glass was poured into the mold. I had an assistant heating the copper leaf nearby with a blowtorch — the red-hot leaf was then positioned on top of the hot glass and another layer was immediately poured on top of it, encasing the copper leaf inside the glass. This process was repeated for each individual mold. Some of the pieces include trapped air pockets surrounding the edges and surfaces of the copper, an interesting if unintentional effect. I have noticed that one of the pieces (the maple leaf) has cracked internally in several places. Most of these cracks were not visible when the piece first came out of the kiln, so I assume that the stress was not relieved completely during the annealing process. Castings can sometimes devitrify, crack or explode months or even years after they are made, and it is usually due to a bad batch of glass or improper annealing — that's why precision is vital.

Note: You should be able to click on each image for a larger view but Blogger has big problems with images uploaded from Safari, and I do not use other browsers on my Mac. I will try to find a work-around, but If you want to see a larger view of anything, just email me.

2006-08-05T21:51:00.000-04:00

I have biking on the brain… and not just with the recent Tour de France and all of the Floyd Landis doping brouhaha brewing in the news media. No, after a recent mishap on the Booty Loop* I decided to finally trade in my 19-yr old trusted but rusty Trek 360 10-speed for a new ride. I really liked the ride of the Trek Madone, but went with the Specialized Roubaix which features a sloping top bar for a more comfortable geometry. With my back problems I figure I'll get more mileage out of it in the long run – plus it's $900 less than the Trek. Wow, for that money I could buy myself a new jersey… maybe even TWO! I special ordered it yesterday and am hoping it will arrive in time to take it with me to Penland in the North Carolina Blueridge mountains at the end of this month.

*The Booty Loop, for you non-Charlotteans, is a 2.4 mile circuit in the Myers Park neighborhood, very popular with cyclists and joggers. At any hour of any day you are sure to spot any number of lycra-clad riders on the Loop, but it is especially crowded during the evening rush hour, from about 5 to 7 pm when the cyclists all but close down the right lanes of Queens Road, Queens Road West and Selwyn Avenue to vehicle traffic. I personally think this is the main reason for all the vitriolic anti-bicycling letters to the editor that appear every week in the Charlotte Observer. The Loop is a mere 2 blocks from our house, and it's usually where I ride in the evenings after work. Weekends I explore other routes. Last weekend was the annual 24 Hours of Booty, a ride to raise funds for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

So after returning from the bike shop yesterday, Jim and I headed uptown to watch the Bank of America Invitational Criterium, a 50-mile pro urban bike race through the streets of Uptown Charlotte (the women's race is 25 miles). There was a great turnout - the course was lined with cheering fans and onlookers. We snagged a great spot at the first corner turn, but ended up traversing the entire length of the 1.2 mile course for additional photo-ops. All the photos shown here are from the Nikon DX digital SLR camera I borrowed from work – I shot everything using the pre-set action mode. Most of the shots ended up way too blurry, but I got some cool effects.

Soon after the men's race began, dark storm clouds started to roll in. The wind picked up and lightning flashed – we wondered if they would call the race but they kept on going. There was at least one pile-up we know of on the backstretch, but after I filled the camera's Flash card to capacity and the rain started coming down, we made our way to Brixx Pizza for some frosty beers and dinner. Good thing too 'cuz it wasn't long before there was a throng gathered out front waiting to get in. Shawn Milne was the winner of the men's race.

Charlotte Criterium Story

2006-07-26T09:17:00.000-04:00

I wanted to test out uploading an image to the blog, and for those of you who know me this picture needs no explanation. The "Pudd" has been my faithful and loving companion for over 16 years. Sambuca is her "Christian" name, but it never really stuck and she's only ever referred to as Pudd or The Pudd (rhymes with "Good"). Pudd is very affectionate, but only with me. She loves tuna, sunbathing on hot asphalt (the hotter the better), and light spankings. She freaks out during thunderstorms and doesn't really tolerate other animals, especially the stinky curmedgeon cat named Sydney with whom she is forced to share her home. At 17, she's not quite as fast or agile as she once was, but she can still give chase to those squirrels and chipmunks that INSIST on mocking her through the sliding glass kitchen door!

2006-07-25T21:52:00.000-04:00

After spending a day at Lodestone Digital in their informative Blogging for Business seminar, I'm jumping headfirst into the blogosphere with The Merkel Circle, an online gallery space dedicated to posting some of my latest and favorite digital images and creative pursuits. Eventually I will build a customized website and the blog will perhaps take on a different direction and function. Gotta start somewhere though… baby steps!

If you arrive here before any content is uploaded, I hope you'll check back – it may take me a while to organize and upload existing images.