Colorful Glass Sculpture

I am a 7th grader living in Brooklyn and I made this glass sculpture at the Corning Museum of Glass (CMOG) last summer. At CMOG, which is dedicated to glass artworks, they have classes for making decorative glass objects. To make this sculpture you will need a glass studio with the right equipment and a furnace to melt the glass. Not including the studio or the furnace you will need:

• Colorful glass rods
• Different colored crushed glass
• A blowpipe (a long metal tube)
• A marver (a polished steel surface used to cool glass)
• Large tweezers
• A block (a large wooden spoon-shaped object)
• Jacks (large blade)
• A kiln (a sort of insulator that helps cool glass objects)
• Heat resistant gloves

Choose some colors to make your sculpture, and then take the colored glass rods you chose and exchange them with the crushed glass colors.

Take the blowpipe and place it into the furnace, and scoop up some glass with the end of the pipe.

Then turn the blowpipe with your hands until the glass becomes rounded.

Take the blowpipe and put it in one of the bowls with the crushed glass. Then quickly put it in the furnace again and continue turning it. Repeat this step multiple times until you did this with all your colors. This will fuse together the colors into the glass.

After adding the colors, take the blowpipe and roll the side with the glass on the marver. You can change some of the dimensions by using the block. You can also add some cool shapes by using the tweezer (like you can see on the top of mine).

After coming to a final shape, take the jack, and indent the bottom of sculpture you are going to cut off. With your gloves on, hold the sculpture with one hand, and hit the blowpipe gently with the other hand, and the sculpture should be smoothly transferred from the blowpipe into your hand.

Take your glass sculpture and place it in the kiln to let it slowly cool. Without the kiln, the temperature drop would be too extreme for the glass to handle and it would crack.

After the glass cools in the kiln for about 24 hours, your sculpture is ready to take home!!!!!