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.