Mini-Heart Globe

With a clear idea of what I wanted to put on the mini-heart for the SFGH foundation mosaic auction piece, my next challenge was to transfer a world map onto a non-spherical surface. How in the world do you do that? Gridlines! If you look at a world globe, you will notice that it has gridlines representing the major longitude and latitude lines, 36 around the equator and 36 around the poles. My first step was to the draw the equator, and decide which longitude line would go around the center of the heart. Then I drew in the 35 other latitude and longitude lines. This resulted in a very skewed grid with skinny sections at the bottom, and fat sections towards the top. Using the gridlines of my world globe for reference, I was able to transfer the landmass outlines onto my heart. The heart substrate now has a very accurate depiction of the world globe. I filled in all the water areas with blue color pencil for easier reference when I lay down the glass. Since this is a rather small form, some of the glass pieces will be very tiny, which is an advantage of using glass instead of ceramic tile. No images of the heart can be displayed until the SFGH foundation has started their publicity campaign.

Glass Art Festival, Sequim, WA

The Glass Art Festival in Sequim, WA was great. Sequim is a small town of 5800 people and is about 2 hours out of Seattle, on the Olympic peninsula. The artist reception was very well attended, and the artwork was all exceptional. The majority of the artists were from Washington state, but some were from CA, OR, NY, Australia, Greece and Turkey. There is a variety of glass styles in the show, including fused, stained glass, mosaics, kilncast, and blown glass. Best in show, 2nd, 3rd, special and merit awards were presented at the reception. My pieces did not receive any awards, but they did appear in 2 separate articles in the local newspapers which was quite exciting.

The festival runs from Sept 1-26. On each Saturday through the month of September, there are glass demos, workshops, artist talks, and a glass alley where vendors sell there glass art and supplies. I attended Michael Dupille's presentation on his body of work. Michael is one of the early pioneers of the fused glass medium. He has a background in illustration, and his style is called fritography, which uses frit to render subjects like a photograph. His work is awesome and inspiring.

A Visit to Conti Studio

On my way to the Art Glass Festival in Sequim, WA., I stopped to visit Don and Carol Conti in Gig Harbor. Their house is about a hour out of Seattle. Carol is the founder of the Association of Stained Glass Lamp Artists (ASGLA), and is a very accomplished lamp maker. After following some winding roads through Gig Harbor, I arrived at their house nestled among a grove of trees with a gorgeous view of the water and Mt. Rainier in the distance.

I met Don at their front porch, and he said that Carol was working on a window in the studio. Their studio is in the basement of their house, and is remarkable - it is very spacious, with a large work table, a light table, and several racks full of glass. Scattered throughout their house are many of the lamps Carol has constructed, and some of the quilt panels assembled by Don for the calendars. Here is Don and Carol next to the window is working on. Don is holding a rebar that will be used to reinforce the panel.

This part of the studio is the workbench for cutting, foiling and grinding. After touring the studio, Carol showed me some of her lamps, and the quilt panels. Scattered throughout the house are many of the stained glass quilt panels that have appeared in the ASGLA calendars. Her favorite quilt is the 2-panel pond life quilt.

S.F. General Hospital Foundation Mini-Heart

I am a long-time student of the Institute of Mosaic Art in Oakland, and have exhibited many of my pieces in their various exhibits. I have gotten to know the staff and Laurel True quite well. IMA has partnered with the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation to help them create 15 small 7" tabletop mosaic hearts for SFGH Foundation donors. I was invited along with the IMA faculty to create one of these hearts. My deadline is Oct 28.

The blank is made out of fiberglass and is really solid and heavy. Some initial design ideas for the heart included a fish, dragon, flowers, a phoenix and a peacock. But many of these elements would have required too much detail for such a small surface. The heart itself is only 6"x7"x3". Then a flash of inspiration came on, and I knew I needed to do a heart globe. I had made a couple of globes before - a stained glass globe, and a mosaic koi globe. The challenge now is to transfer the world map onto a non-spherical surface. More on that later.