Standing Stones

My experiments with sheet glass and fusing led me to try to make the glass thicker to see more interior space. One professor pointed out that I was working with a metaphor, for which the internal space of the glass was the equivalent to the internal life of the mind. This became my operating mantra, but forced me to come to terms with the casting of thick sections.

Warning! Glass can be a cruel mistress! Mistreated, or mishandled and it breaks; it is very expensive to follow your dreams with this material. It can demand the highest perfection.

Creating those internal spaces came with some problems. Other than telescope mirrors, I did not know that anyone annealed glass in a kiln for more than a day or two. When pieces cracked after five days of cooling, I could not believe they would need even more time. The tragedy quotient was huge for this type of technical exploration, and that is well before any exploration of internal space as poetry. While some sculptures I have made have been in the kiln for as long as two months, most of my recent pieces cook for two to three weeks, for slow, steady annealing and cooling.

Excerpt from David’s Alchemy of Glass

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