Kelly Witmer

This two week workshop is a deep dive into ways of manipulating glass in the kiln, exploring techniques such as fusing, slumping, draping, and casting. Students use hand building techniques to create ceramic forms which are then combined with glass to create sculptural or functional work. Through experimentation, they learn the basic rules of kiln-formed glass, making discoveries along the way.

This two week workshop is a deep dive into ways of manipulating glass in the kiln, exploring techniques such as fusing, slumping, draping, and casting. Students use hand building techniques to create ceramic forms which are then combined with glass to create sculptural or functional work. Through experimentation, they learn the basic rules of kiln-formed glass, making discoveries along the way.

This one-week workshop delves into the process of combining ceramic and glass in a technique known as slumping. Gravity and heat from a kiln shapes sheet glass into a mold. Simple commercial molds are available for this process, usually to produce a dish, bowl, or vase form, but here students take this process in a different direction, making sculptural objects by including the ceramic “mold” as part of the finished work. Students create ceramic forms and experiment with several glass firings to truly understand the stages of glass as it melts in the kiln, gaining the knowledge to develop this technique within their own practice.