New Glass Arts to Discover
I've been having fun exploring other blown glass artists' work, so I hope you've enjoyed it too. I remember what another glass artist said, which is that "a real artist takes a risk." So I'd love to cover some artists today who have taken that risk to bring us things we've never seen before, inventions coming straight to us from the land of imagination.
This is one of my favorites. The neon sculpture takes advantage of the fact that blown glass can be filled with certain gases that glow when they are charged electrically, such as neon and krypton. Once the sculpture is fully sealed, cold cathodes introduce electricity into the gases, ionizing them. Pure neon gas produces a pink, red, or orange color, while all the other colors come from introducing mercury, which evaporates and produces ultraviolet light. This reacts with a powder coating inside the tube to produce all the other colors of the rainbow.
One of my friends, Angie, has done a lot of work with neon to produce otherworldly sculptures. You can see more of her work on her Instagram.
I'm personally interested in this art form because I've always thought of glass as a living creature. If you watch the way it moves it almost looks like a slug or some kind of invertebrate. I feel like neon really brings it to life by adding light and movement!
Madeline Rile Smith is an artist who has focused on this, creating all sorts of fanciful glass instruments that take advantage of the unique properties of glass. One of the ones I found particularly interesting was something she calls a "glass hammer". She seals water inside of a glass tube, which creates a vacuum. This means there is very little air to cushion the water, so when it hits the sides of the tube it creates a sharp metallic sound. I found this so fascinating!
Unique Glass Art Forms
Neon Sculpture
This is one of my favorites. The neon sculpture takes advantage of the fact that blown glass can be filled with certain gases that glow when they are charged electrically, such as neon and krypton. Once the sculpture is fully sealed, cold cathodes introduce electricity into the gases, ionizing them. Pure neon gas produces a pink, red, or orange color, while all the other colors come from introducing mercury, which evaporates and produces ultraviolet light. This reacts with a powder coating inside the tube to produce all the other colors of the rainbow.
One of my friends, Angie, has done a lot of work with neon to produce otherworldly sculptures. You can see more of her work on her Instagram.
I'm personally interested in this art form because I've always thought of glass as a living creature. If you watch the way it moves it almost looks like a slug or some kind of invertebrate. I feel like neon really brings it to life by adding light and movement!
Glass Instruments
Glass has a number of fascinating properties which make it a great conductor of sound. So it can be used to create all sorts of instruments both real and imaginary! Trumpets, drums, pipes and more are possible.
Madeline Rile Smith is an artist who has focused on this, creating all sorts of fanciful glass instruments that take advantage of the unique properties of glass. One of the ones I found particularly interesting was something she calls a "glass hammer". She seals water inside of a glass tube, which creates a vacuum. This means there is very little air to cushion the water, so when it hits the sides of the tube it creates a sharp metallic sound. I found this so fascinating!