This is the first draft of a new piece that I'm working out. It's a fused glass circle background - with colored frits on top to bring out the tones I saw in Churchill in the Fall. I wanted a background for the bevel glass polar bear that fell in love with this winter. The bevels/design are from Glassmith Studios. I'm still not quite satisfied with the look - the clear glass doesn't cover the adhesive required to keep the bevels on the fused base. But I don't want to cover it in white paint, yet. I like the way the light bounces around in the bevels.
And then here is the other blank that I'm still working on. I have another set of bevels I could use...but now that I've had the adhesive issue on bear 1, I'm not sure that that's what I want to do on this piece.
Both of these pieces are about 12" across. In the past, I've done a combination of functional work (like bowls and plates) and decorative pieces like what you'll find on my other site (www.beachgirlglass.com).
For the holiday sale I created these:
And I preferred the bevel-like feel of the plate on the right. Not sure what my two circle bear pieces will ultimately end up as? Sometimes pieces like this just end up as references to something larger and more substantial.
Part of why I love the bevel set so much for the circular pieces is that the body posture of the bear is "close enough. " So often I see polar bears in art as rolly-polly or just not the right proportion of compact/muscular and engagingly soft/fluffy. Come to think of it, it could be the dichotomy of the "soft looking" polar bear with its real-life role as the top carnivore in the world that makes it so intriguing to me. It's similar to the dichotomy of glass - fragile and sharp one day; rugged and smooth another. It's the complexity of the material that often compels me..or the complexity of the subject. I'll have to reflect longer about whether this is the same with the fiber I'm using. I suspect it is. It is unusual to take material used for clothing and warmth and then re-use them in an aesthetically pleasing but non-utilitarian way (my landscapes for example).