Ideas to Form VIIII - Glass - Fusing and slumping

An opportunity to work with glass arose and I decided I wanted to explore it as a potential material to work with in the future. Could I combine glass with other mediums I have been experimenting with?
1. Fusing glass  

Using materials such as copper wire, oxides and coloured glass sandwiched between two compatible layers of clear glass - the heating process melts the glass fusing everything sandwiched between but the heat also reacts with the materials and creates interesting and unexpected marks and imagery. It definitely played to my abstract approach to imagery - It felt quite playful placing various objects between glass and waiting to see the outcome of the heat and fusing process. I did enjoy learning about this process but couldn't see myself developing further along this line as for me its not gestural enough, I enjoy the physicality of creating art and this was a bit small scale and fiddly. An interesting exercise but not for me moving forward.

2. Glass slumping

Biscuit fired
white clay moulds

This was an unexpected turn of events and came about by thinking about ideas for end of year show. I wanted to bridge the gap between the stone carving I had been developing outside of the studio into my Uni work - I would deconstruct sections of the 'Drift' stone sculpture - recreating these sections by slumping glass over pre prepared clay and alginate moulds.  Not as easy as it looks, at the first attempt the kiln was too hot and the glass melted creating overhangs and subsequently most of the pieces cracked and broke on cooling  -  lots of learnings but I will have another go.
I enjoyed the physicality of making the clay moulds and the concept of deconstructing a piece of my work to create smaller, it could be argued, more meaningful and interesting work.

Alginate applied
to surface of sculpture

The question I need to answer is what am I really trying to achieve over and above learning a new technique - is it to create a 'final piece' for the end of year show, something that the audience will consider 'beautiful '(whatever that means) or is it really about experimentation and my exploration of glass and how I might be able to use it in my future work. Will I be able to combine it with other mediums to create something quite extraordinary as my practice develops.

Strips of glass 

1 sheet of glass

Again I seem to keep coming back to colour and light and how the two interplay to create a sense of space - will glass play a role in my work next year - as yet I can't answer that question, maybe. What will the end of year show look like for me? well I have decided Im not aiming to produce something beautiful for the audience. The point of me working with glass is to experiment, so what I exhibit will be a snapshot, just one part of my experimentation from this year  - this is not straight forward, if it was easy everyone would be doing it!

Slumped blue glass
over plaster mould.