Spiky Star flameworking practice

A large part of developing sculpture designs is working on practicing techniques, learning how to make the materials I work with take the shapes that I want them to. With a medium like flameworking, it often requires some trial and error before something works out, especially because I am still learning.

I often like to completely plan out a sculpture before making it, but this is not always possible or even necessarily a better way to approach it. Sometimes it is only through trying to start to make an idea, before it is fully planned, that I realize what will or will not work. This is some of the process that I documented of making a new type of star shape that I may incorporate in a new sculpture.

The piece only got as far as you will see here, and unfortunately ended up cracking after adding the fourth star point. (This means that next time I should either work faster, or more thoroughly anneal the star after the first four points are added (heating the entire piece evenly to remove strain), before adding the remaining four smaller points in between those. There also may have been strain caused by uneven seals, etc. So this attempt is only a first step in the process of figuring it out.)

The shape I am making here is loosely based on this image from folio 82r of the Voynich Manuscript:

Because this drawing is paired with wavy lines that remind me of the lightning-like filaments of light inside a plasma globe, I am thinking about how this star shape might be incorporated into a lighted gas discharge sculpture. If the star stands on its own, and is filled with gas that lights up, then it may work to make the glass the size the size that I show here. But if this star is to be somehow enclosed inside another piece of larger diameter glass tubing, it will likely need to be smaller. There are many directions this could go, so some experimentation will be important.