Five Larger Pieces, Five Different Lessons

Mood: Imperfect progress | Post Type: Work Spotlight | Weeks Until Show: 23

What scaling up is showing me

One of the things I’m learning as the landscapes grow is that larger work exposes everything more clearly — what holds, what shifts, what disappears, and what still needs understanding. At pendant scale, certain decisions can quietly hold themselves, but once the work becomes larger there is far more for the eye to take in, and every layer begins to matter differently.

I thought I would share five current works in progress, because although not all of them have gone to plan, each one is teaching me something distinct. Some are close to where I want them to be, others are heading back into the kiln, and a few are proving to be some of my biggest learning curves yet.

Piece One — Building Warmth Into the Base

This first piece I’m pleased with because the glow is there, although it was meant to sit more at an angle. I was scaling up from a pendant I particularly liked and wanted the ground to carry more warmth — more orange and less green — so it better reflected the sunset above.

Looking at it now, I can see that one of the base layers simply needed that warmth built into it from the start. It is not that the piece has failed; rather, it has shown me that scaling up an image I know well still requires fresh decisions rather than simple translation.

Piece Two — What Holds at Scale

This is the only piece that has really held itself at the size I intended, even though some of the land masses stretched more than I expected.

What the other pieces are teaching me is that I probably need to make them larger than I think, simply to give myself room afterwards to decide final angle, cropping, and composition.

Piece Three — Reconsidering What Can Be Changed

I like parts of this one, but I am still not content. The wave lines feel too regimented, and I want the left side darker to strengthen the sense of light. The turquoise contrast I liked against the cream sand also disappeared, partly because I have chosen a smaller frame.

Unlike painting, I have always felt that once a piece has gone into the kiln there is very little I can do afterwards — and for the trapped layers that remains true. But I am beginning to realise that if the issue sits in the top layer, particularly within the foreground, there may still be room to make amendments. So this piece will test that idea.

Piece Four — When Size Changes the Firing

This is the biggest piece I have made so far, and I could immediately tell it needed longer at top temperature because it simply did not spread enough. There are still ridges visible in the glass, which tells me the layers have not fully fused together.

The ground is also darker than I intended because one of the lower layers carried too much depth. Again, it is a reminder that if a layer begins too dark, it rarely disappears quietly.

What I do love here is the sky and the glow resting along the horizon.

Piece Five — The Biggest Learning Curve

A great deal went wrong in this one, although I still love the sky. Several layers behaved unexpectedly, making this perhaps one of the biggest learning curves so far. My dark distant land mass disappeared beneath the sea.

I should have glued the two sea sections together — something I have done successfully before — and I also experimented by adding glass frit and powders on top without pre-fusing them first. Because they were face down, that decision did not work as hoped.

Another lesson here: if one of the lower layers is dark, it will still come through, even when opaque glass sits above it.

Where the Learning Sits

So yes, the pieces are getting bigger, which was always the aim, but every larger work continues to ask something different of me. At the moment, the real progress lies not in perfection, but in understanding what each piece is quietly teaching before the next one begins.

A short video where I talk through all five pieces together.

This is Episode 18 in my ‘Solo Show Diary’ series — a behind-the-scenes look at how my work develops. You can find my earlier posts here.