A Straight Face

At Sarasota County Technical Institute, where I teach a class in mosaic, I share a classroom with stained glass classes (among several others), and a while ago I asked the stained glass teacher to save all the beautiful glass scraps that I was seeing in the trash can. I thought I had such a brilliant idea -- you know, save the planet, reuse, recycle, and so forth and so on. Well, very soon I began to feel like Mickey in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," because the bin of designated glass scraps began to fill up higher, and higher, and higher -- then there was a break of a couple of weeks between the end of one of my sessions and the beginning of a new one, but meanwhile the stained glass classes had NOT ended yet, so when I came back to the room the bin was overflowing!

Quickly I found a second bin and decided I HAD TO DO SOMETHING. So first I set myself a challenge. I separated out a bunch of straight pieces that had been tickling at my consciousness anyway because they were so perfectly straight, and I thought it would be fun to see if I could make something NOT straight with them. And since I've been doing a lot of faces lately, I decided to make a face using only -- or mostly -- straight pieces from the scrap pile. This is the result. 

I liked it so much that I decided to put the scrap challenge to my students, since we're coming up to a 6-week break between sessions. Their challenge is to take home as many scrap pieces as they wish, and to make whatever they'd like before class starts again at the end of September. It doesn't have to be a face or anything realistic. It could be a color study, or a shape study (we've been discussing ideas, since Tuesday is our last class). The challenge is optional, but I expect great things! And I'll post any results! 

At least it will lower the level of that scrap pile.