Cortex's beautiful stained glass piece

February 14, 2019 9:20 AM

There's a detailed walkthrough of the process with photos. The shape is a Menger sponge.
posted by Foci for Analysis (24 comments total)

Paging cortex to the red phone. Cortex, to the red phone please.

I think in this case, the call is coming from inside the cortex, as it were.
posted by gauche at 9:30 AM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

Also this is a hella cool piece of art. My wife got into stained glass about five years ago and absolutely loves it. I will show her this tonight.
posted by gauche at 9:31 AM on February 14, 2019

Cortex's brain must be a fun place to walk around inside of. All that math and coding and moderating poop posts. This is beautiful. Great share.
posted by Fizz at 9:31 AM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

It's always good to have a fallback art skill in case a career in the internets doesn't work out.
posted by sageleaf at 9:59 AM on February 14, 2019

(Cortex's Projects post)
posted by ardgedee at 10:08 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I would attend whatever church had that in the window.
posted by bondcliff at 10:34 AM on February 14, 2019 [5 favorites]

Me: Oh huh, I didn't know cortex did stained glass.
Blog: Over the course of six weeks in January and February 2019, I took an introduction to stained glass course....
Me: *looks at final product* *reads sentence* *looks at final product* *reads sentence*
Me: Are you freaking KIDDING ME?!?!?
posted by missmary6 at 10:35 AM on February 14, 2019 [14 favorites]

I like this a lot
posted by MengerSponge at 10:36 AM on February 14, 2019 [21 favorites]

I've been teaching stained glass since I was literally 12 years old (family business) and this is one of the nicest, most approachable explanations I've seen of the Tiffany (copper foil) method. Nice work.
posted by rachaelfaith at 11:15 AM on February 14, 2019 [6 favorites]

That's a gorgeous piece and the walkthrough was so nicely written I am really curious to give it a go!
posted by Iteki at 11:16 AM on February 14, 2019

Heyyyy! It's my thing!

I know I'm basically repeating myself from the link, but y'all this process was so dang interesting to learn, and so much less intimidating in practice than I had guessed! There's lots to learn and plenty that can go wrong, but the basic step-by-step of it felt really dang approachable, and my instructor and the class environment was really great and supportive. If you're curious after this and there's an intro class/workshop in your area, totally go for it; even if you don't particularly take to it, it'll be interesting and you'll come away with a neat looking artifact.

And I know it may seem sort of absurd given my relationship with the site at this point but honestly I still get a genuine happy little thrill when one of my creative projects shows up on the blue. There's nowhere I'd rather it get posted.
posted by cortex at 11:22 AM on February 14, 2019 [38 favorites]

This is so, so cool, and the write-up is really engaging.

What a lovely piece, cortex!

Foci for Analysis, thank you for posting this! I don't think I would have seen it otherwise.
posted by kristi at 11:27 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Nice work, but what I really want is a Menger Sponge Cake!
posted by Pendragon at 11:43 AM on February 14, 2019

While it's a pretty traditional paint on canvass, I quite like Cortex's recent Menger Sponge In Fog.
posted by VTX at 12:26 PM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

You know how I found out about this? On Hacker News!!! Thought it deserved a better place 😂😂
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:52 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

It was an absolutely genius move to wiggly-fy the surfaces of the cube to differentiate between it and the holes. That is some A+ design problem solving. It's so entirely legible, which is something beginners struggle with, in every medium.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:59 PM on February 14, 2019

I would attend whatever church had that in the window.

This would be an an excellent cave decoration for the new religion of mathematics.
posted by bassooner at 2:19 PM on February 14, 2019

This is freaking cool. I took a beginner class years ago and it was so much fun, and I loved how cortex’s description made those memories come alive again for me. And what a gorgeous piece! I hope you have a nice south facing window for it! (Unless you’re one of our antipodal people... in which case, north facing :) )
posted by eirias at 2:23 PM on February 14, 2019

Will this be part of a series of Menger Iterations? I would go to that church.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:31 PM on February 14, 2019

It's excellent work, and I enjoyed the write-up. My father went through a face of glassworking (mostly lamps), and the reading about the solder and flux and glass cutters and all the apparatus took me back to some enjoyable memories.

And when David Eppstein promotes your artwork on Mastodon, you're doing OK.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:24 PM on February 14, 2019

Great piece. (Both the article and the glass)
I took an intro course 20 years ago, and the first interesting thing to me was cutting the glass.
You grow up thinking that glass should not be broken, so there's this mental block or whatever about breaking it on purpose. Then you do it and it's easy. (except when it's not)

The second interesting thing was when the instructor mentioned the parameters of the design- should be rectangular, more or less square, and about a square foot. I think also something about the piece count.
I was like, "you mean I have to design it myself??" I was there to learn how to do it, and had thought I would be given a design.
I settled on a design based on a regular pentagram in a rectangle exactly 1 ft square. This gave me a chance to practice my trig. I may have even used a slide rule.
posted by MtDewd at 5:30 PM on February 14, 2019

Here's an example. It's got a diamond-covered wheel.
posted by MtDewd at 3:09 AM on February 15, 2019

That model MtDewd linked is I think the exact machine I was using, yeah! There's a shallow water reservoir under the plastic grating, and a sponge pinned behind the grinding bit carries water up from the reservoir onto the bit to keep it wetted so the grinding goes smoothly. Pulverized glass accumulated down in the reservoir, and then you clean the whole thing out after a couple hours work and refill the water.

As someone who bloodied more than one knuckle on upright disc sanders back in middle school shop class, I really appreciate how non-injurious the face of that spinning diamond bit turns out to be.
posted by cortex at 8:17 AM on February 15, 2019

This inspired me to look up stained glass classes near me, and now I'm trying to convince my crew of craft-y lady friends to go, too.
posted by joyceanmachine at 10:44 AM on February 15, 2019 [2 favorites]