Greece

No glass news this past week or so due to duties of my "day job". I was in Athens, Greece for eight days. I attended a conference and presented a case study for one of the projects I led. One of the by-products of the economic downturn is the reduced number of flights available. This is especially true flying from Detroit, where I live. I have a bunch of upgrade certificates and I wanted to be able to fly business class due to the lengths of the flights. Using these certificates turns out to a lot more difficult in practice than it should. I finally found some flights with long layovers that left on a Thursday and got back the next Saturday.

That meant almost eight full days in Athens. I got there around 11 am local time on Friday, after a long layover in New York's wonderful JFK airport. I had part of Friday and all day Saturday for sightseeing. I did a ton of it, all walking. I'm not in shape and my calves certainly ached after probably eight miles of walking up and down hills, and climbing the Acropolis. Sunday mid-day thru Thursday were taken up by the conference itself - more on that some other time. Thursday night and Friday were taken up with more sightseeing. I had to get up at O'Dark Early (3:30am local time) to get to the airport for the flight to Amsterdam. I'm writing this post from the airline club lounge as I have about five hours of layover here as well. Seems like the number of flights is limited to one or two per day from almost anywhere making connections easier as you aren't OJ'ing it through the airport. If you don't know what OJ'ing it means, you are too young - Google it.

I took a bunch of pictures with my little Nikon camera - they turned out pretty well. I am quite pleased with how they turned out, although each and every one of them will need some Photoshopping touch ups. I did a quick tweak on the attached image of the Parthenon from the base of the Acropolis. I tweaked the contrast, saturation, and removed a crane that was partially visible which was distracting. This was a 5 minute job in Photoshop just to see how things look. I like it.

Exciting Workshop at Corning this Winter

I'm pleased to be attending this week long workshop at The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. I'm really excited as this course combines both the warm glass aspects of fusing with the hot glass blowing world. The only challenge is that the last time I drove from Michigan to Corning in the dead of winter there was a major blizzard. The way conditions were, I wasn't really sure if I'd get there at all - visions of being stranded on the highway with over a foot of snow really were dancing in my head.

Looking at Patterns and Murrine

Giles Bettison | Glassblowing

The class will focus on building patterns using sheet glass to make into murrine canes that can then be used to make vessels, panels, and other objects. Students will observe objects in nature, urban and rural landscapes, and other media, such as textiles and graphics, as sources for color and as composition elements. They will explore the relationship among form, pattern, and color, and will use these elements to arrive at a finished piece. At least one year of glassblowing experience is required.

Giles Bettison is a glassblower living in Maylands, Australia. He earned his B.A. in visual arts from Canberra School of Art in Australia. He has taught and demonstrated his glassblowing and murrine techniques in Europe and the United States, and his work is in galleries and collections around the world, including the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA; the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, Australia; Sabbia Gallery in Sydney, Australia; and Bullseye Connection Gallery in Portland, OR.

Picassa vs. ACD See vs. Adobe Bridge vs. ???

No pictures today. I'm struggling with what image cataloging tool to use. I've been around computers for a long time, so managing files and folders isn't difficult. When I got my first digital camera several years ago it came with a stripped down version of ACD See. I really liked what it provided. It was easy to use and didn't have a lot of extra stuff I would never use. I've changed computers about three times since then. I always installed that version when I upgraded my computer. Recently, I got a new laptop and wanted to install the catalog viewer. I couldn't find the disk. I know I have it somewhere, packed in a blue storage tub somewhere (that's a different story).

I went on-line to see if I could download that version of ACD See. No dice. There was a trial version that had a lot more features. I installed it and immediately got the nag message that I had 29 days left. After the month the trial expired, but then I got a free chance for an extra 30 days. That just prolonged the inevitable. I'd have to shell out $40-$70 to buy a real version. Didn't really feel that I needed to do that. I own the software and the version is just fine, but I have to find the original CD.

I'd heard about the free version of Picassa. I was surprised, but I guess that I shouldn't have been, that it is another Google offering. I did download and install the free service. After a brief learning curve, I feel it give me most of what ACD See did. However, I still wonder what Google is collecting about me and my pictures. There are some quirks, and interfaces to editors such as PhotoShop aren't easy to configure - at least I couldn't figure it out. But it works and at the right price.

But I've been thinking about finally updating my very outdated version of PhotoShop. I use and like PhotoShop 7. That must be ten years old. I've been watching some online PhotoShop tutorials and CS4 looks like it gives enough reasons to upgrade. Now I have another beef - Adobe just this year instituted a policy of only allowing people to upgrade for three versions. That means that 7 to CS3 was OK, but 7 to CS4 is no longer allowed. Now I have to pay a lot more. It may be worth it, but that brings up another question. Should I get one of the "editions" which include a lot of things, or just get PhotoShop itself? There is a several hundred dollar difference. The editions come with Adobe Bridge which is an image catalog/management tool which has lots of features. I probably wouldn't use most of the other tools in the edition. But Bridge does look interesting. Does it give me more than either ACD See or Picassa in terms of image management that I'd find useful for what I do?

Are there other packages that I should consider? Comments?

Now What?

I guess I've been lucky in that I've never really seen much devitrification in my glass work. I think this piece has it - in spades. That is the problem, but first the background. I took Marty Kremer's workshop at Corning this summer. That was a great time and I learned a great deal. We did a lot of strip cutting to use in our work during the week. One of the other participants had some leftovers and gave me a dozen or so strips that were made with stringer and confetti. They were quite nice, but I never really knew what I was going to make with them.

I'd been playing with them in various configurations since early August. I was never quite happy. I had them laying around on the workbench and was complaining to my wife that I knew there was a great piece in the strips, but I was having a hard time finding it. As I laid several of the strips side by side, she remarked that it reminded her of the Native American fabric weavings. I knew what to do.

Rather than stack the strips vertically, laying them horizontally was the key. I put a strip of black iridized glass face down, then a strip of a color - in this case white, black, yellow, and orange were used, a strip of clear, and finally the magic stringer/confetti strip on top. This made 4 layers or about a half an inch thick blank. I was using a 12" diameter ring mold. This is where problem #1 starts. The first picture shows the set up in the kiln.

I have a small kiln at home. It is about 13.5" across, and its a weird 7 sided shape. I thought the round kiln shelves were 13" in diameter. I set the ring down on the kiln shelf and it fit perfectly. However "perfect" in this case meant dropping down around the sides of the shelf and not sitting on it. Crap... I had a piece of fiber or vermiculite board that I'd intended as a kiln shelf but never used. This was gifted from a friend and I wasn't sure of the composition but decided to chop down the corners into a roughly septagonal shape (7 sides-ish). So far, so good. Note that the ring just fits on the shelf - the picture could lead you to believe that the piece is hanging off the left edge.

I laid up the strip construction staring across the diameter of the piece. This turned out to be a good idea. Soon I realized that I actually didn't have enough of the stringer/confetti strips to do the entire piece. In comes problem #2. I was about 4 long strips short. I decided to fill in with a solid color and used a turquoise color that matched some of the stringer color. Nice southwest feel. Finally I had the piece constructed and felt good about the blank.

Into the kiln and all went well. The next morning I opened the kiln and saw a couple of issues. First, the turquoise areas were distracting. The lines between the strips in the pattern area disappeared, but they were there in the turquoise. I knew better. I could have used flat sheets in this area. But that wasn't the worst problem. The surface seemed to be covered with scum. I've never seen anything like it. I was stumped. I guess it is devitrification. But why. My current thinking is that there is something from the new kiln shelf/board that came out when it was fired. I later found out that the board was "new" and had never been fired. Are there some kind of binders that gassed off? Who knows.

The back is quite interesting - in fact, it may be more interesting than the front. These strips all came from the same sheet of Bullseye. I really haven't done much with iridized glass so wasn't expecting the "coats of many colors" look.

Anyway, my dilemma now is what to do with it. Getting rid of devit will require sandblasting and then fire-polishing - which I can do. Are there other things that could/should be considered. Should I cut off the turquoise and create an interesting shape when it is slumped? Or just turn it over and use the iridized surface?

Now what?

Photographing Clear Glass is . . . Hard!

I love the way that clear glass catches the light and plays all sorts tricks with it. Depending on the direction of the light, its color, strength, and the environment the object is in - the piece will look different and unique with each combination. However what you see is not what you get. This piece is just one example. This is a blown vessel that has a leaf motif cut around the "equator" and a highly polished lip/rim.

Now this isn't the best photograph in the world, but it does show some of the problems I've encountered on the way trying to photograph these things. I don't have a "pro" level photo setup with a frosted table, darkened studio, and lights. I do have a photo tent and some decent lights though. This set up is good enough for most of the work I want to photograph. I do have a really high-quality 35mm camera and lenses, but I don't use it much anymore - its just too hard and time consuming, especially if I want to end up with digital images.

So I set about to photograph this piece digitally. This isn't even the hardest clear piece I have to shoot. Note that I have a Nikon Coolpix which doesn't have a couple of manual controls that I would like, but it does every thing else quite well. I take most of the reference pictures of my glass work with it. So it should have been a no-brainer for this piece. But it wasn't.

First, on the plain background I normally use, the camera wouldn't focus. It kept focusing on the background and then the foreground...and on and on. So I got an old table cloth with some texture, and at least the camera could find a focus. I finally fooled the camera into getting a mostly focused shot at this point, but not perfect. And then the color is really off - the table cloth goes from tan to a cool blue - when it should be white.

I like this piece, but I just couldn't get a good enough picture to make it worth the effort in Photoshop to clean up the light reflections, the poor color casts, etc.

Photographing glass can be...hard, really hard.

Leftovers

I find myself with lots of little bits of glass rod left over from a project. Glass color usually comes in the form of a glass rod, typically about a kilo of color. For a blown piece, the amount of colored glass is very small in comparison to the overall piece. The majority is just clear glass. You take a hammer and chisel or something similar to break up the glass rod into smaller chunks to be used in the blown piece. But breaking rods in this way, no matter how careful you are, results in broken pieces that aren't big enough for a single piece. And using multiple chunks of one color results in a piece that has veiling and shadows where the chunks overlap causing density differences in the color.

I don't like to throw things away. See the previous post on that topic here. So in the bottom of my glass color box I end up with a lot of odds and ends. They are still perfectly good. Glass is expensive. Throwing it away seems foolish.

So I decide to make things with these leftovers. This bowl is just one example of using the leftovers.

When I sold it, I had named it "Great Red Spot" because of the red swirling colors that reminded me of pictures of Jupiter and its surface storms.

But now, on further thought, perhaps I should have called it "Ragu" - as in "its all in there".

Cool Shadows

This photo demonstrates one of the reasons I like glass. No other material can change so much depending on the conditions you view it.

I was selling at an outdoor art fair a couple of years ago. One of the pieces I had on display is nice, but I never realized quite how nice until this happened.

It was getting late in the afternoon and the sun was getting lower in the sky. I happened to look at the table that this piece was sitting on. The thing that immediately struck me was the shadow of the piece on the tablecloth. I quickly grabbed my camera and got this one picture. Of course, ten minutes later the sun had gone behind the tree near my booth and the shadow was gone.