My Glass Experience at Hocking (Petersilge)

My experience with glass was love at first sight. Prior to this class, I had seen my sister work with it before in the reenactment village where she works, and always wanted to try it for myself. The moment my hands touched the first shards of Bullseye that we worked with, I immediately felt a connection. I couldn’t put it down, so I spent much of my time at Hocking completely immersed in working with it, obsessing over every little detail. I couldn’t get enough of it. I wanted my pieces to get to the next level. I have always had an affinity for engraving (hence the printmaking major), so the fusing project was a great way for me to start out, combing scraffito techniques with the mosaic quality of glass shards.

The challenge for me came in trying to predict what the frit would do. Hardly a coincidence, I noticed a strong similarity to the process of developing glaze recipes. I wish we had made test tiles of the frit to see how it would behave, as it caused me to have to re-fire my piece multiple times to get the line work outlined correctly. Even that turned into an engaging, problem solving experience for me. Through multiple firings, I was able to accomplish the line quality I desired, while also capturing the piece in the color hues I was searching for.

I know that this will not be the last time I work with glass. Next year I will be in graduate school at Kent, whose facilities I can utilize as well as the University of Akron, where my friends frequent the glass studio. This experience has opened up so many venues for my work to take, and I can’t wait to see where it goes.