Sand Blasted or Stained Glass Art always fascinates me as an interior designer. Colored glass can create mystical spaces by redirecting sunlight and reflecting its colors onto walls, ceiling and floor of your space. Today I’d love to introduce Ernie Orfila, a local San Diego glass artist. Below he talks about his art and some of his fantastic projects in more details.
This dramatic wall mounted piece is composed of back painted carved sandblasted design on 3/8″ thick glass mounted on two posts with stainless steel background piece. The stainless steel surface allows light to bounce off its surface illuminating painted sandblasted design.
By Ernie Orfila
After 39 years of practicing my craft and art, I continue to be amazed at the limitless possibilities inherent in a medium born of the very elements of our earth combined with fire and illuminated by the most ethereal of elements, light. Leaded glass, more popularly known as stained glass, born in the Middle Ages to bring color and light to the great cathedrals of northern Europe while a most ancient medium of expression still offers our contemporary secular world an opportunity to foster an environment of serenity and renewal.
A grand gesture of leaded glass for a grand staircase. Bringing a sense of wholeness and artful play, lead lines of various widths cascade down through all eight openings. Pastel colors are juxtaposed against clear seedy glass to enhance natural exterior light and reflected interior light.
This photo of fabrication process illustrates the detailed and exacting nature of this ancient medium.
Sandblasted glass offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to design and ease of maintenance. Usually it is done on thicker annealed glass or when building codes require, laminated glass. Drama within such designs can be achieved in myriad ways. Carving is when a layered three dimensional quality is required while single stage sandblasting is often used in presenting simple positive and negative shapes while shading can provide illusion of dimensionality if desired. Also, painting of etched surfaces when used judiciously can bring another level of drama to a any sandblasted commission.
This Purefitness entry in Carlsbad is an example of single stage sandblasting with shading on tempered glass. Reflecting its coastal location, design incorporates flora found in local area.
This standing screen of carved and painted glass incorporates contemporary and traditional design elements. Ribbon-like forms are carved and highlighted with pieces of laminated dichroic glass. The vertical inset borders are sandblasted and painted with gold lacquer. Awarded first place in sandblasting category, Art Glass Association of Southern California Annual Show ’02.
This stationary sandblasted and painted piece was commissioned for luxury condo in downtown San Diego. Measuring 2’8″ x 8’6″ this work was done on 3/8″ laminated glass.
Over the last several years I have researched and developed some new techniques for incorporating “fired on” decals, color along with gray scale, onto fused colored glass. To the best of my knowledge, I am one of few doing here in the west. There is much territory to explore yet and I firmly believe this medium has some terrific potential for commercial applications. Its use in design of donor walls for public and private institutions would be one such application.
Above is an examples of fired on decals with fused glass illustrating the relation with original photos for decals and completed work.
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The stainless steel surface allows light to bounce off its surface illuminating painted sandblasted design.