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Trophy Art Collaboration
col·lab·o·rate – \kə-ˈla-bə-ˌrāt\ : to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something.
Recently I was contracted by Jim Murrell to create the trophies for King Harbor Race Week, my biggest trophy job to date requiring about 25 pieces and four different sizes. I decided to collaborate with glass blower Myles Freedman. This is our first project together. To get the ball rolling Myles met me down at the yacht club so I could show him various types of trophies and awards. At this point the only decision we had made was to work with blues/greens and that the final piece needed to feel like the ocean. We were off to a good start.
Next we had to consider the final shape. We wanted something curvy that could stand on its own. We looked at many molds and finally found one that we both liked. The mold then dictated our final trophy sizes. All the trophies are 16 inches in width. We are doing four heights for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places, they are 12, 10, 8 and 6 inches. Now it was time to make some samples and do test firings.
Julie’s Glass Sample
I went first. Our concerns at this point were whether to use some type of white back ground or to have the trophies be transparent. I used several white and crèam colors in my composition. Myles had blown some adventurine blue into glass confetti pieces so I utilized those as well. I tried a couple of different fusing techniques. While we liked the end result it wasn’t totally what we were going for. This sample will definitely end up in an art piece down the road.
Myles’ Glass Sample
Myles was up next. He loved a section on my sample that utilized small pieces of clear glass junks that pulled color up around themselves. He used this one method and proceeded to use many layers of glass confetti pieces with clear junks. The results were amazing. We now had our method.
We wanted more than just blue for the final art trophies so Myles started blowing all kinds of blues and green together and separately. He added some white as well. We had lots of striking glass combinations to work with. We started layering and fusing our first glass panels. Because of all the layering we trapped some air bubbles. Bubbles always make my crazy, but Myles embraced them as cool and aquatic. I saw his point. It was time for me to let go of perfection and embrace bubbles.
We are now in the process of slumping our glass panels into their final form. The results are wonderful. Each trophy is a unique piece of art with different colors layered and swirled together. Our final step will be to sand blast the award text at the trophy bottom just before the regatta. This has been a fun project to work on with Myles. I look forward to collaborating together more in the future.
