Louis Sidoli Limited Edition

The starting point is to select a photo to work from. The most fun part of my work is going on a photography trips to take photos of the subject matter. I very occasionally work from a stock photo, but I get better results when I work from my own photos, because I can take dozens from all different perspectives to get the exact composition I'm looking for.

I then work from the photos to produce the artwork on my computer, building the final image up in individual layers of color, so that I can then create elaborate stencils for each layer to reproduce the artwork in glass. Working on computer enables me to produce stencils with a level of complexity that would be impossible by hand. You would not immediately guess that my work is stenciled when you see the final piece. The stencil stage is very time consuming and I like to print the artwork out and 'sit on it' for a few weeks to make sure I'm happy, before cutting out stencils by hand, which takes about a week for a single image!

The glass panels are made by painstakingly hand stenciling the several different layers of colour between a sandwich of two layers of glass. It is then fired in a kiln at over 1000 degrees farenheight, to form a single piece of glass. The image is then 'inside' the glass. The colours are created from special glazes I have developed myself (similar concept to pottery glazes) by combining various glass and metal compounds together to create a particular colour. It has taken years of experimentation and experience to produce the colour palette.

Random air bubbles form inside the glass during firing, emphasising the liquid and tactile nature of glass. This also means that no two pieces in the edition are ever identical. The firing process takes over 24 hours and when the glass is cooled down, the finished pieces are expertly finished off and engraved with my signature before bonding them onto specially designed frames to hang on the wall.