Basket Maker

A village elder carrying her supplies for weaving hats, baskets, and other items to sell.

Image: White powdered glass silk-screened onto black sheet glass and lightly kiln-fired.
Frame: fused mosaic of tiny squares of sheet glass, standing on edge and fused onto the sheet glass background. Frame is completed first, then the image is screened onto the background and very lightly fired.

This was my first photo-based glass-on-glass screen print. I had taken a class on screen printing with powdered glass, using different screens for different colors. I wondered if there was a way to digitally process a photo into multiple layers I could superimpose to create a low-res version of the photo with just black, white, and a couple shades of gray. Somewhat to my surprise, it actually worked. The trick is to fire the white powder just hot enough and long enough to make it stick together, but not so much that it starts melting together and becoming transparent.

To get the different shades, I used several screens. The screen that creates the bright white areas of the image is only open (“open” means that glass particles can fall through the screen) where the print will be bright white. The screen that defines the light gray areas is open where light gray will be AND where bright white will be. Likewise, the screen for dark gray is open wherever there will be bright white, light gray, or dark gray. The white parts of the finished piece appear white because the screens for dark gray, light gray, and white each contribute a thin layer to the total depth of powder there. Light gray has two layers of white powder and dark gray has only one.