Solid Glass Head

Glass Sculpture:
I sculpted this head out of solid hot glass and photographed it in 2014. This picture was taken in Illinois. This is probably one of my favorite pieces I've made.

The process of creating this is fairly odd. You must gather a large gather of clear glass and cover it in powdered color glass (blue in this case), then it's usually a good idea to encase the color with more clear glass to avoid pulling or cutting any color in later steps. Then, you want to shape the gather into a neck and head shape using newspaper saturated with water. This allows you to manipulate the molten glass with your hands without getting burned. Then, using a tool called diamond shears and tweezers you want to pull out where the chin and nose will be. This is a difficult process and requires many spot heats with a hand held torch. Once the chin and nose are defined you want to begin making the contours of the skull with the back of the jacks (this has a large flat metal surface that can push glass). Next, spot heat where the eyes should go and press that area in with a solid metal cylinder. This will create eye sockets. Then, using a butter knife, draw lines on the face after spot heating to create eyes, facial contours, and a mouth. Lastly, open up the nose with the tweezers and add ears with bits.

Over all this process can take anywhere from 2 to 8 hours, depending on size and detail. This piece took roughly 3 hours.