Artist: Tawney Reynolds
Berkely, CA
Tawney melts glass into “sundrops” in her driveway in Berkeley, California, using a three-foot-tall magnifying glass (technically a fresnel lens) to focus sunlight, which can produce a ‘hot spot’ reaching 3,000 °F. Shaped simply with focused sunlight and gravity, the molten glass naturally forms an elegant droplet shape. The droplet is broken off at the thin ‘neck’, which is returned to the heat and the sharp point melted into a ball. She uses recycled bottle glass for blues, greens and browns, art glass for other colors. The drops are then wrapped in recycled Argentium silver wire.