Nature and Nurture Update: Pictures and Prizes

This is the piece I put in the Nature and Nurture show.  It is entitled 2,358 Nails.  My mother passed away the day after I was born.  There is a nail for each minute we were alive together.  Each nail was pounded by hand.

 

This sculpture also won a 3rd place prize from jurors Madison Smith and Brian Kershisnik.

Catalog for Museum of Glass

So the catalog for the Museum of Glass Red Hot Auction is now up. The show happens the 11th of September and Reflections of a Parallel Universe is going on the (silent) auction block. The link is here if you want to check it out: http://www.museumofglass.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/catalog_art.pdf

PS, he's on page 26--item #40.

Museum of Glass Red Hot Juried Art Auction

The other day, my good friend and potter extraordinaire Katie Jahner tipped me to a show at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA--the Museum of Glass Red Hot Juried Art Auction. It looked really interesting (and it was free to enter) so I put together an application and sent it off. I entered the piece you see above, Reflections of a Parallel Universe. This was a really fun piece to make, and I'm glad that it will soon be at a show where many people can see it and be able to buy it.
I started out with this piece by sculpting a head out of clay. I then made a mold of the head and cast it in wax. I used the wax, in turn, to make a special plaster mold that would stand up to the intense heat of glassblowing. I then took a hot gob of glass and blew it into the mold, thereby recreating the head I had sculpted in a hollow bubble of glass (Shortly after I blew this head in the mold, the mold broke, so it is the only one of its kind!)
My roommate at the time had recently taken a class where they mirrored the inside of a flask with silver nitrate. I contacted his professor and his TA's were kind enough to show me the reaction and let me perform it on this glass head. I now had a clear glass head mirrored on the inside with silver. I mounted the head inside a hexagonal box that I made and it was done!

Well, I'm excited to box this bad boy up and send him off to Washington, but sad to see him go at the same time. I'll let you know how the show goes in September.

Vera Hinckley Mayhew Contest

Every year at Brigham Young University, there is a creative arts contest named after Vera Hinckley Mayhew. There are many categories, including visual arts. I entered my sculpture "Hell" in the show and the jurors chose it to be displayed! Go figure.