Jana's Index
Fusing Glass
"Art washes away from the soul the dust of every day life . "
- Pablo Picasso
Besides photography, my other creative outlet (for many years) has been fusing glass to create unique pieces of wearable art. Pieces of a very special type of glass are combined, layered and fired (often several times) at very high temperature (1,500 degrees Fahrenheit and higher) in a kiln. Dichroic glass is a state of the art thin film that combines the science of vacuum deposition and optical filters with the art of glass. .
The word dichroic (pronounced dye-kro-ik) comes from the Greek meaning two colors. This type of glass has the property of reflecting, from its surface, light of one color and transmitting light of other colors. Transmitted colors are what you see when you look through a piece of dichroic glass. Reflected colors are the colors you see when you hold the glass at an angle, and will be the opposite color of the transmission. This type of glass was originally created for use in the aerospace industry for things such as satellite mirrors, which have dichroic coating. The colors seen in dichroic glass are actually ultra thin (themselves colorles) layers of metallic oxides interacting with the light. The results are magical!
To learn more about the medium and the art form, read below.
Dichroic coatings are produced by vacuum depositing multiple thin layers of materials onto a glass substrate. This creates a kind of optical filter that can selectively reflect and transmit various wavelengths of light. A vacuum chamber is needed in order to produce the required pure environment for the deposition of the thin film materials. Throughout the vaporization (deposition) process, the glass is also continuously rotated inside the chamber in order to deposit uniform coatings on the glass. Due to the coating method, there always are slight differences in color throughout the sheet of glass. The glass is sold by the square inch and is expensive.After the glass is manipulated and fused, the color of the dichroic glass will shift towards the left on the visible color spectrum, depending on the thickness of the dichroic coating, the amount of time and temperature fired for a specific kiln, the number of firings, and other factors. Also, individual kilns will fire differently. This is why it is almost impossible to create two pieces that are the same. A unique piece, depending on how the variables of color, glass texture, glass thickness, and fusing technique were applied is created.
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Jana Shober
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