alexhirst-thinkingthroughglass

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[no words] https://www.instagram.com/p/B6DfQVthM_T/?igshid=1u2hdoxtcc5r1

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[no words] 2019 By me Thanks too all the people that helped me pull this off! https://www.instagram.com/p/B6DdwCIhLjm/?igshid=1owr4kg9a4gmr

[alexhirst-thinkingthroughglass]

[No Words] 2019 Reflection

What A roller coaster ride this semester has been all of my emotions have been absorbed into this piece, it is an ideal installation to end on. It really shows how each decision manifested the work through complications that arose. However, my vision became known, even though at some points I was skeptical and thought the work might not come into fruition.

Throughout this work I have gone into the depths of the psychology of blue how and why so many of us are drawn to  blue and why we have such a strong emotional response to it. Using the psychology as a starting point I started off wanting to make perfectly round blue plates -  this quickly change. I became more interested in the distorted and warped pieces than the regular round plates. These irregular plates brought dynamic energy together with the twisting colouration of the blues and white. I experimented warping the glass further by adding extra glass to one side to add uneven weight to the initial bubble of glass, trying to distort as much as possible. I purposely put the punty off center or pull sections of the glass out to see if this would create better organic shapes. Working with the nature of the glass and the process of making  instead of fighting the glass into a shape. I did find however, if I kept weight in the base with the walls by the rim thin and spun the glass more than you would think was needed,  the glass would warp much more interestingly.

After a space was finally allocated I could get on with the next stages of how the work would hang. However the company I was going to use to get the fixings from America wouldn’t be able to ship in time, so I had to redesign the work. In the end I think it worked out better as the fixture I used were gear cable wires for bikes - the connection that held up the glass being very small. The connection therefore being less noticeable and people could focus on the details of the glass and not the suspending mechanisms. I wanted the glass look ethereal in the space but have the wires visible and very much a part of the installation instead of trying to hide them. 

This was meant to be an immersive experience viewed from all different perspectives however I felt like I needed sound piece to that made the work less flat. A sound piece that heighten your senses towards the installation but didn’t overpower the work itself. I brought a friend who is very musically talented and asked to respond to the work. He liked the swooping nature of the glass and retractions of light on the walls and the floor and wanted to encapsulate these effects in the sound. The only requirement I asked for was the he incorporated his breath and that there were louder and softer moments. There was about the adaptations only changing sleight details, Gideon Black Pretty much hit the nail on the head first go. It was brilliant working with him as he listen not only to me but responded to the piece so perfectly. He had never done a collaboration quite like this before so was exciting for the both of us.

I was very pleased to get Shannon Tofs to take professional photographs it was highly enlightening to see the tricks he used to make the glass look its best. During my presentation, I mentioned that I saw this work as a starting point a market for larger works to come in the future. For this reason I wanted to get some very good photographs taken because this particular would not be installed again. 

A grand finally to end on - I wanted my final artwork to be an immersive experience, I feel I have successfully accomplished this. Yet there are definitely aspects I would change but it  has been such a steep learning curve, to think I have never blown a plate before, never used stone wheels or drilled holes in glass when cold. Although I see flaws within the work I think I have pulled of a site specific to a high standard in a short amount of time. 

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Posters made and posted in a verity of different locations. I also took close ups of some of my glass plates to make business cards - almost looks like I am a real professional.

I am shocked how long it took me to create a name for the work. However after bouncing around a few names I settled on NO WORD which I think is very fitting.  

[alexhirst-thinkingthroughglass]

Reflections and refraction of light on the wall and the floor. The great aspect about having a black space was the interplay of light that would be very different to white walls and a white floor. 

Drawing your eye not only to the piece but also to the surrounding imagery that is reflected.

The black room create a more intimate setting, the sound enhances the work by allowing you to focus on the details of the glass.

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Epic shots taken from Shannon Tofts, its so difficult to take good photographs of glass and he managed to accomplish this in every possible way. 

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Three plates I particularly liked but also worked well as a grouping of three, were going to be on the outside wall as a lead up to my exhibition along side my artist statement.

Unfortunately one of the plates which I found the colouration, shape and size to be much more interesting than any other plate I had made, had some incompatible glass within the piece. This meant that it was breaking from the inside out and I therefore couldn’t display it. 

Three became two.

Like with the hanging work I wanted clean fastenings to not detract from the work, this was made possible by Jess, for introducing me to these particular fastenings which worked very well.    

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Close up shot of the different swirls and mixture of glass within one plate.

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Installing piece by piece - laying an initial idea of colouration combinations on the floor - then getting Gideon Black to respond with a sound piece after viewing the work in person and talking through ideas.  

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I had less than two weeks to master using the stone wheels going from a harsh stone, polishing stone and then high polish with cork pumice and rouge. 

(normally it takes about 2 year to master stone polishing, I do not feel like I mastered this technique but gave it my best shot.  

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Initial sketch of my work, a drawing that made it into the design book.

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The trails of the mesh

-After having a long conversation with Cat who was brilliant at making a frame to quickly for me, However it ended up being not quite what I asked for. Even through we had conversations about making a frame that was covered in mesh and only had some support beams in place she ran out of mesh, unfortunately didn’t mention this and went and made a much lager grid system.

I needed the small mesh however, so I got her to place the amount of mesh she did have on top. This ended up being far to heavy, not only a worry or the compression bar but also just lifting it up a ladder.

The solution was just to get more mesh that covered the whole frame and take out some of the bars to make it lighter. The mesh was meant to be delivered by Wednesday and the new frame completed by Friday. The mesh didn’t even arrive by Friday, this made me think of a plan B. If the mesh still didn’t arrive by the Monday for me to install by Tuesday, I would cut the frame in half and remove some bars. Making it lighter and easier to lift. 

We ended up going with PLAN B.

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Although I cast the piece I found it didn’t cast quite I how I would have liked there were a lot of creases and it just looked messy - I tried sandblasting it back but wanted to focus more of my attention to the other million and one things I had to do - so I decided to put this on the back burner.

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I had quite a few plates that got broken because the base was too thin or came off the punty, never made to get out of the annealer, I decided to 3D print a bowl shape design manipulating it in rhino. This shape in itself was quite lovely, just as a 3D print. The first print I printed was didn’t have enough PLA. I printed it’s the shape again. Two half’s were printed - then I joined together with glue and got rid of the seem with wax. ( pretty impressive by my joining )

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Important to layout the plates together to see the shapes and computations.

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Hard at work