Glass artist: Mark Payton assisted by Ben Taylor

How long did fabrication take? 4 months overall

Special equipment? The fountain was created by a process of glass forming called "flame working".A special glass called borosilicate is heated and manipulated with a torch. This sculpture was accomplished using 2 torches that were recently developed to have the capacity to melt large pieces of this borosilicate, hard glass at least 1.5 inches thick. These two torches are "super powered" in that they have intense penetration of heat into the glass and they have a wide heat spread. They reach a working temperature of 7500 degrees! So much heat is produced that the artists must wear aluminized hoods, jackets and gloves to reflect the intense heat. However, the torches are self-cooled to where the artist can actually hold it in his hand while working within 18" of the heat source. The fish scales, eyes, fins and the waves were made using these torches. Due to the development of the torches, the glass waves were able to be created. Until now, the technology did not exist to create the waves by hand.

The other components of the fish structure were made using "cross fire" torches. These have 2 heads where the flames actually face each other.

Unique challenges: Working within 18" of the heat source and raising the glass up to forming temperature, there is a reflective heat of 1000 degrees. You can cook a pizza in 2 minutes with this reflective heat! One torch is facing the back side of the glass while the other heats the front. So, there were two torches at 7500 degrees heating the glass simultaneously. The artists are only able to wear the aluminized suit for about 10 minutes at a time and then would have to change to another suit. The other option was to allow the glass to rest in a 1000 degree kiln in mid-process while the artists could cool themselves.

One of the other challenges was to complete the piece before the glass cracked. Glass artists call this "beating the glass". The artists literally have to attack the glass. The glass must be heated to the manipulation point and the desired shape must be made before the glass cracks. Because of this, it took Mark and his team 3 attempts to make one wave. Once successfully completed the piece goes into a 1000 degree kiln for up to 12 hours to de-stress. This process is called annealing. It allows the molecules of the glass to align with each other and not against each other.

Because the fish are so big, another challenge was to insure the structural integrity of the piece. In other words. the fish had to be able to hold the weight of itself. The design of the mounting system created another challenge in that it had to support the fish by evenly distributing the weight and yet accentuate the graceful form. In each fish, there at least 2000 individual, separate, connections that have to be technically precise to guarantee this structural integrity. The borosilicate glass is a hard glass and therefore extremely strong. So, the artist can use these strengths to his advantage in that he can create a piece, like the waves, out of balance of itself and yet the piece remains structurally sound.

Records?: Mark used new technology and he devised his own technique to produce a work of this magnitude that has never been created before! The fountain is very unique because it is a first. It is the largest flameworked, borosilicate glass, fish sculpture in the world.

Mark also created the glass mosaic wrap around the base of the fountain. There are over 46,000 3/4" Italian glass tiles that were laid by hand. There are 70 hand formed glass bubbles in the mosaic too.

The fish pendant lights and bubbles and the frog and turtle sconces located in the Rusty Anchor, were custom created by Mark. These lights were blown from a 2050 degree furnace containing 500 pounds of molten glass in a process called "off-hand" glassblowing.

The lake scene on the windows in the On the Rocks bar required 100 hours of hand cutting and sand blasting plate glass. The three dimensional effect was created by using torch worked borosilicate glass for the sea gulls, turtles and fish. These were made using the same techniques used to create the fountain sculpture.
 

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You can watch Mark work on other projects by either taking a tour of Louisville Glassworks or take a ride on the free Trolley Hop!