Officially Introducing my fused glass tiles!

I’ve been working on making fused glass tiles off and on for about 7 months. They are inspired by an art quilt. When I saw the quilt and thought about it I was hit hard with inspiration and felt it was really just necessary to follow though. I was first introduced to art quilts on a PBS special about them and the artists who make them. I was fascinated by how these quilt artists were creating wonderful contemporary art out of a traditional fabric craft! I promptly bought Art Quilts: A Celebration: 400 Stunning Contemporary Designs. Right up my new ally! Once it arrived I couldn't stop paging through it over and over and over again. And as I did I kept landing on Melody Johnson's Streetdance (pictured right) . As soon as I saw a picture of this quilt I fell in love. I just kept thinking about how it looked like cracked glass tiles and that I wanted to make something like in glass.

They're made of 104 COE glass and enamels. I chose to try these out in 104 COE because its what I had the stock for. I even had a few sheets of sheet glass laying around, so switching to 96 COE, which is more commonly used in fusing, didn't even enter my mind. And now it is heavily upon my mind since 96 COE could potentially be used in a hot shop situation, too. But that's a decision I can put off for a while. I'm actually not going to be making any more of these for a little while. As I'm traveling about I'm not bringing my fusing kiln. So aside from being in a situation that's already set up for fusing, I'm not likely to be able to work on these until I find a way to settle my living/shop situation down. But that's OK. It turns out this project would be a multi-year sort of thing anyway...

Since fusing is mostly comprised of my least favorite activity (prep work) and the process is a bit slow and tedious, it’s taken me a little while to build a small collection of these. Originally I began to create them in order to cobblestone and mortar them into a large tabletop for an effect that I felt could only be achieved by massing the tiles together. Being limited in my ability to fuse large pieces of glass in my 18” fusing kiln, I quickly settled on making smaller tiles and piecing them together to achieve the big piece that would best voice my interpretation of the quilt. And so I began the prep work and, eventually, the fusing. And the process turned out to be a slow one. In a nutshell, and with a few steps thrown in between fuses, the tiles have to go through 3 fusing cycles. And, frankly, the only thing that's fun about fusing is the 5-6 seconds at the hight of the fuse when I get to flash cool the kiln. It's awesome to stand in front of that heat blast and look at the glowing slabs of glass in there!!! (I like the heat blast part most.)

So as I began to fuse and fuse and fuse and fuse I realized these tiles were not amassing the way I needed them to in order to complete my Grand Inspired Vision of a bunch of these covering a large tabletop. Taking them to AGI and showing them to people (finally) helped me to see that I could also use the tiles in other ways, such as standing as their own art piece with the help of a boro stand. In a new Watch Me Create post, I actually wrote a little more about how the process of showing these tiles to friends helped me adjust my vision. The post is called Fiber-Inspired Fusing. (It will actually be my last WMC post as I just can't get them the number of post I ought to.)

And, finally, here are some of the tiles. I have a small collection right now. And these are just photos of the tiles that we in the top layer of the case, frankly. I'll be selling them in Tucson this February at the Best Bead Show. AND!!! I currently have a proto-type tile up for auction on eBay. (Click here to see that awesome tile auction.) At the end of the tile parade I also included a photo of the boro tile that I created to support the tiles (please excuse the cruddy picture). Last, I want to throw a shout out to everyone who insisted I come up with a stand and other ways to use the tiles on a smaller scale (I guess size matters, yo!) And a big, big shout out to my bros Alex and Tony (my roommate) who helped me work out the final design. Thanks, guys