Looking Closely: From Lake Michigan Sand to Glass
Jeff Blandford and I share a fascination with Lake Michigan sand.
We both walk along the shoreline and notice it—not simply as part of the landscape, but as a material. And we have both spent time experimenting with chemistry to discover what that material can become.
For me, that exploration has happened in ceramics. I use Lake Michigan sand in my glazes, testing how the minerals in the sand react with other glaze materials and the heat of the kiln. The results aren’t always predictable. That’s part of what keeps me interested.
Jeff has taken that curiosity much further.
He wondered whether Lake Michigan sand could become glass.
That question led to years of research, chemistry and testing as Jeff developed a formula for making glass using locally sourced Michigan sand. Eventually, his experiments produced the beautiful blue-green glass that you see here.
But Jeff didn’t stop with figuring out how to make the glass.
He wanted to know what another glass artist might do with it.
From Experiment to Collaboration
That’s where Eli Zilke and Water Street Glassworks enter the story.
I knew Eli through C2C Gallery, where I represented his handblown glass. Jeff brought approximately 500 pounds of the cullet he had created to Eli and the team at Water Street Glassworks.
Cullet is essentially glass that has already been melted and then cooled and broken into smaller pieces so it can be reheated and worked again.
Jeff had figured out how to make the material.
Now Eli and the Water Street artists could explore what it might become.
And I think that’s an important distinction.
This wasn’t simply one artist supplying material to another. One person’s experimentation became the starting point for another person’s experimentation.
Chemistry as Part of Making
We don’t always think about chemistry when we look at a finished ceramic pot or a handblown glass vessel.
We see Color. Surface. Form. Light.
But behind those things is chemistry.
For Jeff, understanding the silica and minerals in Michigan sand—and what needed to be added to make that sand into workable glass—became part of his creative process.
The same thing happens when I formulate and test ceramic glazes. I may begin because I want a particular surface or because I’m curious about what Lake Michigan sand will do in a glaze. But getting there means understanding materials, heat and their reactions with one another.
There is science behind what eventually becomes something we experience visually.
And sometimes, the chemistry gives us something we weren’t expecting.
Looking Closely
That’s what I find myself thinking about when I look at these pieces of blue-green glass.
Jeff and I can walk the same Lake Michigan shoreline, pick up the same handful of sand and wonder about its possibilities.
I put it into a glaze.
Jeff figured out how to turn it into glass.
Then he handed that glass to Eli and essentially asked another question:
What can you do with this?
Perhaps that’s one of the things we can learn from the way artists see the world.
We don’t always look at a material and ask, What is this?
Sometimes we ask:
What else could this become?
That question can lead us into chemistry, experimentation, collaboration—and occasionally somewhere none of us expected.
