What's Zach Doing

ok so somehow another month has passed? Here is what I’ve been doing.

Glass!

This month I focused on sculpting and color. Glass is different from any medium I have worked with before in many ways, but one of the most significant ways is color. Pictured below is a glass flower I made this month. Before entering the flame, the rod that I used as the stem of the flower was crystal clear. After shaping and annealing, it ended up as the color you see below. When I took this piece out of the kiln I was confused. How can clear glass turn to opaque blue in one section and translucent amber in another? After some researching I learned that the clear rod I was using was actually a “striking color” rod. This means that the rod has small amounts of metals like gold, silver, etc..embedded in it. As the glass comes to temperature in the flame, the metals have a chemical reaction with the oxygen and propane in the flame. Different flame chemistries (more oxygen or more propane) will result in the glass turning different colors. Now that I know this, a new dimension of possibilities is unlocked. See this months creations under the “glass” page to see how I worked with striking colors this month, as well as the sculpting skills I have been working on. I try to spend 2-3 hours a day working on glass.

Project Archives

One of my goals for this month and next is to fill out the project archives page. This month I have added a brief archive of lamps that I created while working on building a lighting brand, ELECO. These lamps are all made out of recycled materials. Stay tuned for more projects to be added in the coming months!

Birthdays and Friends

In personal news, This month we celebrated Veras’ birthday! Since Vera is only one semester away from graduating college, I decided to throw her a freshman year themed birthday party. Our friends were sorted into two “orientation groups”, forced to play name games and Vera themed trivia, all while dressed as their freshman year selves.

Additionally our friends Maise and Harris came to visit! We luv our friends.

Events!

One of my 2025 goals is to connect more with people I care about and meet new people with similar interests. To facilitate this, I have decided to host two casual events a month. There will a rotating event on the first Friday of every month, and a craft/movie night on the last Sunday of every month. These will be open invite events. I am hoping these nights will offer a low pressure way to hang out with friends new and old. I will be posting an event calendar on this site, stay tuned!

New! Comments!

Ok, I think I figured out how to enable comments. Feel free to leave one, or don’t! This is just a post on a website it cant force you to do anything.