Glass + Photography

Around RISD, the "+" sign is used instead of the "&" sign. When I was in school, I learned that an "=" sign usually followed a "+" sign. Here, the "sum" must be conceptual art and a gem on your resume. I've decided to take a break from myself and write about my husband. It's only fair. One day, when he reads the blog, he can comment on himself. In his defense, I make him laugh everyday so he doesn't need to enter cyberspace to get his daily fill.

RISD has a wonderful program during the Winter. Instead of get a long vacation between semesters, RISD students take a 6 week wintersession class. This is technically the golden opportunity to take an interdisciplinary class since most of the regular semesters are filled with required classes. Also, undergraduates have a freshman seminar their first year and don't declare a major until the end of their first year. Wintersession is an opportunity to explore your interest in a major.

This past wintersession, Nicholas' final wintersession, he took a class through the photography department called Light, Time, Space. The idea was to explore those concepts in the dark room in new ways. As a result, Nicholas is now taking an independent study class (in his final Spring semester) with a photography professor. He is making photograms in the dark room. He takes one of his glass pieces and places it on a piece of photo paper in the dark room. Then, he flashes light through the glass piece from above to expose the photo paper, then develops the result. He creates different prints by holding the light at different distances from the glass/paper and by moving the glass piece to different angles.

For his final project for his wintersession class, he tried to use the UV light from molten glass to create an image on paper using the cyanotype process. This involved using a trash can as a dark room, and several trips back and forth across the street between the dark room building and the glass hot shop. The result is below. The blue image is the UV light and the infrared heat reflected from the trash can (the ridged lines).

Here are some pictures of the "process" with Nicholas in the hotshop.