Lover / River
To my wife and daughter, these objects are a pair of love letters. They form the two centers of my life and warp my world around them. They are presented here centered on each of their faces.
Available through Evenline — Michael’s studio.
For each object, the printer traces a single curved path for each letter, as if holding a pen. By using the behavior of falling glass to create coils, the path becomes drawn out of small, perfect little loops.
The printer holds glass at more than 2000°F. It flows out through a ceramic nozzle, one line at a time. I write the path it follows: where to go, how fast, how hot. The nozzle traces that path, leaving a bead of glass behind it, and the object grows layer by layer.
When a print is done, we cut it free from the stream. It comes off the machine close to 900°F and goes into another chamber to cool overnight.
None of this replaces glassblowing. It builds on it. People have been forming glass for thousands of years. This is one more way to do it: material, machine, and the person running both.