JAM FINE ARTS

I am exploring ways to reuse bottle glass. I won't be making one of these, but I admire the technique.

Pictured - studio assistant, Zuul, suffering maximum ennui as we sort through scrap stained glass in Wisconsin  today. I got 50 lbs of blue and green glass.

I deleted my Facebook account. I liked Marketplace but I have a lot of other sources for preowned, salvaged, defective, overstock mirrors, and glass, I found my favorite source of stained glass scrap on Marketplace and I bought a lot of used beads.

Unfortunately, Facebook has announced that it will allow more hateful language on its site. As the mother of a beloved AuDHD gender fluid child, I don't want to surround myself with that kind of discourse. The place was a minefield of phishing, security attacks, and catfishing accounts. I also hated the intrusive ads. Relatives reposting bad AI and misinformation  was cringe. I expect it to get worse. I love my family and friends and acquaintances, but garbage that floods FB is not worth my time.

Amazon used to list open box and returned items under listings for new mirrors. That is no longer the case. They now have that stuff listed somewhere else on the site but it is hard to find and I'm not having any luck finding mirrors.

Today, I checked Ebay and Etsy.  Nothing.

I ordered a used 18" mirror on Mercari for very cheap.

On Etsy I discovered Behrenberg Glass Company. I am on a waiting list for large defective glass chargers.

After businesses do inventory, I often find deals on mirrors because they discover they have been sitting on some mirrors they are not using and they are taking up warehouse space. I purchased several 30" mirrors for very little in late December/early January 2025. 

I also keep an eye on business/warehouse liquidation sites and Grafe Auctions.

Above: Juicy Sunrise, 2020.

This piece is not about the coronavirus. This post is a half-hearted apology/ stammering explanation for having bad timing.

I got tired last fall of working on glass vases. I wanted to use the same technique I use for them, but on a larger scale with more luminosity. After submitting a Saturn-themed proposal for a mini golf hole in October, I hit on the idea of making the Saturn of the golf hole a disco ball and embellishing it. I got very excited and found someone selling their 20-inch, vintage, slightly damaged disco ball and bought it.

I had a mercury crackle glass vase on hand that I started making woven bead tiles for. This became Blue Sun. I loved the effects I was getting by layering glass and reflective bead woven tiles over mirror. It became Blue Star vase. That piece was a study for a luminous sun that I wanted to make.

Meanwhile, there was going to be a long wait on the golf proposal and I really wanted to embellish a disco ball. It was calling to me from it's enormous box. I had finished Solar Panels a month or two prior, and I wanted another piece that celebrated clean energy sources. It's taking a long time to develop efficient fusion power reactors, and I am impatient. I decided to fulfill a wish by bringing the power of the Sun to Earth. The piece would be optimistic, joyous, and celebratory. I decided to make it a sunrise.

Which is good because a high-noon yellow sun doesn't offer much for tonal variations so I opted for a color palette like a sun close to the horizon that is glowing like a red/pink piece of citrus fruit. I was designing this piece and sourcing & mixing bead colors in November and December. Sometime in December I started weaving the first tiles for Juicy Sunrise.

Concerning reports started coming in on Twitter and news sources about a new killer flu-like disease emerging in China.

Weave, weave, weave, weave, weave.

The days went on. The reports out of the orient got more concerning. Then it spread to other countries. Around the time I finished Juicy Sunrise the first renderings of the novel conronavirus were being circulated like a WANTED poster and it looked a lot like my sculpture. I am quick to defensively point out, though, that my sculpture does not have the characteristic coronavirus nobbies. So you must acquit.

Anyway, I'm using it as the featured image on my landing page. I'd say I will try to do better but this is a coincidence and tone deaf I stan for the utopian dream of nuclear fusion power.

I am researching sun colors for my disco ball sun. I am leaning toward a reddish pink ball like the artist Jules Breton was so good at painting. I'm thinking somewhere between pink grapefruit and blood orange. I haven't started testing color variations yet, but I have a pattern that evolved while working on Blue Sun. It has a good scale to get the texture I want and a little repeating spiral to make it dyanamic. Imagine the beaded tile to the left repeating all over a sphere. I have to look at more astronomical pictures of the sun to see how or whether I should flip the spirals going left and then right.

If you have ever been to the Art Institute of Chicago you have probably seen the picture above, "The Song of the Lark" from 1884. Although not a Regionalist piece, it resonated in sympathy with the midwestern aesthetic groundswell that brought "American Gothic" to fame.

Rising or setting, I like his suns. These photos don't do them justice. The top one below is called "The Weeders" or "The Gleaners". The title I am finding for the bottom one is "Tired Gleaner." I'm guessing Breton's real titles were in French.

I'm starting work on a mercury glass almost-globe vase. It's a study for a disco ball sun or-- if my proposal is accepted for Par Excellence--Saturn. Or both.

I want the reflective silvery surface to shine through the bead mosaic. I am learning some new bead tiling techniques inspired by of Gwen Fisher's blog. The modular tiles have nice voids that will hopefully give me a layered, dappled effect.

It's going to be a blue star because I don't think I need those colors for other projects. I can spare them. I will be using blue reflective beads and blue transparent, maybe some translucent 6/0 beads.

Back to Gwen Fisher...she is one of the hyperbolic and mathematical beaders. I love her work.