Brazee Street Studio, in Oakley, is an artist community housed in a former tool and die building, which has been renovated into a green building. There are solar panels on the roof, butterfly sanctuary, stormwater runoff is diverted to a rain garden and plenty of plants and grass in the surrounding gardens.

The building houses 25 professional artist studios, Brazee Street School of Glass, and gallery One One, which I first encountered during Oakley After Hours (second Friday of the month during summer).

Brazee offers classes like glass blowing, weaving, cutting, sandblasting (think etching glass) and more so you can learn how to make glass beads or barrettes or pendants.

In glass casting, you can use a found object (wood, plastic, metal) to make an impression in sand, then fill it with hot lava (melted glass) which is put in a kiln for days to create a glass piece, like an ornament.

What these photos do not convey is how hot the studio is, it was a 90 degree day and the studio heats up even more!

My impression was dusted with graphite in order to pick up the detail of a small object

After the hot lava starts to cool, it pulls away from the surrounding sand and then a spatula can pick it up and take it over to the kiln

Each piece spends a couple of days in the kiln

The found objects can be re-used so I donated these Lego men to their collection of stuff

Thank you Brazee Street Studio and Scooter Media for inviting me to learn about hot casting.