A Glass Work In Progress | Part IV

Questions And Answers – A Conversation with Mike Leckie, Sculptor
May 28th – July 1 – 2007

May 28th

Taking it out of the steamer. See all that wax underneath? That’s
what’s left from a lot of wax molds.

June 4

I’m going to fill this lower section in here with glass as heavy as I can but that won’t stop some of these upper ones from rolling in there just a touch but that’s ok. That’s one of those looks I don’t mind having. The black will probably stay where it is. It’s called stiff black. These other ones will flow just a little bit but so far everything is down in grooves. I’ll fill the faces, too. Then I’m going to take some larger blocks of just plain color and sit them on top. These are the background colors. Smokey green and smokey blue. They’re light colors because it’ll still look like translucent glass with just a minor tint to it. It won’t be white glass.

It’s kinda fun to be able to smash up glass with a hammer. This is all Bullseye glass. It’s always compatible. The expandable rate of all their the glass is the same.

There is question about how much the glass is going to move and if you can put another piece in someplace. The more glass you get in, the more intense the color, but you put too much in and it’s going to overflow its little spot. I have a pretty good idea how much.

I want these things to settle into the holes. The holes will be the positive. I might actually put some more of the same color in on top of them before I put the background color on. If I put the background color on now it will probably roll down into the holes and create a little mix of color. I try to separate them a little more than that.

Keeping them separate is a little harder to do.

June 8

The finished piece still in its mold.

June 27

All there is to do is put the fine touches on the piece with file and sandpaper.

I like the finished product.

July 1

This is very very close to what I hoped I was going to be able to get. I planned for the pink and the gray to go together with the purple and blue. I planned for the turquoise face and for the blue frame inside the black frame. The black frame was one of the first things I did to the piece.

On a scale of 1-10, the degree of difficulty is about 12. This is almost two feet wide and 18 inches tall with life-size faces. The degree of difficulty in casting it and having it stay in one piece in the firing? It’s a big deal.