IMG_20170411_220754_323.jpg

Blizzard

The depth of my process has pushed the themes of my work forward into ideas like Glaciertech sculpting and the Blizzardtech motif. Exploring the craft through the help of mentors and peers has allowed me to continually uncover new ideas and techniques in a process of revelation. 

 
A blizzardtech section with frost crystals, snowflakes, and wind swirl millis. "icy as fuck" milli detail. All millis in these sectioan are designed and processed by myself. The frost crystal was pulled using a furnace and gloryhole with the help of…

A blizzardtech section with frost crystals, snowflakes, and wind swirl millis. "icy as fuck" milli detail. All millis in these sections are designed and processed by myself. The frost crystal was pulled using a furnace and gloryhole with the help of Marcel Braun and the starship crew.

Solo Glaciertech Tube made out of Chaka's Ice with Chaka's Frost Accents and A Frost Crystal Milli. Photo by Jeff Dimarco

Solo Glaciertech Tube made out of Chaka's Ice with Chaka's Frost Accents and A Frost Crystal Milli. Photo by Jeff Dimarco

Blizzardtech is the culmination of my 19 years working in glass and draws from every aspect of my education in glass from how I create and pull the millli to my decisions in laying out the pattern and working that pattern both as tubing or in a layered cabochon or marble. Interestingly enough this pattern carries a dualistic chaos-and-order symbolism which I never intended but which is definitely a reflection of my own interests in the nature of duality. The chaotic, curvilinear wind-swirls animate the orderly, geometric snowflakes into a raging blizzard. This dance of yin and yang might explain why this pattern feels complete to me, it has just the right amount of drama… for my tastes anyway.

The technique I use to apply milli to a surface is known as stick-and-snap and has been used for longer than I can remember. I heat the tip of the milli and then heat the surface of a tube while letting the milli cool. I then stick the warm milli onto the hot surface and wait a few seconds before snapping off leaving a fresh flake of milli imbedded into the surface. I’ve now heavily been doing this technique for the last three years (Nov. 2020) and still have milli that occasionally leave an incomplete image when snapped, though way less often than before. It’s inevitable but fixable.

 

The Big Plan

In May of 2015 I began the search for a very specific ice color both for general use in my work and as a backdrop for blizzardtech. I was aware of a rising trend in transparent colors and companies like Glass Alchemy were starting to release colors like Blue Dream and Raindrop that would be perfect for the concepts I was building. I was also aware of the existing offering of Glacier Blue and Ice Blue from Northstar Glass Company but any icy color including raindrop has a nasty side effect of turning brick red if exposed to the wrong flame mix. The reddening was a result of copper in the formula, something I was all too familiar with when using certain greens back in 2005 or so. I felt like there had to be better ways of obtaining a slight teal or colder blue than classic cobalt, So I began experimenting...

Color Mixes made using existing factory colors and clear glass. This is about 6 pounds that was mixed over the course of a day using a skil power drill. I wasn't even close to achieving my desired color but this was progress for sure. 

Color Mixes made using existing factory colors and clear glass. This is about 6 pounds that was mixed over the course of a day using a skil power drill. I wasn't even close to achieving my desired color but this was progress for sure. 

The Journey of The Ice Cube

I began the search for my own non-copper teal by mixing slime and dark cobalt and using clear glass as a diluter. By sticking with a fixed ratio of color and varying the clear, the saturation of color in each mix would vary without affecting the tone. I would also keep the ratio of clear and blue cobalt fixed and change the amount of slime in each mix. the result was a study in drill mixing entitled “journey of the ice cube” which currently sits on display at Exhale in Saco, Maine.

 
 
Interestingly all the green in this piece is slime mixed with different variations of dark cobalt and clear. Unfortunately the workability of the mix wasn’t something i could see using in the long term. It was stiff and had a very noticeable veil wh…

Interestingly all the green in this piece is slime mixed with different variations of dark cobalt and clear. Unfortunately the workability of the mix wasn’t something i could see using in the long term. It was stiff and had a very noticeable veil which could be useful but ended up not being the right color tone. the slime would either make the mix greenish or it would strike to clear from being overdiluted, at which point any blue in the mix would take over. At least it didn’t turn red on me. This was a great step in figuring out better mixing and getting to the realization that I would need access to a furnace. Onward and upward.

After that experiment with slime I ended up trying many other greens to mix against cobalt blue. I used green stardust, tried diluting opaque greens and cadmium based greens, and tried using kryptonite as well. Ultimately the kryptonite won out. Many of the other experiments left me with concerns about overworking the colors and boiling out cadmiums even when the mixing was thorough. I ended up with a ratio of 10 parts clear to 1 part dark cobalt to 17 parts kryptonite for the icy, steely blue mix eventually dubbed “Chakas Ice”.

In Late June 2015 I attended the DFO (Degenerate Flame-Off) in Eugene, OR and got the chance to work at Marcel Braun’s studio. His facility is a dream setup for any lampworker looking to harness the power of a furnace (to house and melt up to 60 lbs. of glass over the course of days) and a glory hole (to super-heat large gathers of glass while working). His milli project, Project 33, employed every aspect of the facility and he welcomed other artists to spend time there and work on their own endeavors. It took me another year of working my way back to eugene to and create the foundations of the design we know as blizzardtech.

My Boro Year

To pipemakers, 33 is known as your boro year because that is the COE of borosilicate glass. I used the occasion to pack up all my belongings and embark on a 6 month collaboration road trip that spanned the country. I spent a month in Philly, another month in tallahasee, another in eugene, oregon with smaller spans of time in stops along the way. I ended up working with well over 50 artists on that trip and leveraged the generosity and collaborative spirit of the community in funding the development of my new body of work. I’m very adamant that great accomplishments take a community effort and I would not be able to develop this technique in the time it took without major help from many different sources. A major part of the funding for the projects created at the starship (Marcel’s studio) came from collaborations with AKM and Eusheen, who are both established names in the industry and whose work commands a high value. Sharing their value through collaboration really helped me in both visibility and financially to fund the roughly $10,000 investment in the starship residency. Justin Carter was the one who initially invited me out to work with him and Andrew and he also influenced my game and helped me tighten up my technique. These are just a few of the artists whose generosity propelled me into a very productive boro year.

When i arrived at the starship in June 2016 I had a number of vague ideas of how to use the time and a few solid, feasible goals. I knew i would be able to make my own color blend and at least try to design a milli for Marcel to pull. I purchased around $2500 worth of glass, a $400 crucible, some new tools, and hired my apprentice to assist for the month. My friends Gabriel and Chaiah also helped out as shop technicians. One of the first projects was creating a mold out of graphite to create milli components. Marcel rigged up something pretty quickly with his toolmaking and machining skills and I began pouring blanks for a milli pull. The process I envisioned was only possible using the tools of the starship, especially Draco, the 3500 degree hell-on-earth inferno that is the starship gloryhole, hot enough to fully melt and pull large boro millis. At times i witnessed this beast consume gas so quickly that it drew liquid oxygen into the hoses leading to the chamber. Extreme heat is an understatement.

Once I settled into a groove and began making milli components, Marcel began manifesting a process for how to heat up all the components together and pull it all in one move out of a kiln without adding anything to it afterwards. Most of his own process at that point consisted of adding and building the milli off the metal punty rod and intermittently heating as the build gathered. Instead, this method used a large gather of glass on the end of the punty called a “moil” to grab the milli out of the kiln all at once and then the work on the punty is all heating and shaping to make sure the milli moves in a uniform and even manner. That’s where Marcel’s skills and attention to the medium were invaluable. He was able to pull this large amalgam of components into a milli diameter that was usable at the lampwork scale. The yield from this milli and the technique of stick-and-snapping it into my work has made it last over 6 years so far. These were baseball-bat sized milli pulls.