My fascination for rain puddles, mainly on the streets of Lisbon (P), began a few years ago. I started to make pictures, drawings, prints, etc. to study their ever changing form. In the meanwhile trying to figure out how I could be able to translate these puddles of water into glass objects. Objects that capture the form and imprint of whatever is there on the ground but which also keep a reference to the reflection of the surface and the transparency of a pool of water.
The first tests I made were still small in size: between 15 cm up to 35 cm in length. I made the models for these elements right there on the streets with clay. Fernando Quintas, professor of the glass departement of the academia de Belas Artes in Lisbon (P), gave me the chance and space to dive into the wonderful world of glass melting and in his presence I started with my first experiments.
After a while I got the idea to make them bigger in size, deeper, more transparent. So I had to find a suitable place to do so. In Beeldenstorm, an artist workshop in Eindhoven (NL), I found the perfect environment to excecute this project. I changed from clay to silicones to make traveling easier and didn’t worry to much about the final size of each of the puddles I was casting. Only to find out in Beeldenstorm that I was very lucky the biggest of the models only merely fitted into the kiln. It shouldn’t have been a little bigger or it would have been a different story.
In January of this year I started making the moulds. Some of which took me two days to prepare. Each of the moulds had 4 layers of a different mixture of plaster and silica. A piece of fiber glass was put between the second and the third layer to avoid the mould falling completely apart after firing.
In June we started to fill the first moulds with a gorgeous type of glass (bullseye) and just a little more than one week ago I finally took the first results out of the kiln. Two of the objects still need a good and final cleaning but I feel eager to share already some of the pictures here with you.
katie lagast - blog 