An Evening with
Lisa Daigle
Boro Snowflakes
Monday, December 20, 2021
Lisa is demonstrating a Snowflake made with Borosilicate glass. She will be sharing her inspiration and how she develops what she creates. In addition, she will share some of her past work. A Folk Artist and Metal Sculptor for more than 25 years, she was immersed in the Folk Art scene before finding Glass.
Drawing on her background and her work in those areas, Lisa was able to translate many of her ideas into glass. She works in Stained Glass, Fused Glass, and on the torch (normally with borosilicate, but uses soft glass when making Beads of Courage).
You can visit Lisa’s website to see more of her work.
After the Demo Update!
(If you missed it, remember that members can watch the recorded demo on the Facebook Members’ Page, check it out! And if you aren’t a member but would like to be, visit the Membership page)
Lisa Daigle is a multi-talented artist who excels in many different art genres. Although she works primarily in borosilicate (commonly known as boro) for her torch work, she also works in soft glass when making beads for Beads of Courage. She also works with stained glass, fused glass, metals, quilting, fiber art and more.
This lovely mask was made as a donation for the ISGB live auction at the Gathering in New Orleans.
Sally Prash became Lisa’s mentor while Lisa began developing the skills needed to make the over 10,000 snowflakes she has made. Later Lisa held the position of Director of The Glassworks Studio for the National Bottle Museum for nearly ten years (which has since closed). She has taken classes from many people, taught classes for many years, and been the teacher’s assistant for other instructors at the Corning Museum of Glass.
In the fascinating demo she shared with us, Lisa made a borosilicate snowflake. She began by giving us some information on real snowflakes, and shared photos of some of her amazing glass snowflakes.
Lisa’s passion for snowflakes came through loud and clear as she demonstrated how she made them with the boro rods. She described each size rod she used and how she got the beautiful refraction points on the arms of her snowflakes.
Knowing that many people work with smaller torches, Lisa made the snowflake on a Minor torch to show us that we can use boro on a small torch. As a result, there may be several of us trying boro in the future. She mentioned that WaleApparatus.com has a sample pack we could try, just a hint from Lisa for those who do not have any boro but want to try it.
Lisa makes many different kinds of snowflakes, hollow as well as solid. She actually makes a mind boggling 1500 Christmas ornaments to sell each year. While in production mode, she makes the “points” seen on her demonstration snowflakeby the bowlful, ready to assemble them into snowflakes when needed.
After the demo, the floor was opened for a Q&A session. Lisa has been working with boro for over 20 years, and freely shared her wealth of knowledge with us on many aspects of working with it. What a great opportunity we had to ask her a variety of questions about this art! One thing she emphasized is to take what we learn from a teacher in a class as a starting point, and make any adjustments needed in order to make what we learned in the class work for us and our equipment.
Thank you Lisa, for sharing your time and expertise with us!
Visit Lisa’s website to see more of her work.
Dragon members have access to this recorded presentation on the Facebook Members Group page.