Designing a glass piece

Designing a dalle de verre glass piece of art starts like most things with a lot of ideas swirling in my head and then sorting out the design and sketching ideas. Working with dalle de verre glass offers the opportunity to use negative space in a meaningful way and I try to use the black negative space as a key part of the design process. Creating small details with glass and a chisel or hammer isn’t easy and most times not possible so I use negative space to accomplish some of that.

As the design progresses I create a cartoon of the piece and use that to select colors and texture that I want to achieve. I also do some research on the historical elements that may be relevant to the piece if its relevant to the design. I am currently working on a piece that is a stylized version of Odin the Norsk god and I’ve done a fair amount of reading about his likeness from a historical point of view and try to reflect that in the choice of colors and design.

Working with slab glass is challenging at times because different colors break and facet differently and at times it breaks in a way you had not planned. So theres a fair amount of creative decision making as you progress with finishing the design. I’ve broken more than one piece which I had spent a fair amount of time developing because I hit it just wrong when I was trying to fine tune it.

If you’d like to know more about the process let me know and I’ll be happy to share it with you. If you’re ever in the Peoria, Arizona area I would also welcome you to come by for a studio tour…just give me a heads up so I can clean up the glass shards!