School of Jiri Harcuba

School of Jiri Harcuba

by | Oct 1, 2014 | Conference, Drawings, Engraving, Exhibition, Expirimentation, Other Artists

 
After the Symposium, I was also able to attend the School of Jiri Harcuba. It was a smaller group of us, lead by Pavlina Cambalova that met at the Glass Centre in Sazava, just south of Prague. The week started with the opening of an exhibit of works by Jiri, and it was wonderful to be able to spend more time, seeing them change as the light changed over each day in the week. The Glassworks is a wonderful studio, and if you’ve got a chance to to a workshop there, it is worth going
One of the most amusing things we did over the course of the week was engrave glass slides and tell stories with them:

School of Jiri Harcuba 2014: Engraved Glass Slides from Ainsley Francis on Vimeo.

Reflecting/Projecting: Confronting

Reflecting/Projecting: Confronting

by | Mar 19, 2012 | Cameo, Engraving, Fusing, Glass, Museums, Portraits, ReflectingProjecting, Thoughts

Here’s the second part of the reflecting series:

I’ve realized that I posted the picture of the other tile that goes with this one without saying anything about it. It’s over here.

I am currently working on a series ofcameo engravings based on photographs that I am taking in museums around theworld. I find it interesting to watch the reflections of people in the glasscases that hold objects in a museum; it seems to represent the museum systemitself, with our personal and culturalself-perceptions interceding with the objects on display. I think that we areincapable of looking at the objects through the eyes of the people who usedthem, and often, we don’t even notice that we project our own meaning ontothem. Our culture, like the glass, is invisible to us, except for certainangles, and we can easily forget the influence that it has on our perceptions.To translate these images from photos into engraved glass, the viewer, theobject being viewed, and the reflections become equalized, and the reflection ismade a part of the object itself. This one is the second of the series.
New Pendants

New Pendants

by | Mar 14, 2012 | Bullseye Glass, Drawings, Engraving, Expirimentation, Finished, Fusing, Glass, Jewelry, Reactions, Reactive

I’ve been doing some new pendants, in a palette of whites this time, I really prefer the circular shape to the rectangular ones, on the whole, and I think that these ones looks quite nice with the bail showing rather than hidden behind the glass. I love the reactions between the silver leaf and the french vanilla, which you can see in the creamy coloured ones in the picture below. I find the blues and golds that appear quite lovely, and more varied and complex than the silver reaction with reactive cloud.
I’m practicing with the silver and with a paintable version of silver gilding to see if I can be a little more precise with the placement of the silver, we’ll see how the expiriments come out. I think it would be interesting to control the placement of the reactions more so that I can use it as an element to build up imagery.