The Art of Experimenting
By Gil Reynolds

Originally published in Stained Glass News issue #59 Feb. 2003

I experiment a lot, its fun. This is often what I do. It seems like all of my glass work falls into one or more of the following three categories; finished work for others, finished work for me and experiments. All three are rewarding but the experiments take the most time and I seem to get the most out of them. To me experimenting is a form of practice. A musician wouldn't dream of performing in public without practicing their instrument enough to become proficient, yet for some reason, people think they can just go out and make perfect glass on the first try.

It just amazes me how little people are willing to experiment. My favorite, and this is really common, is the person that calls and they have an expensive disaster and they are just hoping that it is my fault. They had this great idea so they went out and bought some really expensive glass, they had never done anything this complex or large before, yet they just know it would be perfect, but it doesn't turn out perfect on the first try. They are disappointed, frustrated and looking for someone or something to blame. In most cases all of the problems that occur could have been anticipated and solved if only they had been willing to experiment a bit first, but no, not them.

They got bubbles under the glass, but they didn't experiment with firing large pieces of glass to determine how to avoid bubbles, so it is the shelf primers fault. A particular color of glass changed color when it was fired, they are shocked by the change, yet they didn't test fire the glass first to see how it would behave in the kiln and now it is the glass companies fault that their piece is a failure. They didn't want their expensive glass to devitrify and have a scummy surface, so they bought some overglaze. The problem is they didn't experiment to find out how to use the product, so they either put it on to thick, or used a dirty brush or didn't clean the glass well before hand or they didn't fire it hot enough and now their piece has a filmy surface and they go tell everyone how the overglaze ruined they master piece. You get the picture?