Melting Scrap Glass into Art

Meet my new kiln tool - its called a screen melt system. Basically you melt glass thru the screen and it puddles in the form below. My new friend Steve made this for me, its awesome and I have been having fun experimenting with it.
The idea is simple: melt glass thru the screen and the right balance of clear and color will create chaotic patterns in the finished puddle of glass. I have hundreds of pounds of scrap glass accumulating and this screen melt system could be a way of transforming it into beautiful art.

Here's what I've been doing in my kiln experiments...

- first I weigh out the glass so that the scrap used will equal the volume I want in the finished puddle (I have been using about 800grams to make a 9"plate)

- then I transfer this scrap onto the screen in the kiln (I have prepped the screen by laying fiber blanket against the steel of the form that the glass melts into and along the kiln shelf (so that final puddle will not stick to anything)

- then I melt the glass, using a program that cooks the glass at 1600degrees Fahrenheit

- once its cold and cleaned off the scrap has transformed into a puddle!

Here are my first three melts, I think they are beautiful.

I have been learning a lot along the way. These experiments will probably turn into bowls in my kitchen.

Walking the Rim

Here are some pictures from a recent collaborative piece - "Little Women" - my studio mate Dennis McConnell made this beautiful glass "saturn" bowl and he asked me to make ladies to attach to the bowl. The bowl is 22" in diameter and the little ladies I made are less than 2" tall.
Some of the ladies are walking around, some are sitting... there is one that is trying to pull another out of the hole in the middle.
They are very simple, these little ladies, but I enjoy the detail in the animation that is achievable. I like to make them doing things, seems to add a human character, a humor value.

There is one lady that is waving to another lady... a couple of ladies are looking over the edge and one lady is sitting on the bottom looking at the lady that is trying to scramble out of the hole...

Thanks Dennis for asking me to collaborate with you!

First Kiln Firings

Mustafa (my new kiln) has been workin' hard! I documented my first fire in case anything freaky happened, taking notes of any little changes in the kiln program and pictures of what the glass looked like before and after. As you can see, I didn't really do a "test" as my first kiln load of glass... as in, I could have put just a few choice pieces of glass in to see what they did before loading it up with a bunch of work and hitting start! :) But rest assured Mustafa is treating me well and there have been no kiln snafus so far.
I was somewhat conservative in my program as well as the distance between pieces (just in case the kiln had hot spots or the programmer was not properly calibrated)
And I made these two little piles of glass in an open spot on the shelf... they were tests to see how much the glass was moving at these temperatures... you see, this white glass is really stiff, so is the pink and lime green, so I made these little piles to see how flat they would become. If I raised up the temperature of my "Full Fuse" or kept it at that temperature for longer (currently Mustafa stays at full fuse for only 3minutes) I could get these piles to fuse flatter.
Lastly - for all my readers that are fellow glass artists - here is the kiln schedule that I am using:

Segment ..... Rate ... Temp... Hold

1 350 500 0.10

2 450 1000 0.05

3 200 1250 1.30

4 9999 1488 0.03

5 9999 900 1.30

6 50 800 0.01

7 75 500 0.01

8 100 300 0.01

9 Idle to room temp.