Amanda Simmons

Today the department had a visit from Amanda Simmons. An artist who specialises in fused glass vessels and all things gravity formed.  In the morning she gave a short presentation showing us lots of her work, and the afternoon was spent watching demonstrations and delving further into the techniques behind gravity formed glass.

Dark Skies, Bright City. Kiln formed and cameo engraved.

Seeing so many colours used together in such a beautiful way has really opened my eyes to the potential benefits of stepping away from my usual monochomatic scheme- which is really saying something! The demonstrations of the afternoon have also been very inspiring (even though I'm not using any of those techniques specifically) as there has been a lot of talk about how to reduce bubbles when fusing. As I am trying to get as many bubbles as I can into my work at the moment this is definitely helpful and has shed a little bit of light on what I shouldn't be doing! (Something about moving backwards to get forwards might be appropriate here..)

Test squares using opaque glass powders.

Larger scale, irregular vessel forms.