Works in progress: The Bone

Inspiration can be an odd thing.

Often I'm inspired by things I see in nature, but this piece came to me when I was visiting, of all places, a plastic store.

I saw tubes of plexiglass on display in a corner, and immediately it came to me: a bone suspended vertically in the tube, covered with shattered red glass that "drips" from the bone to a pool on the base.

Red glass. It seems so easy. But it wasn't. Almost all red glass I could find had been painted red on the surface, not colored through and through, so I ended up buying a piece of solid red Italian glass and having it tempered.

I was warned the glass could blow up during the tempering process, which was fine with me - I need it to be broken. And it did blow up. Unfortunately, though, the kiln was designed to automatically discard any glass that blew up.

Oh well. I went with what I could find: a bundle of tumbled red glass my niece Fern found online.

The bone, at least, was easier to find. People just give me bones, and I found exactly what I needed in a random box of bones at my house.

Now I'm just waiting for one last piece...

To see how the piece turned out, click here.