New Pattern: Pointillist

Whenever I'm planning work and developing patterns I'm generally driven by a vision of a finished piece.  Although once in a while I get excited about a pattern or colors and develop the patterns knowing that I'll need to decide what form (series) I want to use them in eventually.  Recently I've been creating a great deal of murrine (patterned rods) with random threads of color over white for a pointillist pattern not knowing exactly how I wanted to use them, but confident that whatever I do, the final work would look really interesting.  

So after spending many hours over a couple of weeks creating the murrine and having my assistant carefully cut these rods into many hundreds of tiles, I planned to make a very large piece that would incorporate literally thousands of threads of colors.  I was tempted to make a large Sphere with these patterns but decided that a tall Parabola series work was going to be my first use of these patterns.  Making this piece was good fun--partly because I was so engaged with watching how the patterns behave when molten.  Also because making large work like this, with so many hours of effort already into it before even getting the patterns on the pipe, is mentally and physically intense.  After all the work that's gone into pulling the cane, making the murrine, cutting the murrine, sorting the murrine, etc....   This. Is. It.  

This piece has been great fun from designing the pattern to carefully blowing it into its final form and it turned out even better than I'd imagined, which is the best of all possible outcomes.  The patterns remain crisp and evenly-distributed.  The detail has been maintained throughout.  The form is tight.  It's blown very evenly.  Vision realized. :)

Larger clickable photos in the Parabola Portfolio.