Image: e.b. glassworks
Sure, you could build a robot with things like circuit boards and solder and allen wrenches, and it could, you know, do stuff.
Or, you could do what Eric Bailey does: Take some glass into your home-built-and-wired workshop and use some serious heat to turn it into a slick-looking retro-bot. Art? Check. DIY? Check. Geek? No doubt.
Eric’s an artist up in Corvallis, Oregon who’s been doing flameworking for about seven years and sells pieces through galleries scattered across the U.S.
While he and his wife were remodeling what he describes as “a 1950’s atomic ranch-style house,” they opted to do their son’s baby room in a retro science-fiction look.
“Last year, it began to enter my mind that it might be interesting to make a robot in glass, something I haven’t seen done before,” Eric said. “I am also currently working on three designs for rocketships.”
Technically, the new pieces are scent bottles shaped like robots, but their functionality is really sort of an artistic holdover, the way some sculptors design vases that are never meant to actually hold flowers.
Also, there’s the sheer coolness of melting and shaping the glass.
“I admit there is an element of danger to working with fire that I like,” Eric said, “and the type of glassblowing I do uses torches with a large flame that goes to about 3,000 degrees.”
Check out more of Eric’s work at his e.b. glassworks home page.
