It’s been a minute! I’ve been quieter here because I’ve been making, not writing—but I had my first juried show(!!), got a new kiln for my studio, and I’ve been apprenticing with Ed Kirshner (aka the “Plasma Yoda”), so it felt like time for both personal updates and also some nerdy glass/plasma thoughts.

My first time going to the Glass Art Society (GAS) Conference

Think of it as a sort of Disneyland for glass artists. You can meet other glass artists from around the world, meet friends old and new, learn from each other, and get some supplies for your glass addiction practice.

I went because one of my pieces was accepted to the GAS Art Show this year, and Percy Echols II graciously invited me to join the conference as his Board Assistant. So I packed my bags, participated in my first juried show(!), and met a lot of cool, nerdy glass people (if you’re reading this, hi!).

Baby Plasma Artist’s First Art Show

Nothing ever goes smoothly, especially the first time.

In preparation for the show, I learned the lesson that certain plasma pieces are more sensitive to heat than others. The krypton vulva I initially submitted for the show cracked during stress testing (yes I know there’s a joke in there somewhere). Luckily I had a neon version that the conference organizers approved in place of the krypton one.

I’m still figuring out why some of these panels seem more delicate, but I think it’s a variety of factors. Either way, having art in the show was a good experience for getting something out there on display and making it work.

Potentially nerdy glass talk ahead

One thing I’m noticing is that these “neon-style” plasma panels can be particularly sensitive to heat changes, I’m guessing in part because:

1. Unlike more “vessel” type plasma pieces that heat more evenly, the panels that only have certain parts filled with gas heat unevenly. In comparison the crackle panels I make seem less delicate, I think because the ones I’ve made also heat more evenly. Uneven heating at higher temperatures = glass stress = more likely to crack.

2. Higher COE glass like Bullseye (or other soft glass) tends to be more sensitive to these heat changes vs. lower COE like borosilicate.

3. How much impurities I can remove before filling — I did “bakeouts” (high heat in the kiln) and pumped/filled after it was out of the kiln, but I could probably improve that process.

4. Picking a good gas mixture and transformer that’s compatible with the particular piece I’m filling.

… and I’m sure a few other factors that I didn’t include here.

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Using tech to manage the heat 😎

In any case, I decided to develop a solution to moderate the temperature.

Though the neon version seemed to heat up less intensely than the krypton one, I definitely didn’t want this to crack during the show, so I built a sensor setup to maintain a lower, steady temperature while it was on display throughout the show.

Percy shared Amy Lemaire’s sensor controlled power setup, which I used as inspiration for my setup. I ended up doing something a little different because I basically wanted the piece to:

1. Turn on when someone was around.

2. Turn off after a period of time or once it reached a certain temperature.

3. Stay off until it reached a certain temperature before turning on again.

4. Let people know if the piece was cooling off and taking a break.

I may make an Instructables as well or post what I did here (let me know if you want to see it!). I spent a couple weeks developing the setup, choosing sensors, coding, 3D printing components, debugging a few interesting things (like the transformer causing interference with certain types of sensors), and testing it at home and at the gallery itself.

And ta da! Heat was managed!

… Except for one sensor pooping out during the week, which I suppose was a possibility because I tried keeping the piece on throughout the day and night to reduce the need for gallery attendants to do anything with the artwork once it was set. Fortunately the sensor was quickly replaceable via Amazon, and by turning off the piece overnight, the rest of the time was pretty smooth from then on.

Here’s a quick demo of how the piece was set up at the show.

Favorite Talks and Demos

Fortunately a good portion of my volunteering time was being around the neon/plasma demos, which was another huge reason why I wanted to go to the conference this year.

I got to see one of my favorite plasma artists Angie McHale aka @roseglassart do a demo filling one of her plasma figures. I also saw Jacob Fishman, Zoelle Nagib (who runs Lightwriters Neon in Chicago), and Arlo Fishman, a family of neon artists who performed and demoed a neon/family game show that was very unexpected and lovely. I also saw James Akers demo while waxing on about different types of neon bends and what his mentors would say if they saw what he was doing. It felt very Bob Ross, if Bob Ross had a torch and was bending glass instead of welding a paintbrush and palette knife.

And because UT Arlington (where the GAS conference was held) has printmaking in the same area as their glass studios, I got to dabble in some printmaking for the first time and see Kacie Lee (another neon artist!) and her printmaking presentation, where I learned about the delightful risograph duplicator.

New Kiln

I was able to get a big (for me) clamshell kiln to make bigger pieces! I can go up to around 16” pieces instead of the previous 10” limit with my main kiln. Or, as my daughter would say, I can make “mama” and “baby” glass art now.

I can even do multiple smaller pieces in one firing, which blows my mind. Quite exciting. Watch this space as I plan to do some “mama” pieces in the future. 👀

Becoming an Apprentice!

In the last few months I’ve been honored to become an apprentice for Ed Kirshner, the Plasma Yoda. He makes some truly unreal art that when I first saw videos from one of Percy’s presentations last year, I wondered how they were even possible. Now that I’m working with him I’m starting to understand a bit better, though there’s still a lot to learn. I’m helping him however I can continue his art practice while learning, developing, and refining my own techniques.

He also helped me “debug” a glass piece that seemed airtight (and was indeed leak-free, we confirmed!). The pink concha I made last year lit up for the first time, and it was beautiful. 🥲

What’s Next

Now that I have the larger kiln up and running, I have a “mama” glass piece I’ve been planning on making.

It may or may not involve a Pikachu… and maybe a touch of nitrogen if it looks good.

Once I get the idea out of my head and sketchbook and onto glass I’ll post progress here!

Along with further refining my process for making panels, improving my manifold, tinkering with different gas mixtures and getting more ideas working with Ed, I’ve got some things up my sleeve… Watch this space!

Thanks for reading!

If you’d like to support my work, you can follow, tip, or collect a piece through the links below.

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This time last year, I had no idea plasma plates existed or was something I could possibly make. How did I get here?

Long story short, I came across a plasma panel workshop offered by Pittsburgh Glass Center on the topic. Then I remembered when I had met with plasma artist Wayne Strattman, he had mentioned that he used to make these but had sold the equipment he used to make them because it was too much of a hassle and he preferred making the giant tubes and orbs (which I agree, are really, really cool).

Not sure why my brain works this way sometimes, but something about “difficult, annoying process” and “I didn’t want to do this anymore” made me want to dive in and try it for myself. But I’m glad I made the trip because panels have been the main thing I’ve been working on (and enjoying!) the last few months.

What I’ve finished so far

Anime Panel

As I’ve been getting a feel of the medium, I’ve been excited about the potential to do more illustrative work combining different types of materials and techniques with plasma. Working with borosilicate beads (as with this anime test piece) reminds me of more comic book/manga style artwork.

“It’s Right There”

Screenprinting and drawing on fused glass also opens up a lot of fun ideas, like these pieces (I made two versions) where I screenprinted an antique medical illustration of a vulva onto glass, kilncarved a clitoris on top of it, and ran krypton through one version piece and neon in the other piece.

Zion National Park

I’ve also been working on more classic glass fusing techniques where you cut and construct pieces of glass together. I made this abstract piece depicting Zion National Park for a glass show last year, and it was a bit of a saga. It was one of the first pieces I made after the workshop and was still getting a handle on the different techniques. n3rdglass helped me process and fill the piece (it was one of the three I was working on that held a vacuum and worked!), though when I brought it to the show to setup hours before the show opening, the tip of the electrode broke, sending all the neon gas out into the ether and leaving me with a blank piece. I was very sad.

On the flip side, the show curators were very understanding and said if I could repair the piece before the end of the show I could resubmit and display it. That got me motivated to finish my own manifold in less than a month so I could repair and refill the piece.

Rainbow Plasma

And, of course, I can’t forget go without mentioning my “Rainbow Plasma” aka experiments with phosphor. I made this piece on a whim, didn’t expect much from it because it was a simple square, but it’s probably one of my more satisfying pieces so far. I was surprised that the phosphor color still reacted from the neon gas (it was muted compared to argon or krypton, but you can still see some of it) and was the first time I cycled through trying most of the different gases (except the ever expensive xenon, I’m not totally insane yet) and see how they each behaved.

And now here I am with a pile of plasma panels on my desk.

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New experiments

Now that I’ve done a couple of panels from start to finish, I’m doing a few things to improve my process:

1. Reducing kiln cycles

Each firing in the kiln takes about a day, and while a piece is in the kiln there’s only so much I could do with other pieces in the meantime. There are some steps I think I might be able to combine (like putting the glass sheets and the electrode in one cycle, or fixing the electrode) that would reduce the time to make a panel. It’d also mitigate some risk of panels breaking since each firing could increase the risk of a panel breaking (some panels are more prone to breaking depending on the thickness, colors used, etc).

2. Making panels flatter

Currently, most of my panels have an electrode sticking out in the back. While it works, it increases the depth of the piece, and the electrode sticking out puts it at a higher risk of breaking off (as with my Zion National Park piece). I’m trying to figure out if I can improve that design, either by powering the panel another way (using a Tesla coil perhaps), using a smaller electrode, placing it differently, making a stand that can better support and maybe hide the electrode. There are a lot of different variations to try, but basically seeing what works, what works well, and what’s user friendly so that if I hand something off to another person it’s as easy as possible to plug and play.

3. New designs

I’m working through some ideas that may be more challenging to execute, but highly satisfying if I can do it. One of them is an animated Pokemon card powered by plasma! I’m working through some of the steps and details still, but I’ll be sharing my work in progress here as I attempt to figure things out.

Onward

There are a lot of other little experiments and tweaks I’m doing in the background, too. If there’s anything anyone’s particularly curious about, let me know in the comments!

P.S. If you also like “annoying processes” and want a fun challenge, the same plasma panel workshop I took last summer will be offered at Corning Museum this fall with the same instructors Mark Ditzler and Percy Echols II, who are fantastic.

Thanks for reading!

If you’d like to support my work, you can follow, tip, or collect a piece through the links below.

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Since I think most readers here currently may not be familiar with working in neon or plasma (though tell me if you are!), I figure it might be worthwhile to do a birds eye view of how to make something, whether it’s a neon sign, a plasma sculpture, or something in-between.

There are a lot of other details and steps I won’t get into in this post, especially since the process can be different depending on what specifically you’re making. This post is meant to give a basic idea of how this works for someone unfamiliar with the practice and showcase different work from some of the artists I admire who create plasma art to give a flavor of what’s possible with the medium.

I’ll include additional resources at the end you can check out if you are curious to dive deeper into the art and science of plasma.

The very, very basic steps are as follows:

1. Make a glass thing

2. Test and remove impurities

3. Fill with gas

4. Seal the glass thing

Step 1: Make a glass thing

For neon signs (or any neon art), this would be making a design by bending and manipulating a glass tube with heat using a variety of different torches. Some torches are small like hand torches for detail work (like small bends or attaching electrodes), while other torches are larger like ribbon burners that enable you to do larger bends. To complete the piece you’d attach an electrode at each end of the tube. The photograph below by AGF Burner shows a selection of different torch parts you may come across when working with neon.

When it comes to plasma art, the parameters are much broader. Plasma art can be glassblown or lampworked vessels, small fused glass panels, or giant tubes or orbs that you might find in a science museum. They can also be sculptures, like this life-size PlasmaBot by Wayne Strattman or the Plasma Moose Trophy by Percy Echols II and Chris Ahalt below.

Note: You shouldn’t pick just any glass vessel to do this process with — avoid objects with flat or nearly flat sides (the fused glass panels are a bit different depending how they’re designed, so don’t try to recreate on your own without experienced guidance first). From Wayne Strattman: “One caution is to warn people not to fill any piece with flat or nearly flat sides as they may implode! It’s quite dangerous since an implosion has the same energy as an explosion. I had a piece unexpectedly implode when I wasn’t [in the studio] and glass was blown across the room.”

They could also be usable products like pipes, mugs, bowls, or even tables. I’d even consider neon signs/art to be a form of plasma art, since they are vessels, too, but I’m separating them out here because neon is practiced more than other forms of plasma art.

Plasma pieces can have one electrode, two electrodes, or even no electrodes! It depends on how you’re designing it and how you’re going to use it. For example, the above piece by n3rdglass is a functional plasma pipe that does not have any electrodes attached to it, but it’s powered by a Tesla coil base.

No matter what you’re making, the piece cannot have any holes! Holes are bad, it means that the piece will leak and won’t be able to hold any gas, which means that the piece won’t work the way you intend it to. The piece also needs to be durable enough (thick enough walls) that it can withstand the next steps for processing the piece by heating it to high temperatures and holding a vacuum and different gasses.

Step 2: Test and remove impurities

You made your glass thing and you’re happy with it. Now what? It’s time to test whether the piece can hold a vacuum and remove any impurities that are left inside the piece.

To test whether the piece can hold a vacuum (and thereby hold the fun gases you want to put into it), you’ll hook it up to a manifold, which for plasma and neon art, contains a bunch of different things you’ll need to process the piece including a vacuum, gasses, a place to hook up your glass piece, and gauge(s) to view different pressures in the manifold system.

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At this stage, you’ll want to use a vacuum and a very precise pressure gauge to test whether the piece can hold a vacuum. If it does, great! You can proceed to the next steps. If not, that means there’s a leak! In this case, you’ll want to figure out where the leak is coming from and try to fix it. Even a very small leak (seriously, any leak, even minuscule) means that the piece will leak, will not hold gas, and will not work, so precision here is absolutely necessary.

There are a bunch of ways to test leaks depending on the type of leak, which I won’t get into here, but one of the more common ways to detect leaks you’ll hear about is using a high frequency spark coil (also called a handheld Tesla coil). The spark coil generates electricity, and if you can find the leak this way, you may see a visible blue/purple-ish glow from the spark where the leak is. Sometimes though, you can’t find the leak this way but you know it’s there (as is the case with some of my panels sometimes), in which case you’ll need to find other ways to identify and fix the leak.

Once the piece holds a vacuum, you’ll want to remove impurities. This includes things like moisture, air, and any molecules that you don’t want in there that will interfere with the gas you want to put in.

To remove impurities, you’ll essentially want to heat the piece enough to remove them. If you’re making a plasma art piece, this step may already be done if you’ve recently gotten it out of the kiln and it was heated to high enough temperatures to remove those impurities. If you’re making something like a neon piece with two electrodes, which typically hasn’t gone into a kiln, you’ll probably be working with a bombarder, which uses electricity to quickly heat up the piece and remove impurities.

Using a bombarder or using a kiln to “bake out” a piece both can work to accomplish this step — what you’ll use depends on the type of piece you’re making. You can’t use a bombarder for most plasma pieces (they require pieces to have two electrodes, and the quick heating/cooling can break most plasma pieces), and while you *could* use a kiln to “bake out” a neon piece, you’d need a kiln big enough to do so, which for things like large neon signs would mean you’d need something ridiculously big which can be impractical, so the bombarder is usually the way to go for neon pieces.

Step 3: Fill with gas

Now for the moment we’ve been waiting for… making things glow!

Back to your manifold, you’ll have an area where you can have gas tank(s) attached. When the piece is holding a vacuum and connected to a transformer, you’ll fill it with gas.

There is a lot of calibrating when it comes to gas levels and different transformer/power supplies that I won’t get into here — but this is very important to test because you’ll want something that looks cool (of course) but can run without potential for overheating or turning off after short periods of time.

Typically, you’ll see pieces filled with some combination of noble gasses — neon, argon, krypton, helium, and xenon. Each gas produces a different visual effect and color. Xenon you won’t see much of anymore, since it’s very expensive and the prices have only gone up more in the last few years, especially from the war in Ukraine where a lot of the xenon supply comes from.

Other things can be used, too, for different effects. You might see mercury used with argon, especially with neon signs, for a bright blue glow. Some artists have also worked with nitrogen and even very small amounts of air to achieve different effects. Ed Kirshner has experimented with a variety of factors, including different gas mixtures, different Tesla coils, and vessel geometry to create a variety of effects such as the Dancing Mushrooms above (and if that photo is intriguing, check out the videos of his works in action!)

You could also do multiple gas fills within the same artwork, as Angela McHale (Website/Instagram) does with her figure below called Shots Fired, where the figure and the arrows are filled with different gases for different color and lighting effects.

If your piece is coated with phosphors, which is kind of like glowing colors that can react to the gasses, this can also open up more options for colors and effects like with the “rainbow plasma” panel I experimented with at the top of this article. There are a lot of options for designs and it’s one of my favorite parts of the process!

Step 4: Seal the glass thing

You’ve found the right look and everything looks good, which means it’s time to seal your glass piece so you can display it somewhere and marvel at it. To do this, that means you’ll tip off the piece, which is sealing the glass tubing that’s attached to the manifold. You’ll want to be careful here to not break the piece or produce any holes, such as while sealing off the electrode, or overheating other parts of the piece and causing it to crack, since that produces a hole which means that all the cool gasses you just put in leave your piece and you’re left with an empty piece to fix. As long as you have done a smooth tip off and the piece is sealed, when you hook up the piece to light it up, it should work and you’ll have a finished piece!

Additional resources

This was a very high level overview of how to create neon and plasma art. The devil’s in the details when it comes to getting things just right and making sure the piece works. If you want to dive deeper, here are a few places I’d highly recommend and are helping me in my own journey.

The Art of Plasma Book by Wayne Strattman

Wayne Strattman, who’s been working in this art for decades (he’s also the person who got plasma balls and panels into Spencers stores for all of us to marvel at), has put a great deal of what he knows about plasma art into this book. It gets into the details of how to make all kinds of plasma art and is a must have if you want to try making your own work. He also goes over the history this art and science more broadly and features some great artwork from different artists throughout, making it a great coffee table book, too.

Buy from Wayne Strattman (contact him directly)

Buy from Taming Lightning

Taming Lightning by Percy Echols II

Percy Echols II is a plasma artist who’s taken great measures to share his own exploration and learnings in plasma. He’s recorded dozens of interviews with different artists who work with plasma and neon, presentations about the ins and outs of all things plasma art, conducts workshops across the country and at his home base at Pittsburgh Glass Center, and runs his business Taming Lightning which provides a lot of necessary supplies for up and coming plasma artists (including myself). Depending on where you’re at in your journey, if you’re curious to learn more about the art in general and how other artists work, check out some of his podcasts, or if you want to roll up your sleeves and start making, support his Patreon and learn from his posts there, take a workshop, and get your supplies to get started!

Take a neon or plasma class

If you want to get started and are able to, take a class or workshop! Getting hands on experience is so important for practicing and seeing if you like it. Also, connecting with different artists (teachers and students) can be helpful with the learning process, and honestly it’s just nice to socialize and make new friends who you can geek out with over the art.

There are a bunch of different beginner courses scattered across the country that you might be able to take near your home. Neon Makers Guild has a few places here to start. Some glass schools also offer neon or plasma courses during their different workshop periods if you’re able to travel for a week or so or are close by. Some schools include Pittsburgh Glass Center, Urban Glass in NYC, Pilchuck in Washington, and Penland in North Carolina. I’d recommend starting locally if you can, so you can get a taste of the art and see how you like it before diving deeper.

Thank you to Percy Echols II for reviewing this article. Also, thank you to all the artists and businesses for allowing me to share their work in this post! I hope it inspires more people to become fascinated by plasma and neon art. :)

Thanks for reading!

If you’d like to support my work, you can follow, tip, or collect a piece through the links below.

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Some of you know me personally, may remember me from my time as Co-Founder and CEO of Lioness (which I have since left), or we’ve crossed paths at some other point in time. If you’ve come across this or are getting this as an email (assuming you subscribed to my personal website back in the day), I’m creating a Substack to document my journey exploring glass, neon, and plasma art.

Why plasma? Why did I leave Lioness?

One reason is simple — I love colorful, glowy things, and neon and plasma art check those boxes.

Another reason is also simple, but deeper, which is I crave making things.

I did my undergraduate degree in studio art (namely sculpture), and making things is something I’ve always done ever since I can remember. It’s how I ended up making Lioness.

As time went on with Lioness, I became less involved in building product and more involved in fundraising, marketing, management, long-term strategy, and other day-to-day duties — things that are essential to running a business. This sort of experience of a founder becoming less directly involved in their product as the company grows is a pretty common experience. As I became less directly involved in building, I became less happy, though the work was still manageable. The different responsibilities helped me grow, and I was supporting a team, customers, and company I loved and grew from the ground up for nearly a decade.

Eventually though, a few things broke the camel’s back that led to my deciding to step away from the company I started, one major turning point being recovering from a very traumatic and life threatening birth and postpartum that was unlike anything I could have imagined. The things that were okay and tolerable before became intolerable and unsustainable. Though it has been extremely painful to step away from something that was so enmeshed with my identity for most of my adult life, and it was not my plan or desire at all to step away from my work after becoming a mother, especially for a company I helped build, in this particular circumstance, leaving ended up making sense for me.

By leaving, one silver lining is that I’ve been able to go back towards the things I love doing, which is making things. Plasma art in particular is fascinating to me because there’s so much more to explore and experiment with that has rarely been explored, much like my experience with Lioness and exploring and expanding the field of sexual pleasure, which has also been rarely explored. Plasma art is also very difficult to do and get into, and given what I pursued in the past with making Lioness a reality I’ve always liked a challenge. Plasma and neon art require learning a lot of different skillsets in manipulating glass and getting it into a condition where it can hold a vacuum and hold some blend of noble gases (for me, usually neon or krypton right now)—and also have the pieces look good while doing all that.

Will I go back to working in women’s health or sexual pleasure one day? Maybe, I wouldn’t completely rule it out. I’m doing a few consulting projects on the side and open to doing more. For now, being able to make things and do new work that’s not always related to my old work is a breath of fresh air, especially after 10 years of living and breathing it every single day.

What am I working on now?

Most recently I finished a few plasma panels I started a few months ago, which I learned from Mark Ditzler and Percy Echols II during a workshop at the Pittsburgh Glass Center.

The cool thing about this recent set of panels was that I did them all by myself from start to finish, even filling them with gas using my own manifold that I built with my husband — most manifolds for plasma art end up being custom built somehow, it’s not something you can get off the shelf very easily.

I really liked making this anime piece as a first test piece. Ever since I saw borosilicate beads be used to make the crackly effect on plasma panels, the appearance reminded me of comic books and manga, so this is my first experiment playing with this sort of illustrated look.

Of course, I couldn’t help myself to do something that leans on my background, and designed a tongue-in-cheek piece tentatively titled “It’s right there,” a commentary on the disappearance and reappearance of the clitoris in medical education, and overall, a lack of information about this body part. I made two different versions of the piece, each with different gas fills, and I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely a fan of the bouncy krypton.

Before that, I also visited Wayne Strattman, one of the OGs of plasma art who’s worked with the medium for many decades, to take a crash course in making plasma art. We filled some pieces, including a pufferfish that I prepared for plasma fills back in California through glassblowing with the help of Lancelot Fraser. I was particularly interested in the pufferfish because it’s a shape with large and small volumes. The gas can behave differently in different volumes/shapes of glass, so I figured it could be a good first piece to create to see some of those differences.

I can get more into the process and the weeds (good, bad, and ugly) in future posts, but for now, these are a few of the fun, glowy things I’ve made so far. :) If you want to see more pieces I’ve made, I have more over on my Instagram @ThisIsKlinger.

Thanks for reading!

If you’d like to support my work, you can follow, tip, or collect a piece through the links below.

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If you’re curious about what happens behind the scenes to make plasma glass art as a novice, this is where I’ll be documenting my process.

Plasma glass art is a very difficult art form to get into. It requires mastering different techniques and acquiring (or getting access to) different equipment. There are some amazing artists out there who’ve been mastering the craft for decades and getting into the art as a newbie can feel overwhelming. I figure it could be interesting to document my process as someone new to this art form, figuring out how to make a setup and process that works and see where that takes me.

If you just want to see cool glowing things, I also have my Instagram that’s more eye candy, but if you want to read about experimenting with different kilns, building a manifold to pump gas into pieces, and glass breaking, I figured Substack would be a better place to talk about these experiences.

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Who am I?

I’m a recovering tech founder going back to my art roots. In college I majored in Studio Art with a focus in sculpture and digital art. Several years ago I took a neon class at The Crucible taught by the late Christian Schiess. He invited us to an art show that included a variety of plasma art pieces that blew my mind — I wanted to figure out how to make something magical like that. When I stepped away from my company after a difficult birth, I dove into working with glass and figuring out how to make it glow.

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