Bird

This sculpture is one of my favorites - I call it "Bird".

Of course, each time I create a new work, I'm tempted to call that new piece "my favorite". This is a cold-worked piece. It is made from optical crystal glass and heavily cold worked to bring it to a full polish. The blue is a single line of of special glue called "Hxtal" with a blue dye in the glue. Two pyramids of glass are cut and polished along one face. This forms the glue line. The glue takes a few days to cure under a warm lamp. I kept this for two days in a cabinet with a strong light bulb which kept the temperature about 105 degrees.

Once the glue was cured, and the glass cooled down to room temperature, it was cut with diamond saws, ground with various grits and diamond wheels, and then fully polished to a high sheen.

Even though there is just one small plane of the blue, it reflects internally creating really nice reflections. The piece sits on one of the two compound curves and rocks if given a slight push with your fingertips.

I call this one "Bird" for what I hope are obvious reasons. It weighs about 8 pounds. Optical glass is fairly heavy. Bird measures about 9" along the longest diagonal.

It was fairly scary as I got closer and closer to finishing it as the two points are quite fragile and could have easily been damaged by the grinding and polishing wheels.