STEAM Glass Art Project

The goal of the workshop was to promote STEAM education, which incorporates art with the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering and math and produce some kiln-fired glass art pieces. All participating students completed an essay and were chosen based on their essay to participate in the two workshop days. On the first day, students were able to create 3 small pieces of kiln-fired glass. In doing so, they learned about the chemistry, tools and methodology behind kiln-fired glass with the emphasis on equilibrium thickness and the coefficient of expansion. Their new scientific understanding was exemplified on the second day in their discussion of what happened with the 3 small pieces of art they created and the effect of firing these at different process temperatures and the color reactions that took place. Afterwards, their creative problem solving to visualize what the end result of their larger glass art creation would be displayed their new knowledge. It was obvious that they were able to make a connection between science, technology, engineering, art, and math through a creative process and congratulated each other on the finished pieces.