Spring 2013 : Cosmos

Black Glass Geodesic Shapes

$30-150

an open-and-shut necklace

I made this little necklace for a lovely lady in Australia and I think it's possibly the smallest hinge I've put on a piece yet!


remember tomorrow is the last day of the sale in my shop!

custom: dodecahedron pendant light

A lovely young couple came around last week with a special request.  While on holiday in Spain they stayed in an apartment that had an old stained glass light fixture in a dodecahedron shape.  Now that they're renovating a house in South Philly they wanted to recreate the design for their kitchen.  We decided on a larger size, and the bottom pentagon is open so that you can change the bulb or easily take the glass off the fixture for cleaning.  I have to admit that while taking photos of the lamp I played around with the reflections it made in the sunlight, it was like a kaleidoscope!  I'm really looking forward to seeing it installed in their new home.

find more of my custom work here

* p.s. did you know that a dodecahedron is one of the platonic solids and that the ancient Greeks associated the dodecahedron shape with the universe?

shop update

some new pieces on Etsy with book and poetry excerpts inside

(dr.seuss, john keats, jane austen)

snow bound

Octahedron No.11 :: Dodecahedron No. 8

Mini Lovebugs

Did you make it through the snowy weekend?  We weren't too snow bound in the city, but the snow did tamper with some of my weekend plans, including not being able to see a friend who lives 5 hours away!  She got trapped by the snow in rural PA, darn snow halting plans, though I did enjoy tramping through it around the city.  I got a surprise this weekend as well in the form of a hand-me-down camera, so the past couple of days I've been getting used to having a proper camera for photos.  We also stopped by the Clover Market pop-up at the Philly Home Show on Sunday.  We found the home show a bit surreal, but the pop-up looked great, and it was great to see some friends again!  I think I'm going through craft show withdrawal.

As promised, there are more new items in the shop.  Two new platonic solids with love-themed inserts (excerpts from The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis and from Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières), and some mini Lovebugs!  I have kind of fallen for the mini Lovebugs, so a Lovebug mobile may be popping up in the shop in the near future...

shop update!

There are a few new platonic solids in the shop today, including a new style with sheet music inside!

Poets this week include Lewis Carroll, William Blake and Patti Smith...

I'm beginning to take orders for the holidays so contact me if you want to make your own platonic solid for that special someone, or if you want to make something else!

I'll be posting even more new items over the next few days...

elemental platonic solids

Got a photo this morning of the Elemental Platonic Solids stained glass series that I mentioned in my post late last night.  These are smaller than the other sculptures I have been making, they measure from 2" to 3.5" high.  The smaller size makes them really tactile (the blue icosahedron in particular is just asking me to toss it around, but I'm restraining myself!)

To recap from the post - Plato assigned each of the five shapes to one of the elements.  

So, the tetrahedron symbolizes fire, the cube is earth, the octahedron is air, the icosahedron is water, and the dodecahedron is the universe, or sometimes the zodiac, as it is made up from twelve pieces like the twelve signs in the zodiac.

I drew from this to make this series, illustrating each element through the stained glass colors.  I will be selling this as a set, but I think that they would make great gifts if you correspond the shape to someone's astrological sign, so I may make some more of these as individual pieces.  

Check out my last post if you want to see which shape would correspond to your sign.

© 2011 ABJ Glassworks

All Rights Reserved

series: Platonic Solids

The more that I learn about the Platonic Solids, the more interesting I find them.  You may remember something about the solids from this post about the inspiration behind my stained glass series, but this past week I found out more about their relationship with the historic four elements: fire, earth, air and water.

The mathematical laws governing the tetrahedron, cube, and dodecahedron were first studied about 2500 years ago by the Pythagoreans. 

new work: dodecahedron lamp sculpture

Just a preview of what I've been up to this week.  I'll do another weekly wrapup soon, it's been a very busy (and productive) week!

p.s. remember I'll be at the 4th Annual Downingtown Log House Arts & Crafts Show this Sunday from 10am-3pm.  Arts, crafts, food, music... sounds like a great afternoon to me!

work: weekly wrap up

 More platonic solids, a new Burst, and suncatchers

Hi guys, so here's a wrap up of what stained glass art I've been working on this week.  My fingers are definitely looking forward to a little break!

This week I made a few new platonic solids, bursts, new multi-piece necklaces (see below), suncatchers, and .... lamp bases!  No pictures of these yet, but if you don't get to see them at the Outdoor Craft Store tomorrow I will have photos up after the weekend.

 I have different colors and 4 styles at the moment, but as always, I will take color requests!

Looking forward to the show tomorrow, fingers crossed for more of this nice fall weather, hope you all can make it!

Outdoor Craft Show, Park Ave. & Dartmouth Ave., behind the Swarthmore Co-op, 9:30am - 4pm

show: this Saturday

I've been spending every minute of the day getting ready for the Outdoor Craft Show this Saturday in Swarthmore, PA!

There are new stained glass sculptures and jewelry in the works... more platonic solids, bursts, other sculptures, multi-piece necklaces, bracelets and more!

I'll post about them before the weekend...

Check out their website here and their facebook page here :)


P.S.  if you haven't already, check out my featured artist page

series: Platonic Solids

Cube No.1, Cube No.4, Cube No.5
Dodecahedron No.2, Octahedron No.3, Octahedron No.4

I have been working all week making new stained glass platonic solids to put in the shop.

You may or may not have noticed that the original group I listed at the beginning of the week have what looks to be shredded balls of paper inside.  If you have been to my shop then you will have already figured out what this is, but for those who have not, these are poems or excerpts from literature that I have selected.  Some are writings that I have always loved, some I have only come across recently.  

So what is behind the Platonic Solids you ask?  This series is drawn from a work I did about seven years ago.  I made a stained glass cube, like the ones above but more opaque, to house a poem I had written.  I did not really want to share the poem with anyone, but I wanted to harness the feelings in the poem.  I drew from the poem when selecting the colors for the cube and then I shredded the printed poem and housed it in its glass box.

In this way, I have done the same for these classic poems.  I have drawn from the poems of Keats, Coleridge, Thomas, Williams, and more when creating these sculptures; feeding off the emotion and energy all poetry contains when selecting the shapes, sizes and colors.  

I still hold on to the shredding of the actual poem inside because for me poetry is an intimate experience, grasping at the inexpressible.  I shred the poems so that others will only know what is inside if you choose to tell them.    If you have one of these then this will be up to you.

I have also created some hollow stained glass sculptures, which I will be putting in the shop today, as I believe that the shapes in themselves are interesting and beautiful as well.

As always, I hope you enjoy.  Feel free to comment and/or ask me any questions!

Click here to learn what a platonic solid shape is.

 

Cube No.2

© 2011 ABJ Glassworks
All Rights Reserved

shop: first update!

Head on over to my shop to see some of the Platonic Solids I've been working on....  I'll be posting new stained glass sculptures all during the week!  I'll also do a post in the next few days about my idea behind the platonic solids series and what goes into making them.

work: platonic solids

Platonic Solid: Tetrahedron (3, 5, 6), 2011

I am currently working on a series called Platonic Solids.

The faces of a platonic solid all have the same shape and size; and the shape itself is made from the same number of faces meeting at each point.

There are five platonic solids, and their names are derived from their number of faces: tetrahedron (4 faces), cube (6 faces), octahedron (8 faces), dodecahedron (12 faces) and icosahedron (20 faces).

As you probably realized already, they are named for the Greek philosopher Plato.  Early philosophers theorized that the classical elements (air, water, fire, earth and aether) were constructed from these solids.

Platonic Solid: Tetrahedron 6, 2011

I will be making different sizes of each of the platonic solids from stained glass.  Above is one of the tetrahedrons that I have almost completed.  There is more to be added to this one (besides the base!)

By the beginning of next week I will post the completed work and explain the process behind it more completely.

 Check my store on Monday for my first shop update!!

The pieces of an octahedron in the works.

The unmistakable shape of a cube in construction.

© 2011 ABJ Glassworks
All Rights Reserved