Fused Glass Sculpture, an Experiment!

Or how I still haven't learnt to follow instructions. 

On Saturday I had my monthly online fused glass lesson, this week it was dropouts, pot melts and mesh melts. I must admit I am very excited by the idea of a mesh melt; I just love the semi random effect you can get, how thrilling will it be to open the kiln after waiting hours and hours and see what's happened! Oh, the possibilities!!!  

Now, I had previously had a lesson on dropouts, this is a technique where you put a pre fused piece of glass on top of a Mold with a hole in it and let it melt, or drop, through. You have to keep checking the glass as it stretches through the hole, the first time opening my kiln while it was extremely hot was incredibly nerve wracking. Now, I knew realistically it wasn't a big box of fire, I knew when I opened the kiln, flames weren't going to shoot out and turn me into a pile of ashes, but I was scared! I was brave though; I held my breath and opened the kiln....to nothing! There was a hot blast of air (quite pleasant in winter!), and I took a quick look, but there was no movement at all. I had to repeat this a few times before I saw the glass stretch through the hole, by the end of it I was quite the expert at opening and looking!  

Of course, once I had done it once I wanted to try again and put my own spin on it. Now why, I thought, did you need to pre fuse the glass? What would happen if I balanced cut pieces across the hole then let it stretch. The results were...interesting to say the least.  

At first, I was going to smash it up and reuse the glass, but my husband was horrified at the thought and now it lives on the coffee table in the front room. So, what have I learnt? Well, experimenting i fun! Things can turn out how you don't expect and isn't that just the best? So, while I should learn to do it the “proper” way I don't think I’ll stop trying new things!