At 27 x 40mm (plus another 30mm of tail) this little wingless dragon, or lizard, is the smallest and one of the earliest surviving glass sculptures I've made: earlier efforts tended to incorporate a great many cold seals coming out of the ‘wipe on’ technique I used to build up the volume, and so all broke.

borosilicate, probably 2005. 27x70mm.

I was fortunate enough to take a team-taught lampworking course taught by Fred Birkhill and Shane Fero, and the random looking way the latter combined color to make his borosilicate sculptures intrigued me—probably not least because I've made colored pencil drawings incorporating random color in the figures...all goes back to Matisse's Lady with a Green Stripe, I guess.

other side.

At any rate, I started using odds and ends of color (which used to be horrendously expensive in boro, and still isn't cheap) such as pulled-off points to make little animals, especially dragons. Dragons are so easy—just a rod pulled out with a head, four legs and wings, and it doesn't matter how dorky they look, since they're not real.

They're my way of practicing, using glass and subject that don't matter. And perhaps someday, I'll made something worthwhile, that does matter.

filed created 30jan06

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.