Stourbridge Open Studios

It's time to do a little last-minute marketing for the Stourbridge Open Studios event, which will be happening next weekend:

Jo Newman, one of the artists based at the Ruskin Glass Centre had a brilliant idea last year - to create an Open Studios network in and around the Stourbridge area.  Thanks to her determined steering, we will be opening our doors for the first official event on the weekend of 18 & 19 May.

May's Open Studios is the "test-bed" event, based entirely at the Ruskin Glass Centre - so that lessons about marketing and organisation can be learnt on a relatively small (and friendly) scale.  But the aim is to spread the network in the future, to include artists, studios and makers from the wider area.

There are 18 studios at the Ruskin Glass Centre (they aren't all focused on glass: have a look at the centre's "studios" page). So there's already plenty to see next weekend.  But as well as on-site artists/makers there are two additional highlights involving people from around the country:

Simon Bruntnell (a photographer with a studio at the Glass Centre) is a partner in an online glass gallery, Bruntnell-Astley.  Simon will be hosting a Pop-Up Gallery event for the weekend, showing Bruntnell-Astley artists.  The image on the right is his poster for the pop-up event - so you can get an idea of the stellar line-up! (The work that you can see in the poster is by Laura Birdsall)

And last, but not least, there will be the Black Country Echoes exhibition (you can see the poster for this on the left).  This is an exhibition of glass, metal and ceramics work from applied arts students at Wolverhampton University - including Tim Boswell (a previous winner of the Glass Sellers' Student Award at the British Glass Biennale)

If you can make it down to the Ruskin Glass Centre next weekend, please come along!  And feel free to share the information with anyone you think might be interested...

...and again!

And so we reach the final instalment of my saga about Shape Shifters (the Dancers) - work which started a full five years ago!

In my last two posts I've explained the back story and design work and also the glass making.  Now for a little information on the laser cutting and final construction.

You might remember that I'd prepared some drawings in Inkscape, ready to be cut using a laser cutter.  Well, the morning of my booking came around, and I headed off to Black Country Atelier in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter with my USB pen and a box full of plywood (purchased from Hobarts).

The drawings made in Inkscape (which you can see on the right) need to be imported into the software which actually controls the laser cutter - and then it's a matter of choosing both the right power and speed settings to enable the laser to cut through your chosen material.  Luckily, Black Country Atelier have a number of sample sheets with cuts made at a variety of settings - which reduces the amount of guesswork for a beginner like me!



The photo above shows the laser at work cutting one of my Inkscape files.  You can probably see that the plywood has been stuck to the bed of the machine with masking tape - that's to hold the wood flat (there was a little bit of curvature on some sheets).

With a little help, I managed to cut 5 pattern sheets in just over 2 hours, each variations on the design above.

Then it was a matter of construction...

Each layer of plywood was 3mm or 6mm thick, and by sticking these layers together, I was able to build up the final "frames" to hold the glass.  Here you can see some of the frames clamped together while the glue dries.

On the front and back faces, I added an extra relief layer - which I decided to stain in a darker colour.  This tied in nicely with the burnt edges of the plywood.

And this photo to the left shows the final form of the pieces.

I've still got to glue the back faces onto the frames - but that'll happen once I get the glass back from its acid dip!

I had a lot of fun with this project - and it was great to finally complete a design idea that's being lurking at the back of my mind for so long!