Ultra (Light/Dark)
What does it say? Ultra is a reflection of hope, of breath holding, of loss. I became a father to my daughter two years ago. Before her birth and after there was life and possible futures, and then there wasn't. My wife and I hold those sadnesses together and separately. This work is about processing and honoring. To connect with it, the viewer must sink in, adjust the focus of the eyes, study and shift. The work to discover the poetry is a labor of connection — an intimate moment between artist and viewer.
Hold a small light against the panel and scan slowly — only what you keep lit shows, and it fades when you move on. The words come a piece at a time.
Available through Evenline — Michael’s studio.
I start with a grayscale photograph. Each pixel value becomes a speed for the machine, corresponding to black and white. By this I turn that number into wall thickness. The image is no longer on the glass. It is inside it.
All of it lives in a few lines of g-code — speed, heat, and flow. The image is in the wall. Set the panel against the light, and the wall gives the picture back.
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.