Glass Anemone

During RISD Wintersession this year, I took a glass class called Light, Shadow, and Transparency.  For one of my final projects, I decided to create a glass anemone out of many wand-like units.

This glass piece attempts to recreate the characteristics and movement of a bubble-tip anemone.

The bubble-tip anemone is a beautiful animal with distinctive bulb shapes on the end of each tentacle. The more sun it receives in its habitat, the more likely it will develop these bubbles.

A bubble-tip anemone.

Made by creating a marble and stretching out a hot glass stem, each tentacle was created individually and attached together into a ring after being annealed.

My glass anemone.

A profile of the glass anemone's tentacles.

A bubble-tip anemone in the wild sweeps its tentacles through shifting currents to collect nutrients.

When mounted on a wall and introduced to a direct light source, the glass anemone seems to come to life. The shifting light creates interesting shadows that flow across the wall as if underwater.

Light introduced to the anemone.

Work in process- Here I am working on a tentacle in the hot shop.

Birds at my Window

At the Rhode Island School of Design, I'm in this awesome liberal arts class called Birds and Books. For my class presentation, I decided to photograph the different kinds of birds that visit my balcony to eat from one of the many bird feeders. Here is a few highlights from the project.

A beautiful male Downy Woodpecker enjoying some suet.

A female Downy Woodpecker looking super cute.

A male Downy Woodpecker showing off his color.

A female Mourning Dove being curious.

Female Mourning Dove just hanging out on the windowsill. 

Preening and fluffing her feathers.

These birds are so in dove with each other.

Male and female Mourning Doves looking at each other affectionately.

Kisses.

A sweet little Tufted Titmouse watching me through the window

A White-Breasted Nuthatch doin his weird little walk to the feeder.

English Sparrows (male top left, female bottom right) snackin on sunflower seeds.

A Black-Capped Chickadee being adorable as ever..

House Finch/Purple Finch (still so unsure..) just straight chillen