Insanity, and now a lull

The studio has been turned upside-down for the past week working on a prototyping project. Although the finished product hasn't come to fruition yet, I thought I'd share some pictures from the past week or so. It's been exciting, frustrating, with hardly a moment to breathe.

Smooth-on's Rebound 40 brush-on rubber product

A quick sweep with a heat gun works wonders in smoothing out Castilene surface while leaving the cold core structurally stable.

An old pal & wonderful artist visited, and performed the Ceremonial Setting-up of the Table in a corner of the shop. He may or may not drop in from time to time to do a little work and share some of this space.

Asymmetrical table love!

Always an adventurer, that one.

Exploring the Choi residence's dirtier corners.

Throwback to Jin-Won's class + intro to Cinema 4D

Going through some old hard drives and found these three models that took me hours to build in Cinema 4D, years ago, in Jin-Won Han's glass flameworking class. She had this fabulous way of working where she envisioned her Pyrex artwork in a 3D modeling program, leading to a strange meeting of the stoically accurate and the organically unpredictable––and I would say both descriptors apply to both media, digital and glass.

This "ego box" design eventually became the following, one of the first things I ever made with flameworking:

You can see the devitrification (loss of gloss, milky clouding) from poor heating techniques, but I loved every minute of the challenge. All of these "flat" pieces of glass were made from commercial Pyrex tubes heated and sliced open, then melted together in bits and pieces.

Castilene, a difficult + magical modeling medium

Castilene is a new (to me) take on classic wax-based modeling clays like Roma Plastilina or Klean Klay; I find it to be infinitely cleaner and more pleasant to work with, and you're not left with the smell of the product on you and a greasy feel on your hands for days. It's sulfur-free meaning that it will not inhibit curing of most common moldmaking products, and its label description states that no known compound can degrade the material. Amazing!

I needed some slabs for a current project so I turned my home kitchen into a clay station. My studio isn't currently outfitted with that kind of open space, nor do I have a microwave or hot plate like I do at home.

For a good 24 hours I was just petrified by how incredibly hard and brittle the "medium"-softness Castilene was. It didn't warm up easily or break up into soft chunks like Klean Klay likes to do. I was afraid of heating it up, thinking it might be messy.

I finally dumped out a 2.5 lb box ($25 at Compleat Sculptor) into a large ceramic serving dish and started warming it up. I used the inverter/soften setting for a few minutes, then put it on full blast for about a minute. This let the clay get malleable and soft, but I noticed that microwaving doesn't heat the clay evenly. You're left with some crusty, dry-feeling edges and then some crazy hot spots. I recommend mixing up the batch and letting it marinate in its own heat for about 5 minutes. The overheated clay will warm up the dry bits.

I wiped the counter down with mineral oil, the way you would flour for baking, and started rolling, smashing, cutting, doing anything I could to get a nice even slab. I'd take the trimmings, throw it in the bowl, re-heat, and continue to make slabs. The clay takes on a gorgeous smooth hard sheen when it is cold, and maintains rigidity at room temperature. I LOVE IT.

It is difficult to work with and isn't quite grab-and-go like Klean Klay, which I would recommend for small less-precise or press-molded projects, but Castilene definitely blew my mind a little when I started working with it this week.