Skateboard Landscape 2 by Ira Winarsky, 2005

9.75h x 17w x 5d in

For his skateboards, Winarsky created ceramics with iridescent glazes that were combined with wood, rubber and metal. He wanted his ceramic art to change color in different environments, in different lighting conditions at different times of the day. In order to accomplish this, it required the development of a glaze that would behave like a very thin prism. It would reflect some of the light hitting its translucent exterior surface while refracting (bending) the light that enters its internal layers. The light that exits the glaze is broken up into different colors that are iridescent, that are different than the glazes surface. His success came with a few basic colors. Eventually he had hundreds, the result of over 3000 glaze tests and over 300 glaze firings. The glaze colors encompassed an entire rainbow of iridescent colors. Different colors and thicknesses of glaze layers and different numbers of layers create different iridescent effects.