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Adventures with wood and glass

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This past summer I took a two-week intensive course on flameworking with Gianni Toso. We were working with soft glass, which is fun. However, several of my glass friends and instructors have insisted that I should be working with borosilicate glass - especially for making the stands I use for my carved leaf bowls. So, I jumped into that realm this semester by taking an independent study course in glass at The Ohio State University.

I'm sold. I will continue to play with soft glass, but I can foretell that my future work will be mostly in boro. The funny thing is that when I order borosilicate color rods from one of my suppliers, they send me stickers that are about marijuana use. I do not intend to ever make bongs or other smoking apparati. I do get a kick out of the stickers, though.

My first wood and borosilicate glass sculpture is Bole-tangle, which is 11 X 6 X 5.5 inches, and made from black walnut and Oregon myrtle. The hollow form is light-weight. I made this to look as if the glass vines were growing in and out of the vessel.

In this view, you can see where the vine emerges from the hollow form and lid.

On the lower left side of the vessel, the vine appears to enter the wood.

One major thing I learned is how to repair broken borosilicate glass. It turns out that there are different kinds of connections in boro - hot seals and cold seals. A hot seal is when the glass that is connected is totally melted together. A cold seal does not have this feature and can break with just a gentle tap. So, I learned, by lots of practice, how to make hot seals.

I also found out how much I enjoy making leaves and vine-like structures.

I like the tension and motion of this piece. It has generated a bunch of ideas for future work.

Vitrispathis albus - My Latest Wood and Glass sculpture

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I usually start a new project by thinking about it for awhile and then just jumping into the work. This piece took a different path. I started with a sketch of the overall piece and then worked on each element of the design, in sketches and then figuring out the logistics.

2021. Wood, turned and carved; acrylic paint; fused and sandblasted glass; blown and sculpted sandblasted glass; LEDs.

31.5 X 15.25 X 13 inches.

Side view

Back view

This is the most challenging piece I’ve ever done. The woodturning and carving were familiar and, aside from the design elements, straightforward. The leaf shape (patterned on a spathe in the Arum family) was my first challenge. I had to first make a clay texture mold in the shape of a leaf and bisque fire it. I’ve never done ceramics so this was a fun thing to learn. Then I had to cut two large leaf shapes out of sheet glass, fuse them in the kiln, and slump this onto the texture mold.

The gallery photos below have captions that you can see by hovering your mouse over the image.

The other glass element took myself and a team of seven assistants about 2.5 hours to make in the hot shop. That was then sandblasted after it came out of the annealer. Jonathan Capps was gaffer for the cylinder and then I took over the bench for the sculpting. My glass classmates were fantastic in helping me pull this off.

The only log section in my shop large enough for the base was a 20-year-old honey locust piece. Hard as concrete and cracking like crazy. Enough said… I don’t recommend this approach. I also turned a bowl for the top insert and a disk for the inset base (held by magnets).

The final step was to place LED strip lights in the light chamber and wire it. Right now the LEDs are powered by two 12V batteries daisy-chained together. A big thanks goes to Steven Sabin for helping with this step.

The lighting is soft and subtle. This sculpture is not meant to be a lamp, but it does have a lovely ambiance for relaxing in a comfortable room.

My first collaboration with Clay Foster

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I have been an admirerer of Clay Foster's sculptural work for a couple of decades. Over the years we have become friends and correspondents but we had never collaborated on a piece. The opportunity arose this year, and I'm very happy to present our piece, Ceremony, which combines my cast bronze bowl and Clay's architectural stand that is inspired from African cultures.

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I learned how to make a two-part rubber and plaster mold for glass casting, which is also useful for bronze casting. I used a bowl I had previously turned from maple for the mold. Part of the two-part mold includes a reservoir that can hold the glass pieces for melting in the kiln. When I cast the first of the wax replicas of my bowl, the reservoir made it appear to be sitting on a stand, which, in turn, reminded me of Clay’s wonderful ceremonial bowl series.

After the bronze casting was released from the mold and separated from the reservoir, I asked Clay if he would be interested in doing a collaboration. Luckily for me, he said “yes.” I worked on achieving a patina on the bowl and then sent it off to Clay.

His stand is beautiful, I think. I hope you agree. The piece is 9.5 X 3.5 X 3.5 inches (24.1 X 8.9 X 8.9 cm), made from cast bronze, wood, brass brads, and grout. The bowl is solid, which means it’s heavy (3 lbs!).

This will be in a live auction on Friday, July 16th during the American Association of Woodturners (AAW) virtual symposium 2021. I’ll post a link when it’s available for bids. In the meantime, here are our artist statements and background information:

Clay's Statement:
Ceremony is born deep in the belly of ancient stories, and lives on in the emblems of ritual, becoming sacred by generations of use.

Andi's Statement:
Working with bronze has an element of ceremony in that the coordination of the team during the pour feels ritualistic. The steps are always the same: melt the wax out of the mold, put the mold in the sand pit, remove the crucible and carry it to the pit, pour the molten metal, wait for it to cool. It's highly choreographed with each participant's role clearly defined - very akin to ceremonial activities.

Andi: I recently learned mold making for glass casting at The Ohio State University, and used one of my wood-turned bowls for the exercise. While in the process of glass casting I was given the additional opportunity to learn bronze casting. The wax castings from the 2-part mold I made reminded me of Clay's Ceremonial bowls. When I removed my bronze cast bowl from its casing I knew I wanted to collaborate with Clay to bring the piece to life. We both love old bronze artifacts and African art, and have bronze pieces from Africa in our personal collections. We wanted to emulate the patina found on these artifacts, with areas that are worn and shiny from much handling.

Clay: This is the first collaboration piece by Andi Wolfe and Clay Foster. It is also the first piece Clay has made in over two years because of health reasons, and future production will be limited.

Donate Life organ donation registration (https://www.donatelife.net)

Clay received an AAW Honorary Lifetime Member Award in 2017. You can read the article about it and find out more about his incredible work here: https://www.woodturner.org/common/Uploaded%20files/POPMeritAward/2014Foster.pdf

New Directions

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One of the things that has happened during this pandemic tragedy is my branching out into experimenting with glass. This adventure started before the pandemic, as I was enrolled in a beginning glass class at Ohio State University. Part of this class was an introduction to glass blowing. We had half a semester before the university had to shut down due to a stay-at-home mandate that was initiated in early March.

With the university shut down the glass studio was closed and that was the end to glass blowing for the semester. We had just started to learn about warm glass techniques (e.g., glass fusing in a kiln) right before spring break (the university switched to online following spring break). I was able to borrow a small kiln to continue my exploration at home so I started to make 4X4 inch glass tiles for a remodeling project. I enjoyed glass fusing so much that I ordered a kiln for myself, which took nearly three months to receive because all the factories were closed during the early surge of the pandemic.

Once my kiln arrived I was able to make space in my detached garage for a glass workshop. I've been doing lots of fun things in glass, including a technique called "fossil vitra." This is essentially converting organic material into glass fossils. I've been playing with leaves and inflorescences. I really like the result of these experiments. (Check out my Etsy shop for my fused glass work: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ArtByAndiWolfe?ref=seller-platform-mcnav).

This semester I was able to enroll in another glass class at the university. The studio was able to implement safety protocols that allowed us to get back into the hot shop for glass blowing. I had a weekly blow slot to myself, which resulted in a lot of experimenting. One of those experiments is being used for a new piece that I'm working on for an AAW exhibit next summer. The exhibit is "Elements," and I'm one of the invited artists. For this piece I am combining woodturning and some glassblowing work. I have to say that I am really, really enjoying this work. I sketched out my idea, gave a lot of thought to what I wanted to make, and it's actually happening.

Small fossil vitra dish with Japanese maple leaves.

Small fossil vitra dish with Japanese maple leaves.

Small fossil vitra dish with Penstemon.

Small fossil vitra dish with Penstemon.

Elements–work-in-progress.

Elements–work-in-progress.

Elements–work-in-progress.

Elements–work-in-progress.

Elements–work-in-progress.

Elements–work-in-progress.

Elements–work-in-progress. I’ve started to fit my glass pieces to the woodturning.

Elements–work-in-progress. I’ve started to fit my glass pieces to the woodturning.