2019: Results of the Year

The year 2019 was the first creative year after four years of depression. I finally started to feel pleasure from creating with glass again. I am quite pleased with what I have created this year, so allow me to present you with the results. If you do not see the logic between these works, do not worry about it. Most importantly, I see it. This year is special because I started to experiment with glass once again. For those interested, the results of the first 15 years of my artistic career with glass and my story can be found here. 

Starry Night (story here). I for the first time worked with medium sized frit. The town below is done with glass powder. 

Homo Explorer (story here). It is a continuation of my work with regards to drawing with glass powder. I am quite pleased with this work. It is a very beautiful glass work. 

Sun. Stained glass. Sun, is a translation from arabic of the word “shamsa”. That is the name of the illuminated 1338 Koran decoration which is covered in gold leaf and painted pigments. It can be found in the library of Dublin, you can see it here. Both the original picture and my work are not symmetrical but close to it. I wanted to see how it would look in stained glass. I am pleased with this work. 

Ornamental Cat. Unfortunately, this work blew up in the kiln. I worked a fairly long time on it. When I saw this self-portrait of Yayoi Kusama, it shook me to the depth of my soul. 

This cat is a projection of my admiration for her. Kusama-san, is a female artist with a mental disorder. She is the richest of all female artists in the world. She is 90 years old and she works daily in her workshop. She is my role model. I decided to show you my non-fused work to illustrate how beautiful it is. It pains me that it did not work out. It was supposed to be my finest work yet. I hope to someday recreate it again. 

Flying Ship. I, with great pleasure, have made another sailing ship. The last time I made a sailing ship was in 2005. It was a long time ago… two lifetimes ago. I wanted to re-experience that feeling of making the sailing ship again. I really like sailing ships. This time, it is flying from night to day towards the sun. This time around, I worked under the wing of a professional. Rock Laplante came up with the idea of the lines in the background. I had a completely different idea from his, but I am very satisfied with how this work turned out. I managed to retain the pattern in the glass for the background. 

Road of Pilgrim (story here). I am continuing the experiments with the technique of drawing with glass powder. This time around I made non-repeating brush strokes, essentially a complex ornament. I have never done this before. I wanted to reach a point where on the painting everything is in motion, a star flickers, an angel flies in the sky, shrubs and cypress sway and the road runs. If you take a step back from the monitor, you will better see the movement. I felt very free when applying these brush strokes. In this work, there is a whole lot of me. 

Medieval Town. I really love making these works. In my blog, I have a full post about medieval towns (only in russian) here. It takes a really fine hand; it is truly the creation of a miniature. I work with a thin needle and practically count the particles of powder to create these thin lines. This is my test to see how well my hands work. I am showing the work in progress. This town will be laid upon beautiful pink glass. I am very satisfied with the thickness of the lines; they are even finer than in my work Homo Explorer. The work should turn out as fine as lace. Showing the status as of today.

Road of Pilgrim. 2019. 27 x 33 cm.

I, with great pleasure, would like to show you my latest work. It is called the Road of Pilgrim and it is inspired by Van Gogh’s, Road with Cypress and Star. This time I will try not to mix lyrics with technique and I will write two separate parts. The lyrical part is for those interested in the thoughts of the artist. The technical part is for those interested in the details behind the making of the piece.

 Lyrical Part.
The Road of Pilgrim is a logical continuation of my previous work called Homo Explorer (story here). I will remind you that Homo Explorer, is about a pilgrim who saw and heard the Unknown. He walked to the edge of the earth, found a loophole in the fabric of reality and took a glance at the Universe. Here I thought to myself, that the Road of Pilgrim is about the pilgrim returning from a meeting with the Unknown. He will be meeting with people on the road, telling of the things he has seen. What will he tell the others? Will he be able to convey his feelings, emotions and new vision? It has always concerned me how knowledge is passed on. What should I believe? Who should I believe? How do we see? How do we understand what we are told? Finally, since everyone sees the world through their own perspective, it is truly difficult to convey something without distortion. 

 Take a look at my work. It is different from the original, that is obvious. It is a portrayal of my vision of the original work. This is how I see it, do you understand? It is incredibly interesting to me. At some point in time, I was examining a photo of my finished work and was disappointed to see that it looked like a child’s drawing; naive art. I was flustered. I started to analyze how I went about creating this piece. I tried really hard. It was the first time I used this brush stroke texture. But the work is very dynamic. Try to play with the picture by looking at it closer or farther away from the monitor. You will see the effect of movement, which is exactly what I was trying to convey. I personally see it loud and clear. If you catch the desired focus point - everything is moving. A star flickers, an angel flies in the sky, shrubs and cypress sway and the road runs. 

 Why did I choose this work? For the effect of movement and the road. I feel as if I am a pilgrim on the road attempting to talk about the beauty of the world. I am meeting people on the way. Some are interested in what I have to say while others do not care. That is normal. The road itself awakens within me a sense of anticipation new, new meetings and new places. I love this feeling. I love the road. This work is a tribute to people who feel they are on their paths. May the guiding star always shine on you. 

This is my third work based off of Van Gogh’s paintings. Firstly I created Irises in December 2018 (story here), next came Starry Night in January 2019 (story here), and now my Road of Pilgrim. I think a lot about Van Gogh. He interests me very much. For those who read my blog, you know that I am a self-taught artist with bipolar disorder. My vision and understanding of Van Gogh as an artist with bipolar disorder is my own. I understand his passion for creation. I too, also dream of creating art day and night. I am grateful for the opportunity to create glass, and develop myself further as an artist. For those interested in what I have created this year (2019), there is a post, 2019: Results of the Year (here). 

I created a picture for comparison. What do I want to show with this picture? I am satisfied with the colour scheme that I chose for this piece. You see two different works on the same subject. Two different human visions. You know, researchers say that Van Gogh thought about death when creating this painting. I do not know. But I can tell you what I was thinking about. For me, it is a life-affirming work. The understanding that I am going and moving forward. Thank God I can continue to create my glass and further develop myself. During the time that I worked on Road of Pilgrim I formulated for myself my future steps. 

I created my technique of drawing with glass powder for the opportunity to create my favourite pictures in glass with maximum accuracy. In this work, I enjoyed the freedom of not having to draw accurately. I like how it turned out. I really like how the texture of this piece turned out. 

What ideas am I trying to convey? For the first time, I allowed myself some freedom in the design. I applied brush strokes of glass powder as I felt. There was no incentive to draw with precision, it was also not possible because of the difference in medium. I feel like I have progressed a step further in developing my own artistic style. 

Technical Part. 
I want to show you how I go about my work. I explain the basics of my technique here. 

First of all, I have never done such a texture with glass powder before. I call this texture a complex ornament. This is my first attempt, first experiment, 91 hours of work and a total of 5 firings. 

What is the texture of a complex ornament? It is the alternation between different colours of glass powder. A simple ornament would have a basic pattern such as ABABAB. A complex ornament on the other hand would have a more intricate pattern such as ABACABABAC, ABCABC or any other combination up to ten colours. 

I worked with five to ten colours at a time. The road for example is comprised of ten different colours. Each colour has its own brush to avoid any contamination with different colours. Of course, you can make do with one brush and wash it after every brush stroke… but it is more comfortable with ten brushes. Here the photo shows six colours ready to be used. To the left of the work, you see six containers with glass powder with a brush in each one. 

If you take a look at the slide show (here), the first picture shows how I drew on different areas of the piece. I would start on the sky, then the road, then the shrubs. After I have worked on different areas of the piece, the work was fused for the first time. After seeing the result of the first fusing, I increased the density of the brush strokes a tad. Finally, in one centimeter I had 4.5 brush strokes. This is a fairly fine work, let me tell you. In total, it took 91 hours to complete. I calculated that I could draw up to nine square centimeters per hour. In the slide show, the pictures are taken approximately every five hours. 

It is very important to keep track of the viscosity of the glass powder paste. More than anything, it needs to be of a similar consistency for all glass powders. I myself eyeball the viscosity, but the point is clear. If you have a paste that is too liquidy while another is too thick, and you place them next to one another, after fusing the liquidy paste will disappear to reveal holes in the work. For this piece I used a thick paste. Very thick, very very thick sour cream. This picture was made after the first fusing, as you can see, there are many holes. As a result, I increased the thickness of the paste and the density of the brush strokes. What to do with the holes? Fill them up with a new layer of paste. 

Just as well, I kept track of which powder colours I used. I only work with Bullseye glass.

Why did I need five firings? Technically, you can make do with two. First, to understand the colours and the density of the brush strokes. And the second, for the final fusing. But I had the opportunity to do intermediate fusings, it was interesting to see how the colours of the powders changed. 

I also enjoy seeing the backside of the piece. Moreover, I sign my work with glass powder of the reverse side.

Homo Explorer. Flammarion engraving in glass. 2019. 32 x 26 cm

Homo Explorer is what I called this piece. I very much like this name. I like the subject matter behind the piece; the pilgrim having reached the end of the world and having found a gap between the firmament and the earth. I was thinking about the pilgrim. To reach the end of the world, he crossed the whole earth. The pilgrim saw very much on his journey and he has a rich life experience. What is he looking for? He is searching for the Different and the Unknown. What is this, the search for God? Yes, to a certain extent. I think it is not for nothing that the pilgrim is depicted kneeling, and that in the upper left corner you can see Ezekiel’s double wheel (a wheel in a wheel) as Divine symbolism. But at the same time, it is the search for the Unseen.

What you see here is called Flammarion engraving. Camille Flammarion was the author of many scientific books. He was involved with spiritualism and was acquainted with Elena Blavatsky. Within the book titled “Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology” written by Flammarion and published in 1888, you can find this picture with the following subtext, “A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch...”. Who is the author of this engraving? Who is the author behind this idea? No one knows but it is believed that Flammarion could have made it himself. The original looks like this.

My work with the glass was divided into two parts: Part 1) I wanted to recreate this engraving within glass using my own technique. Part 2) To create my own color scheme and to apply it with the help of glass powder. The “engraving” part of this work was fairly complicated. Probably one of the most challenging drawings I have done thus far. And so I completed it by primarily working with a needle and using it to organize the particles of glass powder. For those of you who are interested in the fusing with glass powder technique, you can find more information about it here. The “engraving” part of this piece took 39 hours to complete. This is how it looks before the coloring process.

I deliberately did not include a frame around my piece. In my opinion, without a frame there is more space for the imagination.

And so, I turned over the piece and started to color it in on the reverse side with glass powder. This took another 21 hours to complete. The total time spent on this work is 60 hours.

For the first time ever, I have put together and released a video of a slide show on YouTube to illustrate the process from beginning to end.

What is new in my work? I have for the first time used a new color called “Blue Black” (104 Bullseye Glass). It gives off a blue tint before fusing and becomes Black with a shade of blue after being fused. And of course, I was doing an experiment. What would happen if I color the whole backside of this piece with glass powder? Is it possible that the work would not have turned out well? Yes, there was the risk of multiple bubbles appearing on piece which would in turn ruin the piece completely.

If you google “Flammarion Engraving”, you will find many different color schemes. I found fifteen different color schemes as well a mosaic on the subject, a stained glass piece and a woodcut. On top of all that, I also found that someone is trying to sell a version of the Flammarion Engraving that you would color in yourself as well as one that is already colored in. If you want to color in your own pilgrim, you can find it here.

As you can see in the picture, there are two completely different parts: The Universe and Our World. It is interesting coloring in this picture, especially the Universe part of it. Here you can see three different color schemes side-by-side.

I was showing these three to my friends during the making of this piece. I was interested in what people had to say when I would show it to them. The feedback was always different. And so I thought for a long time about how I see the Universe. For me, the keyword to the Universe is “Different”. I am certain the the pilgrim saw colors that he never saw before on in Our World. How to create Different colors? I chose Emerald Green, Turquoise, Lilac and Pink. I decided that the combination of these colors would differentiate from what can be found on Our World, namely the blue sky with the yellow sun and the green earth. Of course, I used many different shades. In total I used thirty different colors.

I have to say that, that this is not the first piece I did about the Universe. The thought of the Unknown has enveloped me for many years. What do you see in the picture if you single out the Universe part? It consists of a wheel within a wheel, different suns and all the while it has a multi-layered structure and rhythm. I would say that the Universe is shown as an intricate ornament. Right? Right! Does it look like music? Yes, it does! I am guiding you towards the idea of music. I believe that the pilgrim does not just see, but hears as well. He becomes a man who is listening to the music of the Universe.

I tried to convey this idea. Respectively, I wanted to draw the music of the Universe. Do you see the clouds? I colored them emerald green and this helps create the rhythm. Why emerald green? It came out of nowhere. I am absolutely serious. I initially colored the double wheel, then the sun and then I decided to color in just the clouds. And so a rhythm was born.

 Here is a photo illustrating the Homo Explorer (work in progress). I am holding a paintbrush.

The fully colored piece looks like this.

Finally, the work has been fused. The result of the fusing surprised me, but the glass piece turned out beautifully. Very Beautiful. The glass is extraordinarily smooth and almost warm to the touch. The surface of the piece has a subtle wave-like texture to it. The colors that I used turned out to be quite vivid, and the Universe looks gentle. I am very happy. This piece is spectacular. The weight of this piece is 1.5Kg, it is wholly tangible.

 The fusing of experimental glass it is always a process of interacting with the unknown. For example, I expected to see black lines when instead they turned out blue. I thought that the whole “engraving” part of this piece would have a relief to it, but instead the glass became smooth. I thought the colors would be more vibrant, but believe me, they turned out exactly how they are supposed to be. Yes. The final result is very different from what was initially planned. On the other hand, the piece did not become any worse for it. It can be said that the unknown has corrected my work, for which I am grateful for. Before you, is an example of the interaction between an artist and creative power.

Here are four different corners of the piece to illustrate the detail involved. I like the lake/river with the multiple townships, the shading of the water and the little bridge. The fact that my hand when working with the needle could accomplish such detail makes me pretty happy.

 In this photo, pay attention to the openings in the firmament, they are painted in the corresponding colors of the Universe.

 There should have been three shades of pink. I like the interaction between lilac and pink.

The space between the sun and the dark part of the night sky was supposed to be bluish with prominent white stars.

For some of you, it might be interesting to see what the backside of the “World” looks like. As you can see, there are quite a few bubbles. I could have used white glass as a base for this piece, but I wanted to especially see what happens to the glass powder when it is fused between two pieces of glass. This experiment turned into the backside of the “World”. The piece is reversible you can say. I was afraid, that some kind of bubble would break through the “engraving” part of this piece, but in the end, everything worked out.

 I cannot restrain myself, I am showing you with great pride and joy both my Irises (you can find the story here) and my Homo Explorer sided-by-side.

If you have any thoughts and opinions, you can write to me
juliartglass@gmail.com

Starry Night. January 2019. 37 x 30 cm.

So, a month after the completion of Irises (you can find the story here), I have created and am gladly presenting to you my new work. Starry Night. January 2019. 37 x 30 cm.

 The original Starry Night was painted in June 1889 and is in MOMA, New York. Moreover, it is known from Van Gogh’s letters that he was not happy with Starry Night.

 You know, Van Gogh liked to copy and compared it with music and would find consolation in copying other works of art (letter to Theo of September 20, 1889).

 I thought of what Van Gogh would say when he looked at my copy of his work. When such an idea comes to mind, you are trying hard to show off. I was doing my best and I always do my best while working with glass.

 First, glass is a completely different material. Glass frit and glass powder. You have your palette of colours, but it can not be mixed together. Moreover, I confidently began to make a Starry Night out of material I never worked with - from medium sized frit. At first I thought it would not work. Then with a new technique I completed my version of Starry Night in 25 hours.

 Secondly, it is absolutely clear to me how to create this work by painting with glass powder (the description of the technique can be found here). Furthermore, I drew the village in Starry Night with glass powder. If I were to use medium-grained frit, I could not achieve such accuracy. The houses, fields and frontal trees were created with powder while the sky, stars, mountains and gardens of trees was made with medium sized frit.

 I made comparison pictures to compare the two Starry Nights side by side.

 Thirdly, I will be happy to show you my rhythm and my steps as I was creating the work. Here in this order was the progression of my starry night.

After final fusing.

 What did Van Gogh think when he painted this picture? There are thousands of interpretations. What did I think when I worked on this picture? About Van Gogh. I read his letters, read the two-volume book of the 2010 Taschen Complete Collection of Paintings. My son presented me this book for the New Year in 2012. I also thought about how my vision of Van Gogh is completely different now ... In 2012, I did not know how to approach when creating such a piece with glass. And now I pretty quickly managed to make Starry Night using techniques invented by me.

 Here is the article about the Starry Night and 10 facts that you did not know about the Starry Night by Van Gogh. There is something to think about. Van Gogh considered this work a failure. And he wrote the view from the east window 21 times, but he never wrote a grille on the windows.

 I want to quote from Van Gogh. He writes to Brother Theo on July 10, 1888

"But the sight of the stars always makes me dream in as simple a way as the black spots on the map, representing towns and villages, make me dream.

Why, I say to myself, should the spots of light in the firmament be less accessible to us than the black spots on the map of France.

Just as we take the train to go to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to go to a star.20 What’s certainly true in this argument is that while alive, we cannot go to a star, any more than once dead we’d be able to take the train. So it seems to me not impossible that cholera, the stone, consumption, cancer are celestial means of locomotion, just as steamboats, omnibuses and the railway are terrestrial ones.

To die peacefully of old age would be to go there on foot."