I've been interested in doing figurative work in general and people in particular for awhile, but it often takes me several tries to hop over what I think of the analog to water's heat capacity—it takes a lot energy to get water to change phase, from liquid to gas. Similarly, it often takes a sustained effort for me to achieve a good enough result for me to consider what I'm doing worthwhile, and I often have to try something three times before I get it—French beaded flowers are one example (even though really, they're not that hard).

My attention span is just too darned short!

I tried making a tiger head probably within the first year of (serious) lampworking, almost certainly within two. It was terrible, and I gave up. I tried it again, after taking a class, and was most extremely fortunate to get hired by my teacher to shoot her demoing this same bead. Finally I got it.

So with people, which have a lot of the same issues (i.e. they're both sculptural beads of animal heads.) I made face murrine in Loren Stump's class, and thought I'd use all this pretty sea-green glass to make mermen with tiny, murrine faces. Never managed more than some sketches. That was in August of ’99. Then Mavis Smith came and demoed her lovely witch heads for the local guild, and I tried a few. They tended either to crack or turn into plant sticks. One such is gracing a studio plant pot even now. That was several years ago.

This time around, I ended up celebrating the wizard getting rehired by diving head-first into fantasy writing last summer, which got me interested in drawing and representational art again. Well, that was fun while it lasted, but economic realities descended again, and I went back to glass, and the tigers that were just starting to sell before I dropped everything to support my write-12-hours-a-day habit. Well, I found a relatively easy human-type head I was willing to make—over and over and over again...

...And this time, I think I'm finally getting it.

So after making a lot of heads in scrap glass, then I moved over to making them in ivory, since that's also the base for the tigers. Ivory glass is soft! So I tried rolling the beads in thompson enamel, which helped, but I don't really like working with dusts in the dead of winter, and besides I wanted to get that translucent look, so I decided to try stiffening the glass by casing it with transparents. (With the exception of clear, transparent glass is generally stiffer than opaque glass, especially white or ivory.)

My kid had gotten some hot pink nail polish that did not appeal, so I took it over, using it to mark borrowed tools, and then as a resist for the acid etch. It's a bit of a pain to paint on nail polish, (which has nasty, odoriferous solvents) paint on the etching cream (which is corrosive to human skin and requires gloves) then remove the paste, and then use acetone (more nasty solvents) to remove the nail polish, but it does give the faces a nice translucency.

Perhaps I ought to attempt rubber cement, which would reduce the nasty smelling solvents from two to one...I guess some people use glue, but I haven't any idea how they remove it. Another option, once I could afford to purchase glass again, would be to explore bullseye opals, which are naturally translucent, and stiff.

All of that is for the future. In the meantime I'm having a lot of fun with these;)

bead, jan2010. Photos, file, intro, (etsy listing) 27jan10.

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

Sylvus Tarn