Glass Musings

Jelly Beans from Leftovers

2011-09-05T12:09:00.000-04:00

I've got lots of scrap glass. It is taking over the limited work area I have. Without weighing it, I'd guess there are at least 25 pounds of small scrap pieces. When I cut a piece of glass I throw the cut offs that are irregular in shape or too small to store upright in old buckets. I now have about 3 of these. I think the buckets are from old ice cream containers from when the kids were little. See - I never through "useful" things out. They probably held two or three gallons of ice cream and have nice lids and handles. Full of scrap they are in the ten pounds of glass range.

In a bit of a clean up mode a few weeks ago as I was packing up stuff to take with me to Corning. I couldn't just throw all that scrap away. The biggest bucket is of Spectrum 96 glass. I'd built this very wonderful strip cutting machine which I blogged about previously. I tried a few scraps and cut a bunch of half inch squares. I got on a roll and had about a hundred in a few minutes. Now what to do with them? Well, glass wants to be 1/4" and round by its nature. That spurred a thought. Lay out the squares on a kiln shelf and get 'em hot. One round 12" kiln shelf holds about three hundred squares.

After several rounds of firing I had a small bag of these beans weighing about three pounds. I did take pictures of them laying on a shelf - but my stupid camera phone munged the pictures. I fired hot and fast and ran about four batches. I ended up with a bag of glass jelly beans. Square shapes make nice rounded half-domes. Irregular shapes are interesting as well. Now I had to do something with them. Here is a picture of some of the raw beans.

I have some nice fusing rings that fit in my small kiln. I used a 10" ring here. I found out in the first run that you really need to make sure to pack the beans so that they touch other beans in a couple of places. Otherwise you'll get a few beans that aren't stuck together. Here are pictures of the beans packed in the ring and a close up.

After fusing it comes out as a plate with lots of holes - very lacy effect. Note that this version has two beans that didn't fuse. There is one on the outer edge at the two o'clock position. The other is harder to spot.

Final step was to slump the plate into a bowl. I have a wonderful mold that fits my baby kiln. I slumped it nicely but when opened the kiln you can see that the mold had CRACKED. I don't like that, but the glass was fine - very strange. Very costly.

This is a nice low bowl - not sure what I'll do with it, but it is much nicer as a present for someone rather than throwing it into the landfill. From the top you can't see much, but from the side its rather nice.

Corning Workshop with Josh Simpson and Gabriele Kuestner - results

2011-08-31T11:10:00.000-04:00

I spent the last two weeks in Corning, New York in a workshop with Josh Simpson and Gabriele Küstner at the "Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass". The workshop was entitled "Mosaic Glass" which is pretty open ended. Here is the course description - "Students will begin by pulling their own canes, fusing glass mosaic plate and bowl forms, and doing pick-ups in the hot shop. Students will then integrate typical Venetian style surface treatments, such as battuto, incisi, and velato, with work made during the first week. Cold-working equipment, including diamond and stone wheels, horizontal flat mills, belt sanders, and sandblasters will be used."

This really was two different workshops in one two week session. Josh focused on creating various complex canes which can be further combined into even more complex canes or cut into murrine. These would then be used in fusing projects or as rollups in the hot shop.

Gabi's portion was two-fold. First, she introduced us to a technique of using China paints on clear cane and then fusing that into various forms. Second, she showed us various surface treatments.

So enough of the background - here is what I made. I'm not going to post pictures of the 50+ pounds of cane that I made but of a few of the finished pieces.

First, here is the plate I made using the cane painting technique. It is about 10" by 12" in size and half an inch thick. This is the view from the top.

And here is a side view giving a more realistic perspective.

Here is a simple plate I made from some simple canes I made the first day. This one reminds me of a 1950's TV Dinner tray I remember from my childhood!

Here is a simple vase (about 8" tall) that I made way back in 2004. There were some surface defects so it never was as nice as it could be. I used this piece as a test of some of the cold working techniques that Gabi demonstrated. It turned out quite well, but it was a great deal of work - cold working is a time consuming activity.

Finally, here is a simple slumped bowl that I made out of some Bullseye cane. It is quite small - only about 6" across and less than 2" high. Quite delicate and the lip/edge really sets this off.

Well - I guess I lied...

2011-08-01T15:06:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd get a chance to post some more during the late winter, early spring, and now the first half of the summer. For those that follow this blog, you probably are wondering where I've been.

Well, sometimes work and life get in the way of avocations. Glass is not my profession, day job, or anything else. Glass is what I do to get away from all those other things. Unfortunately those have taken precedence over glass work.

I have about 3 or 4 posts in the works which just need some photos to make them complete. This time it really is true.

I'm Back!

2011-02-19T11:17:00.000-05:00

It was before Halloween 2010 the last time I posted. Not that I don't have a lot to say. Well, maybe I don't after all. I'm been extremely busy during the fall and winter. And I've just been in the glass doldrums for a while. I suspect that the extremely cold weather has had a bunch to do with that.

It's been a very cold winter here in Michigan. I think there were very long periods to time when the high for the day was about 10 to 15 degrees Farenheit. My sheet glass and tools are in the garage. Way too cold to even stand there for five minutes. My pole barn (my workshop) which has the coldworking tools is heated, but I keep in down low to probably 45 degrees most of the time. This prevents things from freezing and water from condensing and rusting onto the surfaces of equipment like table saws. I can turn it up and it'll get quite comfortable in about 30 minutes, but walking out there and starting work just didn't seem like fun.

I'm getting ready for spring. And starting to think about glass again. I've sold a lot of pieces at the gallery in Lansing and that is nice to get a check every month for a couple of pieces or so. I need to gear up for glass. I haven't blown glass since November and am looking forward to it some more.

I'm always on the look out for new tools. I find them in the strangest places. I found this one last summer in the local Bed, Bath, and Beyond store.

You are probably asking - what is the "tool" that idiot is blathering about. Well, its the "Baking Mat". It's a baking sheet made of silicone. It is meant to line a cookie sheet and prevents baked items from sticking or burning. If it can stand 450+ degree temperature then it should be pretty durable. I can't remember the dimensions but it is a "Full Sheet" size, 17" x 34" or thereabouts.

I found that clay doesn't stick, wax doesn't stick, and it cleans up very easy. I've actually poured hot wax directly on the sheet. I built dams from clay, and then poured the hot wax directly into the dammed area. Once cooled it was completely flat and perfect. Peeling off the clay dams was easy and then the wax model just popped off. No fuss, no muss.

One more silicone item I picked up was a mini-muffin mold. I didn't get the full size muffin mold but that will be a future acquisition. The mini-muffin mold makes a dozen small muffins. I just pour leftover wax into the mold, let cool, and then pop out discs of wax. These can be easily stored and re-melted in the future. You can see one of the wax muffins off to the right side of the mat in the picture.

Amphitheatre - or is it - Ampitheater

2010-10-13T17:50:00.000-04:00

I wanted to do some finish work on this piece before I posted it. Unfortunately life, or in my case, work, got in the way. I cast this in the Daniel Clayman class at Corning last month.

It turned out as I expected, actually better than I'd expected. This was a simple form that was inspired by my trip last year to Athens, Greece. I loved looking down at the amphitheatre from the Acropolis.

This obviously isn't a direct recreation of what I viewed. Rather this is my interpretation given the limitations of what I could cast and finish in a two day firing cycle. There is some flashing and minor imperfections that a little, make that a lot, of coldworking will fix.

Time to get busy...

Future Fossils

2010-09-22T15:47:00.000-04:00

When I was preparing for the Daniel Clayman casting workshop at the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass earlier this month, I needed to show up to the workshop with a relief ready to cast. I was struggling to come up with an idea. I think of reliefs as being two dimensional even though they are technically a three dimensional thing.

For some strange reason, I started daydreaming about fossils. I really like fossils of animals, fish, reptiles, and vegetation found in rocks. I can't imagine the joy of someone breaking open a rock and finding a trilobite in perfect form, preserved for millions of years. My mind wandered and had a very strange thought. The fact of mind wandering isn't so strange for me. The strange part is where it wandered to. I was thinking of the types of fossils people of the far future would find from our civilization. I thought that all the hardware - nuts, bolts, screws, wires, and other metal found in our houses, cars, toys, and other elements of our daily lives - would be the fossils of the future. Thus, "Future Fossils" were born.

Above is a picture of the first "Future Fossil", which was created during the workshop. It is shown standing up and embedded in a chunk of clay. That made the most sense as a quick solution to the photography problem and seemed more fitting than a plastic display stand.

Here are some photos taken on my mobile phone showing some of the steps along the way. First up is the original clay model. Here I took a bunch of parts from my workshop, rolled out about a half-inch thick slab of plasticine (non-hardening) clay, and then pressed the hardware into the clay.

This is sitting on a piece of melamine board that has been waxed to prevent it from sticking completely and can get it off once the mold is created.

Next up is the preparation of the mold. Here I'm doing a hand-built mold rather than a poured mold. In this picture, I'm using compressed air at a very low pressure (about 3-5 PSI), to gently move the plaster/silica mix around the surface of the clay.

The purpose of doing this is to eliminate the tiny air bubbles that get trapped on the surface and cause issues in the mold.

I didn't take a picture of the final mold before removing from the supporting board, nor one of the mold with the clay still in it. One trick we learned is how to use compressed air at much higher pressure (40-50 PSI) to help remove the clay original. Note that the clay came out perfectly. However if you look close, you'll see I still didn't do a great job of eliminating the air bubbles as there are many little pock marks on the surface of the mold.

The next picture shows the mold sitting in the kiln and filled with a turquoise blue colored glass frit. Even though I've mounded it up, you can see that the final fossil isn't as thick as I'd have liked it.

I leveled the mold in the kiln and took great care to make sure it was level before I filled the mold. I think it must have been moved or adjusted based on the final result, where it is slightly thicker on one edge than the other.

All in all, I'm quite happy with my "Future Fossil #1".

New Work - Now Including Pictures

2010-09-10T14:03:00.000-04:00

I've been making a new form for my blown work. This form isn't new - I can't say I invented it, but it is new for me, and I'm hoping to apply my own spin to it. On a side note about inventions in glass, I spent last week at the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass. I always tour the museum while I'm there studying. The objects from four and five thousand years ago show techniques and forms that are still considered "fresh" today.

Anyway, these new pieces are much taller than my previous work, most are around 24" tall. My little tabletop photography light tent won't accommodate such tall work, being limited to a little over a foot tall. Taking pictures of clear/transparent work is also very difficult. Thus I haven't posted any pictures as they weren't good enough to show what I envision for the work. Corning workshops provide access to a very good photographer for a very nominal fee (basically free). She is great. I took two pieces for her to photograph. Below are the results.

Now wasn't that worth the wait?

World's Tallest - Revisited

2010-08-28T15:14:00.000-04:00

A week or two ago I posted an entry about what I called "The World's Tallest Vase". You can read about that part of the story here. Well to my surprise it actually survived the annealing process. When I went to the studio to pick it up, I was more than shocked. It was intact, quite uniform, and actually pretty nice.

I couldn't photograph it in my usual set up. I have a small table top tent and lights that most of my glass work fits into quite nicely. However the tall pieces I'm doing now will require much different approaches to photographing. While I contemplate that process, I thought I'd capture a snapshot of the piece and post it here.

This is a little hard to see in the photo. It's a nice steely blue color and fairly uniform the entire length of the glass. That doesn't usually happen. The lip is slightly darker as it is a little bigger than the long stem. The bottom still needs grinding in order for it to stand by itself. However, I don't think it will be standing on a table by itself any time soon. If it gets displayed at all, it will have some sort of mechanical help to stand up. Perhaps I should cast a hand grasping it and have that anchored into the wall.

By the way this thing stands 53" high. That is four feet and five inches! Now, that is certainly the tallest thing I've ever created.

The World's Tallest Vase?

2010-08-15T09:12:00.000-04:00

I don't have pictures yet, as the piece is still in the annealer. It certainly won't be the world's tallest, but it will be the tallest piece I've ever made. Or is it the longest? Either way it is big.

So what is "IT"?

I was glassblowing yesterday, during my normal time slot. I am making a new series of tall vases (vessels?) that have curved, swooping tops. Not entirely ready to post pictures, nor do I have the ability to make a decent picture of them. Anyway, the first piece I made was a very nice vase about 16" tall. The only problem is that is was very plain and had pretty thick walls. I was having a little bit of trouble and accidentally bumped the pipe ever so slightly. BONK. The piece hit the floor. It survived and I thought I could rescue it. Rather than just putting it into the annealer - it would have been a good piece of "Flintstone-ware", or a good blank for carving and sandblasting. But no, I was going to be a hero and re-punty the thing and finish it according to plan. Almost made it too. Got very near the end and the cold spot where it was resting on the floor for a few seconds cracked. Oh well - 45 minutes wasted.

The second piece was much nicer. I followed the same steps, but this time things were looking up. However, another problem occurred. I put bases on the tallish vessels. This is done with a "cookie foot", basically a patty of glass. Now I've made hundreds of them and usually pretty good. This time I wasn't. I did some things to correct it, but it wasn't going to be one of my best pieces. My glass blowing partner, John, said "Keep working, you never know how it will look finished, and you can cold work it later". OK, keep pushing through the piece.

It was very hot and humid yesterday, actually the entire last two months, and I just wanted to finish the piece. To stretch the neck, you get it pretty hot and swing it out. I wasn't paying attention and got it rip roaring hot. Usually, I don't work that hot as it is easy to lose control of the piece. I started the stretch and it was going quite well. Going fast, too. I kept letting it drop down. The base of the piece is six or seven inches across and the neck tapers down to about an inch and a half. And there is a lot of neck. Kinda like a giraffe. There is a a wide mouth at the very top which is probably three inches wide.

Getting it knocked off the pipe was a lot easier than I thought. Getting it into the annealer wasn't. The annealer is about 54" long and 24" wide, and pretty deep. There were already some big pieces in there so there was about 48" of length to put the piece. I put it in and it didn't fit. I had to lean it up against the far wall. At least I avoided placing it against the elements! I don't think it'll slump, but who knows.

I have no idea if the thing will even stand up, or be worth finding a way to stabilize it. But it sure was fun, and it rates a story here. A real conversation piece.

It's Corning Time Again

2010-08-13T18:00:00.000-04:00

Time is fast approaching for my semi-annual trek to one of the mother land's of glass and glass instruction - The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass. I've been accepted into Daniel Clayman's "Mold Making for Glass Casting" workshop. Here is what the official description of the session

This course is intended for sculptors wanting to explore kiln-casting glass using plaster molds. Students will explore the how and the why of a broad array of casting concerns. Using the students' work as a platform for demonstrations, the course will cover a range of topics, including mold recipes, wax-working techniques, rubber mold making, glass sources, kiln requirements, and more. Students may make an object or two, but the emphasis will be on learning the process, not leaving with completed objects.

The description also says some sculpting skills required. I'm not entirely convinced right now of this. Of course, this is what I always think prior to attending a workshop!

I've known about this since early May. Every week I've thought about what I want to make / learn in the session. But there always seemed to be time for it later. Well, looking at the calendar, I have a little over two weeks to get off my butt and get ready.

As inspiration, I'm posting this picture which was in the Corning catalog for the summer sessions this year.

I'm not going this big or anything close. We've been limited to a size of about 6" on a side. Given we only have a week, casting anything larger isn't feasible.

Time to get going...

What a "Fair"

2010-07-30T10:53:00.000-04:00

I've been attending the "Ann Arbor Art Fair" for 35 years now. I put it in quotes as there isn't one fair, but a whole bunch - four official fairs, and a bunch of offshoots, street and parking lot vendors, etc. I've always gone on Friday afternoons of the four day, Wednesday to Saturday, event. In fact, I met my wife on a rainy Friday evening during the fair a long time ago.   But that is another story.

The whole month of July here in southeast Michigan can be classified with one word - "HOT". The fourth week of July is usually pretty warm, but this year it was significantly hotter than usual. The heat index Friday afternoon was at about 105 degrees (F). That is pretty hot. It was high 90's plus very high humidity. Not really looking forward to walking around outside on the asphalt streets and amongst the throngs of people. But we went.

We knew we wouldn't see everything. In the old days we could spend five or six hours walking around and seeing almost everything. These days as walking gets harder and the stamina falters, we have to pick and choose. Given the heat, we changed up our usual route. After 35 years, you have a game plan and routes that let you see the most without backtracking. We saw some interesting stuff and spend about two and a half hours slowly moving through the streets.

One thing that has me puzzled though is how little new there was. Back in the "good old days" - 80's and 90's - it seemed like there was always something new, or at least something that you saw a lot of people buying. I really am tired of seeing the same photographs, paintings, ceramic pots, jewelry, and even glass. We haven't bought any art in probably the last five years. Some years we'd come back with half a dozen items, some years it would be that one piece that really grabbed us. But we don't seem to find that any more.

I had rained earlier in the day on Friday, and there was a strong wind storm on Thursday night. One of the streets is known as "tornado alley" as the winds really play havoc with the tents. I heard a lot of people lot work who hadn't prepared properly for that condition. I remember one year we were on tornado alley when the winds and rain came. I remember the sounds of glass breaking and the sight of tents flying down the street. It was really bad. I don't have exact statistics, but we know in our hearts that it will rain during the fair on Friday. It may be a small shower or heavy downpour but it WILL RAIN.

We were tired and sweaty around five o'clock so we decided just to go to dinner. We have a favorite Greek place that we always go to. Since we were on the other side of the town due to changing up our route, we got in the car and tried to drive over. Parking on that side of town wasn't looking good and we just decided to go to the Red Lobster out by where we live. The air conditioning in the car sure felt good. Then about five minutes later the heavens opened up. There was the "art fair downpour" we'd been expecting. It was fun watching the people scurry like cockroaches when you turn the lights on! I know that feeling - we've been there too many times to count. It only lasted 10 minutes but really did help cool down.

Get into the restaurant and then the lights go out. It was only about 10 seconds and they were back on, but then another storm came. This one was much bigger and the winds were very strong. That one lasted about 30 minutes and since we were inside weren't paying much attention. Driving home the six miles you could tell that the closer we got to home, the worse it was. There were trees and leaves and branches and trash cans everywhere. Pulling into the driveway it looked like a war zone. Of course, there was no power. It was still very hot, and now really humid. I didn't see much damage until I went to the far side of the house and saw this.

There was a nice 12 foot high ornamental flowering cherry tree in this area, now it is tangled up with some branches that fell from the 70 foot oak trees that are nearby. The clean up task will begin. There are leaves and branches everywhere. I suspect it'll be a couple of weeks before things look normal again.

Happy Belated Birthday - Glass Musings!

2010-07-18T09:21:00.000-04:00

I was planning on posting this a little bit closer to the actual day when I celebrated one year of writing this blog. Like everything else this summer, I haven't done much blogging. This is one of the strangest summers in a long time. The heat and humidity, along with the raft of thunderstorms and tornadoes have left me in a mood to not do very much. Thus, I'm two weeks past due in celebrating.

July 5, 2009 was the first post. My intent was to post a few times per week. I posted 66 entries in 52 weeks - actually 54 weeks given the delay. That works out to 1.2 posts per week. Far short of the 2 or 3 I planned. Looking back, I started off pretty good, got some good spurts in, and now have lost steam. I don't see that coming as a result of not wanting to continue to write about my adventures in glass land, just a reality that I have a lot of things to do. Glass has taken a back seat since early this spring and thus everything related has fallen by the wayside.

I plan on writing more in the coming days and weeks. I know I've said that before, but I have a few unfinished projects that I need to complete. I have some new blown glass work that I'm pretty happy with as well. Stay tuned.

What Happened - A Frustrating Result

2010-07-04T16:20:00.000-04:00

Well, here is a really strange result. I created a strip-cut blank and a incorporated some of the murrine tiles I made a while ago. It is all made from Bullseye glass so I'm pretty sure it is all compatible. I spent several hours cutting the strips, alternating clear and opaque ones which looked really nice when setting up the layout. I used murrine that had clear glass centers surrounded by an amber brown color. These made little windows or stepping stones across the piece.

I fused the blank in a 12" ring. It came out perfectly - just as I expected. I got some new slumping molds for Father's Day. One was the deep sided bowl. This is a 12" diameter mold across the top but only a few inches deep. This should have worked perfectly in my small kiln. In a nutshell - IT DIDN'T.

The picture above is what I saw when I opened the kiln. I peeked when the piece was heating up to make sure everything was OK. At a little over 1000 degrees (F) it was perfectly fine. It was late so I went to bed, around midnight, knowing that it would take most of the night and the next morning to slump, anneal, and cool.

A couple of notes, I had a good kiln wash on the mold. I was happy and it was uniform. Note that the glass came out perfectly fine from the mold and only had a slight dusting of kiln wash residue which wiped right off. The blank was perfectly centered in the opening and was very level. The mold has an indented bottom on the outside so I didn't think it needed to be up off the kiln floor. The only other thing which is a little unusual is the placement of the thermocouple. It is about 3/8" from the side of the mold. It isn't touching the mold but its placement meant I had to keep the entire set up slightly off center in the kiln.

Here is a more close up picture of the break. Note that the piece seems to have slid down the sides of the mold unevenly as one side is higher in the mold than the other.

I used the following schedule which I felt was conservative. I peeked in the morning when the temperature was about 750 and the piece was cracked.

Step   Rate    Temp (F)   Hold
1    100    1000 60
2      240      1240         30
3    9999 900    180
4      50        700           0

The picture below is a close up of the crack from the underside. Note that it is very smooth and fire polished.

So I'm really at a loss to explain why this happened. It isn't a compatibility issue that I can see. All the white, red, and clear strips where full length strips so there was no piecing together. Seems to me that since the edges of the crack are smooth that the piece cracked sometime after the 1000F mark but before the full fuse.

Help? Thoughts? Ideas?

I'm Not Dead!

2010-06-11T14:53:00.000-04:00

I've been busy. This past five weeks have been pretty crazy. I realized it had been over a month since I'd posted. In fact, it has been five weeks for both posting and glass in general. Wanted to drop a note here to say "I'm not dead". I'm alive and kicking. Not much happening in glass, though.

I am trying some new things in blown glass. Some really tall, thin necked pieces. I hope to take some pictures this weekend and I'll post those. In the fusing world, I made one piece in the past month using the "strip" method. No - get your mind out of the gutter - it doesn't have to do with taking off ones clothes. It is the method of cutting lots of strips of glass, standing them on edge, and using them to make interesting patterns. I used some of the murrine I made this winter. I'll never get used to how many strips you need for a piece. It took a lot more time (and glass) to make the blank. I haven't slumped it yet and don't have a picture. Again, that is on the plate for this weekend.

By the way, the title of this post, "I'm not dead", comes from one of my favorite movies - "Chilly Scenes of Winter". Here is the link from the Internet Movie Database. Note that they've changed the name to "Head Over Heels" which makes no sense. The classic line comes from the mother, played by Gloria Grahame, who always responds to her son's question, "How are you?" with "I'm not dead". I've loved that line since 1979 when the movie first came out.

Floating Away

2010-05-02T10:42:00.000-04:00

Been quite busy lately and haven't had time to post. A while ago, I posted about some float (window) glass that a buddy of mine obtained quite cheaply. You can follow that thread here and the first test results here. I certainly was amazed by the results which wasn't at all what I expected. I posted my results and asked some questions over at the Warm Glass forum. The answers told me that I should have expected the results. But I wasn't happy. The holy grail of cheap clear casting glass was theoretically in my sights and I wasn't giving up quite so easily.

Off to the kiln for round two. Since the first test wasn't flat, and took way too long to grind, I decided to fire the test piece longer and hotter. The test pieces are 8" rings about 1" thick. This is something that easily fits in my little kiln, doesn't take forever, and is easily repeatable. I doubled the length of time for the melt and added 150 degrees to the top temperature. Glass I'm used to would have been in a puddle on the floor at those times and temperatures. Here is a picture of the second test.

Now this is strange. It's hard to see in this picture but the glass went completely milky white. The previous piece had "veils", but this piece is completely opaque. It was definitely flatter, but certainly isn't smooth. The bottom was pretty good, but this still has a long way to go before I could say I have an 8" flat disc. My guess right now is that even longer/hotter wouldn't get where I want to be.

That left another test to do. What if I took the glass, crushed it into frit, and then cast that. That is a good way to work with other types of glass. So I put a bunch of the float cullet in the kiln, heated it up to about 1100F, and then quenched the hot pieces in a bucket of water. This sets up a bunch of internal fractures in the pieces, but they don't shatter immediately. Hitting them with a hammer creates a fairly uniform gravel (frit). The best way to describe it, is that they are like fat grains of rice.

I weighed the first test piece which was 2.5 pounds. I then weighed out the same amount of the frit, so I'd have a good comparison. Of course, the frit mounds up as there is quite a bit of air spaces in between each of the grains. It should all melt down flat. Off to the kiln with a schedule that I thought would work, based on previous frit casting. Boy was I surprised.

The picture is sort of out of focus, so sorry for that. But you get the idea. This looks like the surface of piece of sandpaper enlarged a hundred times! This isn't flat, not even close. However the color is much more uniform, even if it is white. That I expected based on previous frit casting with transparent glass. I wasn't ready for the surface texture. Longer and hotter for this piece is needed as well.

Finally, I had a friend polish the first test piece. This is quite nice. I like the veiling effect, but you certainly see the shape outline of the original cullet.

Well, its off to consider other options and tests.

1000 Visitors and Counting.

2010-04-12T13:43:00.000-04:00

Wow - I first created this blog on July 20th of last year. I didn't know if anyone would visit or come back a second time. I started with Google Analytics from day one to track the reading of this blog. For the last week or so, I've noticed the number of users creeping up.

This morning marked a milestone for me. As of today, 1000 different people have visited the site. Of course, some of these may be the same user coming from different computers. But this is still a large number and I've very pleased that so many people have cared to see what I have to say. And that people come back for more - that is even more satisfying.

I guess I need to post more often.

Casting - How do I Account for These Results?

2010-04-02T12:20:00.000-04:00

The first results are in. The first casting/fusing of the nice, cheap Guardian float glass is complete and I'm at a loss to explain what happened. The first part of the story is here. This first picture is a bucket of cullet. It was approximately $4 for 40-50 pounds. Great price.

Even in the bucket, this stuff looks great. Even though it is a "float" glass, the type of glass used in windows, it doesn't show the usual greenish tint. The picture below shows some pieces laid out on a paper towel, to give you an idea of how crystal clear it is.

So I piled up a bunch of this stuff in a 9" casting ring in the kiln. It probably was a little over two inches high in most spots. I knew it would melt down and I was going for about an inch and a half in thickness. I understood that there would be lines and ghostly images where the various chunks where, but overall I thought I'd get a fairly transparent disc of glass. Instead this is what I got.

This was melted at 1500 degrees (F) for 120 minutes. The surface is quite bumpy still, and you can clearly see the outlines of every chunk of glass. The texture is fairly smooth, and doesn't feel like devitrification, which in my experience is quite rough and "crackly". The bottom is fairly smooth as shown below.

The bottom is a little closer to what I expected, but still it is very cloudy - not clear at all. Anybody have any thoughts? I haven't worked with float glass and am a little puzzled.

Cheap Casting

2010-03-28T14:21:00.000-04:00

I am finally going to get more serious about casting glass. I have several ideas, which I won't detail here now, but stay tuned. More in the coming weeks. Anyway, I needed to find a way to test out some ideas without breaking the bank. Really nice glass can cost $8 to $10 per pound - or even more. That is just too much for me to waste learning techniques and trying different things.

One of my friends found that the local glass factory sold broken stuff for next to nothing. I won't give the place away as I don't want the convenience and low cost to be taken away! I think the price is under $0.10 per pound. This glass comes in half-inch thick chunks. I'd say that the average is from about 1" square to 3-4" pieces. The glass is very clear, even though it is a float glass which is usually found in windows. The nice part is that there isn't any green tint that is associated with this type of glass.

I took my 9" ring and loaded it with about 5 pounds of the chunks. It is in the kiln now. I'm trying to see how well it melts and what kinds of veiling or other remnants show up. Stay tuned for the update when it comes out of the kiln tomorrow.

Seconds

2010-03-14T11:27:00.000-04:00

I finished a big chore of pulling out all of the glass I have and sorting, cleansing, and other spring cleaning tasks about a month ago. You can read about it here. This resulted in my living room having three areas of glass being displayed. In a similar theme to the movie "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", I have - "The New, The Decent, and The Seconds". The "New" are the Rothko's that I've been making over the past nine months or so. See them here. The "Decent" are those that I either want to keep personally for now as I like them too much or would be stars of the show in an art fair. Finally there are the "Seconds". These are the pieces that I like or are good enough to sell, but aren't the best. These would be things that I'd sell cheaply at art fairs or during a planned "yard sale" later this spring. I like to have things available that are less expensive than normal. Right now, they are occupying a large portion of my living room floor. Here is a picture. Wanna buy them?

A Forest of Rothko's

2010-02-28T11:57:00.000-05:00

I've blogged previously about the Mark Rothko-inspired pieces I've been blowing here. I've completed quite a few and put them all on a display shelf to try out different arrangements.

I made the display shelves as well. I been doing woodworking for about thirty-five years and may be better at it than glass! This display is a little over three feet tall and almost five feet wide.

It is interesting to mix and match the various colors and shapes. The speckled ones on the top two shelves are very different depending on how you view them. Looking straight down into them, especially the flatter ones, give wonderful reflections.

There is a lot of work represented here - there is at least two hours into each piece, some as much as three. Blowing them takes about 20-30 minutes max, and then upwards of two hours of cold working (grinding & polishing).

I feel tired now.

Stripping . . . for Fun and Profit

2010-02-21T09:41:00.000-05:00

OK, so that title is a little misleading. Maybe I'll get some new readers that way when they are Goggling the subject. Anyway, a lot of the fused glass I am making requires a lot of glass strips to be cut out of sheet glass.

This is for pieces such as "Orange Bowl" shown here and even the murinne pattern bars I've recently started making. The problem is that a piece may require hundreds of strips of glass, all the same width. In this case, these are half-inch wide strips. These are then stacked together on their edges to make the layup for fusing into a single blank. Cutting that many strips is a real PITA (pain in the you know what). Cutting them all the same size, within maybe 1/32" is even more of a PITA.

I've got a ghetto set up where I use a very good strip/circle cutting tool but it is limited to cutting one piece at a time and therefore way too slow. The accuracy is OK, but not really what I need. I've seen some commercial strip cutting tools that are many hundreds of $. That isn't in the cards, and after seeing them I've always felt I could build it myself. I just didn't have the whole thing worked out in my head of how I could do it with stuff I could get at the big box stores such as Lowes or Home Depot, or even order from Graingers.

That is when I happened upon a post on the Warm Glass site advertising plans for a strip cutter that can be made with the source of parts being Lowes. And they only wanted $10 for the plans. The claim was that it would cost about $50 to build. The bonus was a link to a YouTube video showing the strip cutter in action. Perfect. Off to PayPal I went and after purchase, got a secure link to download the PDF of the plans. All I can say is I'm impressed with the quality of the plans, the clear pictures, and most importantly and exact parts list with part numbers for the pieces I'd need.

Hi Ho, its off to Lowes I go. I spent $41 on parts. I had the rod already, which was a very nice piece of stainless steel, which probably cost $10 with shipping. Finally, I needed a bed/table for the thing. I had some old plywood which seemed too rough. I had a nice sheet of plexiglass that was the right size, but didn't think it would take the abuse. I usually have MDF around, which would have worked, but nothing in the right size. So one more trip to Lowes and I got a sheet of particle board covered in melamine for $30. That is for a 4' x 8' size, and I only used about 32" square, so less than 1/3 of the piece - that's the final $10. The glass cutting head is the key to all of this, and a replacement Toyo cutter head (one of the best) is $20 with shipping. So in reality, this thing is closer to $80, but you might get by with a little cheaper if you had some of the things on hand.

I can easily cut full sheets of glass using this, and I saved about $300 by doing it myself. Here is the finished product:

And now for the closeup:

If you want/need on of these things, buy the plans and do it yourself.

Photosensitive Glass

2010-02-17T14:48:00.000-05:00

Here is a picture of an interesting process involving hot glass (blown) work. This could also apply to fused glass work although I haven't tried it.

This piece is a blown platter that is about 16" in diameter. The intent was to blow a rondel, a round platter that doesn't really have any dips in the center and almost perfectly flat. That is one of the ways they made window glass in the "good old days". Anyway, this one is pretty good for me. There is a slight depression in the middle which is about half an inch deep. The interesting part of this is that you use a special glass color which is clear, but photosensitive. Thus it does need to be kept in a special wrapper until you are ready to use it. You blow the blank and then anneal/cool it. The annealer shouldn't be opened much as the piece is light sensitive and will pick up some darkening, however it is a very large exposure time.

The photo above shows the blank after it came out of the annealer and ready for its exposure. I took a bunch of egyptian symbols as well as a photo of me and a colleague on horses at the Great Pyramids at Giza. I just taped these on the glass and even used a Sharpie to write my name and date on it. We had to work in a dark room with a safe light, just like old fashioned black and white photographic dark rooms.

This was then taken outside. A very strong ultraviolet light, the sun being a great source is needed to expose the blank, just like a photograph. We left it outside at high noon for 45 minutes as there was some brief clouds. Normally 30 minutes in bright sun should be sufficient.

This is then placed in a cold annealer, brought slowly up to working temperature (around 1100 degrees), and then annealed again. This sets the image on the blank. You can see in the top picture the color difference. There is an interesting color cast to the developed image and overall blank. The original blank was a very pale blue, and this developed piece is a medium amber color. It would take a lot of practice to figure out just how to make use of the coloring.

Overall, I was impressed with the detail you can obtain using this process. I don't think I'll do it a lot, as it does require special glass and a means to expose it, but it sure is fun to contemplate.

In the Frame

2010-02-12T20:53:00.001-05:00

One late afternoon last summer in Marty Kremer's fusing workshop at Corning, I found myself having a lot of leftover pieces of glass and wanted to do something different. I had an hour or so before dinner and really didn't want to start a typical strip cut piece. This is what I came up with from the table scraps. I finished most of it there, but finally got around to cleaning up the edges and taking a photo. The photo really sucks but I didn't feel like getting out the tabletop photo tent, lights, and tripod. So I just spread out a piece of wrinkled fabric and made a quick snapshot.

I had a bunch of white and clear strips left and was playing around with them. I thought that the alternating patter of the clear and white made a nice pattern and a reminded me of matting on a picture. That spawned the idea of framing something interesting.

The pattern bars are actually four strips of a communal pattern "sheet" we made in the class. That was interesting. We set up a 20" square on a kiln shelf and surrounded it with kiln furniture. That was lined with fiber paper. Then the class went to town in the scrap bins filling the interior with random cuts and colors about 2" thick. I've done a lot of bars, but never had seen a sheet done like this. The result was a little less than an inch thick and 20" square. That was sliced up into half inch thick bars, 20" long. I selected a few that I thought had a cool pattern and graduation of warm to cool colors.

Two pairs of book matched strips were then laid down. The original intent was to fill up the interior of this frame with the pattern bars, but even I couldn't take the jumble of color. I settled on the two pairs you see here. There was still an open area and I was getting hungry. There was a nice piece of chartreuse but not nearly enough. Rather than cut up in strips, which I knew wouldn't be enough, nor have the look I wanted, I opted to lay it flat. This is only one layer of chartreuse and there were three layers of clear underneath it.

Due to the way we were loading kilns, I think this one got bumped a little. I had to trim the border a little so it isn't perfect, but it's OK. I had a lot of kiln furniture surrounding the borders, but I probably should have used a little more. I slumped it in a low square bowl mold and was very pleased. The wrinkles of the fabric are a little distracting in this picture, but otherwise the photo does show the transparency, which is what I was hoping for.

Control Panel

2010-02-12T10:23:00.001-05:00

I'm slowly going through all the stuff I've made and deciding what to do with it. This is an example of that issue. This piece I made during on of my workshops at Corning.

Well, I should say I made the pieces/parts at Corning and fused it at home. This is a quick reference picture. I didn't realize when I took this picture that I'd cut the corners off the picture. You aren't missing anything as I got almost all of it. The doughnuts were a somewhat failed effort to do a rollup of a fused panel and then pull that down into a cane that would in turn be cut into a bunch of murrine (how the heck do you spell that any way?). I wanted the holes in the middle, that much worked. However I got lots of variation in the diameter of the pulled cane. This meant some of the bits were larger or smaller than the others.

The other thing I should have done is bevel the edge of the blank form. If you look closely, there isn't enough white to completely encircle the rings. And I think there is a duplicate red - another lesson learned. Have opposite colors at either end of the blanks.

Oh well, I spread a bunch of them out on the table and I got the impression of gears. That in turn made me think of a crazy, Frankenstein-esque control panel. I laid this out on a scrap bit of aventurine green (sparkly). Then with a bunch of scraps of other glass and bits, I set up this panel. I couldn't get it fused while there, so I did it when I got home. I wanted these to be tacked on, not nearly as much as it ended up. I kinda like the look, but some of the random bits melted too much.

Overall I think it's pretty cool. Note the "signature cane" I made. The "J" just seems to fit. I may make some more letters for use in the future. I am envisioning some sort of much larger piece where this control panel is just one part. That assembly hasn't been worked out in my feeble mind yet, just another thing I could do if I have the time, energy, money, desire, drive, support, tools, techniques, skills...

Smooth Sailing, Captain Phil

2010-02-10T19:32:00.000-05:00

A brief note to say goodbye to my favorite crab boat captain - Captain Phil Harris of the Cornelia Marie. He was my favorite person on the TV reality show "Deadliest Catch". I started watching that show when it first came on and don't miss an episode. Captain Phil certainly had his share of health related as well as boat issues, but I was always pulling for him.

You can read a little more about it here.

Makes me a little worried as he was the same age as me.

Smooth sailing, captain.

Hoarding and Cleaning

2010-02-09T21:41:00.000-05:00

I really am a sucker for crappy reality TV shows. The latest one I've been watching is a show called "Hoarders". It shows here in the U.S. and is all about people whose houses are literally filled to the ceiling with stuff and the floors falling in. There is a similar show that has been on the BBC for a few years as well. I have to laugh as it really is incredible. But I also have seen that I tend to keep a lot of stuff, even it is well packed away in tubs. This is even true for the blown glass pieces I've made over the years.

I've been blowing glass for a decade now. I've made about 1,100 pieces. Of that number, probably 600 have been sold. Over a hundred have been given away as gifts over the years. I have almost 200 marbles of various sizes (2" to 3" in diameter). There were probably a hundred items that were numbered and photographed, but were cracked or in some other way defective. That meant somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 pieces are floating around my house, basement, garage, and pole barn either being displayed or packed away.

The hoarding had reached its breaking point and now I had to cleanse. So I spent all day Sunday rounding up all the suspects and laying them out on my living room floor. I really should take pictures, but I don't always think of it at the time. There were some that were now apparent that should be destroyed. I have pictures, but they are either really bad, defective in some way, too wonky to correct, or just plain UGLY. I got rid of about twenty of them right away.

Then my toughest art critic (my wife) was brought in to sort them remainder. We donate about a dozen pieces a year to various local organizations for silent auctions and other fund raisers. She picked ones out of the pile that fit that need. We also agreed on the ones we would keep. My personal collection of about fifteen evolves over the years and older ones keep getting replaced with newer or better ones. Then I had her pick ones out that we'd try to sell. There are forty that are in that pile. About 50 of the "Rothko" series are in various stages of finishing/displaying/readying for sale so these got spared for now. The final fifty-ish "good" pieces were packed away for a seconds sale or some future use. That left about fifteen more to toss.

Probably should have been more critical, but I did get the pieces sorted, organized, and reduced in number.

"HAVE YOU SEEN ME?"

One of the pieces I was looking for was a blue "Sea Fan". This is a really crappy picture, but it was already uploaded so I am going to use it here. We can't find this piece!! It happens to be one of our favorites and I hadn't planned on selling it. It was here sometime before we packed up all the art and put out the Christmas decorations. It isn't here anymore. Can't really see myself selling it as it is the last one of three or four that I made. Kinda weird. I usually have a good sense of where anything is - and I just can't recall what happened here. Just strange.

Oh well, guess I'll have to make more.

Rescuing an Old Piece of Glass

2010-02-06T16:25:00.000-05:00

I've sold a lot of the 1100+ glass objects I've made over the course of the last ten years. I figured it out, I've been blowing glass or working in glass in some way for a decade now. Not sure if I'm getting any better, but I'm still positive that work is progressing.

So I was cleaning out a tub of old glass last summer and this very early piece was there. It didn't have the decorations, just a blown floppy bowl. I liked it but really didn't have a use for it. It didn't have a bottom so it just rocked back and forth if put on a table. However it is a pretty good color - "Cranberry Pink" it is called. So it sat there for a while as I pondered its fate.

At that time I was trying to decide if I wanted to invest in a plotter that cut stencils. I'd then use the stencils for sandblasting. One night while watching HGTV with my wife, I noticed people were using scrapbooking punches with fairly heavy cardstock. That was an epiphany for me. Would those punches work on sandblasting resist material? I suggested a trip to the local Michael's craft store. I had to take my wife so I wouldn't look like a complete idiot. Usually when I go there looking for picture frames or gifts, I'm the only male in the store. Anyway, I took a scrap piece of the resist to the store. Luckily, the punches were not sealed in plastic so I could "try it out". The punch worked perfectly and out popped a nice little stencil and I had a negative image of the design left in the scrap resist. Two for the price of one! I quickly bought four or five punches, and a circle/oval cutter.

I punched out a few designs and now I wanted to sandblast. What should I use? That's when I spotted the cranberry dish sitting there looking ready for action. I peeled off a number of designs and put them on the dish. The outside seemed like the best place to put them. I used tape to mask off the areas between the stencils and headed out to the pole barn to sandblast. Five minutes later the tape was peeled away to reveal a really nice pattern.

During my next foray into the cold shop, I lightly ground off the bottom punty crap so it'll sit nice and even on a table. The final touch was to add the "tub and shower protectant" I posted about a while ago here. Wow - really nice, the gel really makes it shine and seems to fill in the rough sandblasted texture and doesn't show fingerprints.

The picture sucks, but it was a five minute job to lay down a sheet of copy paper, get out the point and shoot camera, take the picture, adjust it in Photoshop, and post it here.

Wanna buy it?

New / Bigger Kiln - first thoughts

2010-01-31T16:13:00.000-05:00

I think I've maxed out my little 13" heptagon (7 sided) kiln. It runs on 120 volts and is in perfect working order. It is from Evenheat and has a great controller. It just is limiting on the size / shape of work I want to do. The seven sides, not sure why not 6 or 8, are a little weird. I can get a 12" round kiln shelf in there. Not too bad, but I'm limited to a square about 9" on a side. That is OK for a small plate, but really not for the art I want to make.

I'm thinking of a square-ish kiln that is 24" x 24" or even 24" x 36" and reasonably deep enough to do some castings that are melted through a flower pot. That requires some depth for the mold, some space above the mold surface, and then the flower pot filled with glass. That is probably in the 14"-16" depth. That is a pretty big kiln.

I've been pricing them out and they are from $1900 to almost $3000. That is a high price for the convenience of being able to unpack it and just plug it in. One the other building it myself gives significant cost savings, probably well under $1000. But I need to find a way to work with the metal structure. I don't have welding equipment. Perhaps I can beg/borrow/rent some. I haven't welded in 25 years, but should be able to re-learn enough as all I'm really building is a big box. The controller is the highest cost item with is a couple hundred bucks for what I want.

I'm about to start pricing out the components - metal, firebrick, wire elements, controller, miscellaneous hardware, and other various and sundry items. I'll document what I find and ask for help / opinions.

Shameless Self-Marketing

2010-01-29T14:59:00.000-05:00

I get asked all the time for photos of my work, my email, etc. I usually point them to my web site, which is awful, out of date, doesn't have good pictures, etc. Now I point them here to my blog, but it's harder to see a wide range of stuff. So I put this together as a "one pager" I can hand out to people. For obvious reasons, I've blurred my contact info. You can contact me via this blog.

I am going to keep updating this picture as time permits as some of my best work still didn't make it into this picture as I only had an hour or so to put it together. What do you think?

Online Glass Resources

2010-01-29T11:52:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd take a minute and post links to the three online glass forums that I check regularly. For the non-glassies out there, these won't mean a thing, but they are wonderful places to find out information quickly and from fellow glass workers (artists and wannabes).

First, for blown glass work, I check out Craftweb Hot Glass Talk. This is the place to be if you want to know anything and everything about the hot shop, glass properties and chemistry, or life in general.

Next, for warm glass (fusing, slumping, kiln casting, etc) I recommend the Warm Glass bulletin board. There are many about five thousand members - probably twenty-five who post very frequently. Got a question - there is the place for answers.

Finally, for sand blasting and carving questions, I go to the Sand Carving forum. If you want to know anything about sand blasting, sand carving, stenciling, photo etching, or related topics - this is the place to be.

Retrospective

2010-01-20T22:02:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it's been almost five days since I left Corning for the long drive back to the Ann Arbor, Michigan area. It was pretty uneventful - thankfully. I found myself dozing off, especially on the long slog through New York. No traffic and dead tired. I had to stop several times for five minute cat-naps. That is something I never do. Must be getting old.

I don't have any updated pictures since I had to unpack and immediately turn around the next morning and prepare for a business trip to Houston. I hope to update the pictures this weekend so stay tuned.

I titled this post "Retrospective" as that is what I did a lot of during the drive - at least when I was awake. Some workshops I've attended, I come home with finished projects, others I come home with nothing. Here I came away with a new found understanding of processes that can be used to combine warm glass work (fusing), hot glass work (pulling cane, glass blowing), and finally cold work (grinding, polishing) into one finished piece. I can hear my inner self saying "it's not about the destination, it's about the journey". How true in this case.

The other thing I learned is a new way to break down glass objects that involve patterns into their component parts and combine in new and interesting ways. I'm not sure where my work will take me - that is part of the inner retrospection that I need to do. I like the things I've learned but now it's time to put them into action.

That last part became clear to me. One of the most exciting things that happened during the week at Corning didn't have anything to do with the workshop. I actually sold three pieces to the Glass Market at the Museum which they will be offering for sale. I took a bunch of pieces, as it was unclear what they were looking for based on the initial meeting last summer. I was a little surprised at the pieces they chose. Glad I had a selection. I'm waiting to see what happens and if they want additional pieces if these sell. It became clear that being good at something isn't enough. You have to develop your own personal style. The "Rothko" pieces I sold to the Glass Market are unique. I combined a lot of techniques that I've seen or learned into a simple, yet complex piece of glass that others are not making.

My goal is to figure out how to incorporate the newly learned processes into unique pieces that people want to own.

It's Over - What a Week!

2010-01-16T23:17:00.000-05:00

Day 6 has come and gone, and the workshop at Corning with Giles Bettison has been completed. Day 6 (or day 7 if you count the introductory dinner on Sunday evening) is usually the most hectic. The day starts early and the students are busy making as much stuff as they can, trying out different techniques we've learned this past week. Instead of working until 11pm, the day ends at 4pm with a full shop cleanup after that. It took us about an hour and a half to completely disassemble and clean the hot shop, the cold shop, the glass cutting workroom, and anything else we might have made a mess of. This is a really hard thing, but it is wonderful to walk in the shop Monday morning and have everything clean and shiny and ready to go.

Today I pulled one cane and made a small vase utilizing the "rollup" technique we learned this week. The finished canes from yesterday are shown in the picture below.

Here are three photos of the vessel I made yesterday. One thing to note, I put in a signature murrine (a "J" in case you couldn't guess), but it has one problem. I got the top/bottom thing correct, but I hadn't counted on the instructor wanting to flip the piece front to back. Hence the "J" is backwards in the finished piece.

Note that these pictures were done by a professional photographer that the Studio brings in for students to utilize her services. You can sign up for one hour time slots and it is great. I brought a bunch of stuff to have photographed in addition to the pieces made during the session. I post on those pieces in the next post.

Day 5 is in the Books

2010-01-16T00:47:00.000-05:00

Well, the fifth day is now in the books. Today was a lot of work. First, we got to see the canes we made yesterday. Here is a pictures of the "Ants" cane that I took four lengths of, bundled, and repulled into a new cane. The four bars were tack fused in the glory hole, and then cased in clear before pulling down. I think the final is somewhere about 3/4" in diameter.

The cane on the left is the stack I made yesterday. This slice isn't all that straight. I have quite a bit of this particular cane that is much straighter. I've bundled four sections and have it ready to pull tomorrow (the last day). Here is a picture. Sorry for the poor quality but I was having trouble with the close up function on the camera tonight and it was low on battery life so I wanted to get a quick shot before the battery power ran out. I will cover this in clear and keep it a square cane, I think.

Here are the other two canes from yesterday. I really like the "window" cane on the left, even though the picture here isn't that good. The stacked cane on the right is very colorful - again I apologize for the photo quality.

Maybe this close up will help.

We concentrated on rollups today - I made a small vase from the layout I posted about yesterday. I changed it slightly from the picture. It should be out of the kiln tomorrow morning, just in time for my scheduled photo shoot. More on that tomorrow.

Finally, I created a simple rollout which I will create into a vessel tomorrow. More to come.

I've Got Blisters on my Fingers

2010-01-15T00:07:00.000-05:00

While only one finger, and it's a small blister - but I have it. Burned myself very slightly tonight and it was all just a stupid mistake of touching a hot pipe at the wrong end with my index finger. Stupid. Now for the real story of today.

The point of today was to pull more, stack more, cut some, restack some of the cut cane, repull it if necessary, and get stuff ready for tomorrow. In the midst of all that we watched some demos, got a tour of the contemporary glass collection at the museum, and worked out butts off.

The first picture is of the five canes and one slice off of them that are out of the kiln. The "ants" one (as my family had dubbed it) was restacked and pulled today. It'll be out of the annealer tomorrow morning.

The next picture is of a set up for a rollup which will be rolled onto a core of clear and then blown out into a vase shaped vessel (or a close approximation thereof). Check out that triangle cane. That was a last minute decision as we'd been doing squares for the most part, and a few people did a round one (I did one today), but no one did any other shapes. I think this clear cane will really be cool with the white (french vanilla, actually) border.

I put two more stacks in tonight for pulling in the morning. The two pictures are below. Sorry for the poor picture of the second one. I didn't realize the camera didn't focus correctly until after they were in the kiln.

Stay tuned - we have two days to go!

Day 3 - Pull, Cut, Pull

2010-01-14T00:17:00.000-05:00

Day 3 is in the books. We are now officially halfway through with the course. Today we got to see what came out of the annealer from the pulls we did yesterday. The are pretty good. My whole goal for pulling cane was to master pulling square cane. I've done a lot of round cane, but these are much harder to use in rollups, in fused blanks for slumping, or other general uses. Square cross-sections are much nicer in this respect. Here is a picture of me starting to heat one of the blanks to get it ready for pulling.

The next picture is of a 5" length of the cane and one 3/8" thick murrine off that cane. The next picture after that is a close up of the two canes I pulled yesterday.

Today, we took four lengths of the square cane, wired four of them together with stainless steel wire to hold their shape during heating and the initial pick up. I'll pull this into smaller canes tomorrow. This is how it looks in the kiln ready to heat up for pick up.

Full Pull

2010-01-13T00:26:00.000-05:00

I've just completed Day 2 at the workshop (Giles Bettison at the Studio of The Corning Museum of Glass). A very long day indeed. Today was pulling the canes from the stacks we created and loaded into the kiln last night. We learned a ton about pulling cane, especially square cane. I pulled both canes that I put in the kiln last night. From the looks of it, they are pretty cool and everything worked as planned.

No pictures yet - too tired to download from camera! I'll try to get a chance to take pics tomorrow. I've got two more stacks ready and in the kiln before I left tonight. We learned how to make "stuffed color cups" which will create some really interesting murrine with clear centers. I got a stack of color ready for that as well.

Tomorrow looks to be another long day. First, we'll cut up the large canes we pulled today and bundle them into new patterns for re-pulling. We'll pull the stacks that are in the kilns right now. Finally, we'll create more stacks. Then we'll get down to business of slicing the bars into murinne for creating vessels from.

Stay tuned.

Strips, Strips Strips - Day 1 with Giles Bettison at Corning

2010-01-11T22:35:00.000-05:00

Made it through the first day in the workshop with Giles. Day one is all about cutting strips. And more cutting. And more cutting. The goal was to make about a 3" x 3" x 5" stack of strips that had simple patterns in them. We will tack fuse them tonight while they are heating up overnight and be ready to pull into long canes tomorrow morning. We use Bullseye glass with has a 90 COE. Bullseye has some great colors. I tried to use a variety of both transparent and opaque glass to be able to see the effects. The goal will be to pull this into cane about 1" square or maybe a little less.

Here are some pictures of some the stacks I made today. The first picture shows some of the strips ready to be stacked. The next two pictures are two are of the same stack, just different views to get some sense of the size. The last two are of two other stacks.

I Made It

2010-01-10T18:22:00.000-05:00

OK, I moaned and complained in my last post about the drive from my home in Milan, Michigan to Corning, New York. It took just over seven hours, only stopped for gas once and a couple of bio breaks. It was sunny most of the way, but way way cold. Think the top temp I saw on the outdoor thermometer reading on the dash was about 19 degrees (F). Of course, true to the nature of lake effect snow and weather in the southwestern tip of New York, it was miserable. Today was no exception.

I stopped at the Chataqua rest stop on I-86, which has to be the most beautiful rest stop on American highways I've ever seen. It is nice in the summer, overlooking Lake Chataqua, but in the winter its pretty much snowed in. This is what the main building looks like. Its better than a lot of houses I've seen.

The snow drifts on the roof and on the ground were almost touching each other. Another big wind and they would be. I grabbed a couple of quick snaps with the trusty camera and was back on my way.

Stay tuned for more updates on the workshop with Giles Bettison throughout the week. My plan is to post every night. We'll see how long that plan works out.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road...

2010-01-09T10:21:00.000-05:00

It's off to see the wizard! I'm busy packing for the upcoming trip to Corning, NY for the workshop with Giles Bettison, which I previously wrote about here. I'm really looking forward to it, once I get there. That is the problem. Driving from Michigan, around Lake Erie, and then across the southern tier of New York can be interesting this time of year. I almost wrote "fun" instead of "interesting" but I remember what it was like two years ago, with probably two feet of snow, blinding white out blizzard conditions, and 47-car pile ups along the way. I swore I wouldn't return in the winter, but I'm going back for the third time. The weather forecast is promising sunny weather, albeit chilly.

Google Maps says its 442 miles and 6 hours 53 minutes - or some such numbers. Of course, I never can figure out how exactly they calculate it. I drive the exact route they suggest, even putting in exact door to door locations and still my odometer says I went 10+ miles longer than Google indicates. Now I've driven this most of the way, and the speed limit is 65 MPH almost the entire way except for the 31 miles in Michigan which is 70 MPH. That is a 64.2 MPH average across the entire distance! Google doesn't have to stop for bio-breaks, food, or even gas, but I do. So in reality this will be closer to at least seven and a half hours, or even eight. I have to watch my speed though, I like to go fast. And Sunday mornings are a great time for getting tickets - as I found out on the Ohio Turnpike this time last year when I got a $100+ ticket. He said I was doing 85+, when I know I was only doing 80. 65 is just too damn slow.

I live on the eastern side of the state for a reason. It's called "Lake Effect Snow" and I've seen what it can do. Western Michigan is bad enough, but western New York is just plain crazy with the amount of snow they get, sometimes without much warning. I'll be driving through it, as you can see on my route map.

Mad Genius at Work...Grinding and Polishing Away

2010-01-01T06:26:00.000-05:00

I have a lot of glass to grind and polish. I've let the number of pieces build up over the fall as I just couldn't bring myself to slog through it. I finally had to face the daunting task. I've blogged about the type of pieces I'm doing in a previous entry, and I've also talked about the "joy" of coldworking. I don't mind doing it, I just should have done a few pieces at a time and not built up such a backlog.

Above is a picture of the mad genius busily grinding away. Actually, this is the final polishing step. I've already taken the piece to the wet saw to cut the top flat, through loose grits of 80, 220, and 400, and a pre-polish on that green wheel. The green pre-polish wheel is similar to using pumice, but not as messy. The white hard felt wheel is for cerium, which gives the final high gloss polish. It's pretty messy. I really like these Polpur wheels, but I don't think I'll be using them on these particular pieces. The lips of the glass vessels tend to eat away the surface pretty quickly. I don't have that problem on larger surfaces. I've probably lost an inch in diameter on that green wheel.

This polishing machine is hand built from parts. The main piece is a dual arbor I got from HIS Glassworks. The rest I either built by hand or through various trips to Grainger's. It works quite well, all things considered.

Here is a closer look at the polishing step. One thing I learned, don't let the cerium dry on the surface of these pieces. The surfaces are highly textured and once the cerium dries, its pretty hard to get off. I have three pieces sitting in the sink right now trying to dissolve some of it, or at least loosen it up enough to scrub it off with a stiff brush!

Glasriket

2009-12-30T12:04:00.017-05:00

In the last post I said I'd found the story I wrote back in 2001 about my adventures to the glassblowing factories and studios in Sweden. This area is called "Glasriket" and I had a very long day visiting them in the dead of winter. I said the post was long and I think I found a way around it. I didn't read all of it, but it does have some interesting points. I mention looking something up on the internet using "Yahoo", I have only dim memories of life on the net before Google.

If you want to read the entire story, click the "Read More" link.

A Trip to Glasriket

-or-

Alligator Alley Revisited

by Jeff Wright

February, 2001

For those who know about my exploits, the subtitle is more appropriate. For those that don’t know me, well, that’s another story.

This tale begins innocently enough. I had to go on a business trip to Sweden. No problem. Get on a plane, fly over the ocean in the middle of the night, switch in Amsterdam, and ride a puddle-jumper to Gothenburg (Göteborg for those who care).

Wait a minute! Sweden, that’s where the glassblowers are, right? I am a glassblower. OK, so I am not a professional one. I’ve been at it for about 18 months now and every once in a while come up with a reasonable facsimile of a worthwhile piece of “art”. Or, at least that’s what my wife says.

A quick trip to the Internet is in order. Look up glassblowing in Sweden. Yahoo comes up with some outrageous number of matches: something like 6,230,126,320,582,296. More or less. As I start clicking and rejecting web sites, quite by accident I find a site called “Glasriket”. Don’t know what it is, I hope it isn’t some porn or other equally unsavory site. Turns out to be the “Kingdom of Crystal”, which is “Glasriket” in Swedish.

I soon realized that almost all of the glass houses and studios in Sweden are located in an area about 30 miles square. Kind of like in Venice, only these look like they are out in the boonies. Lets see. Gothenburg is on the west seacoast and the Glasriket area is near the eastern seacoast. Time to go to MapQuest and see how far it is. There aren’t driving directions for Sweden so go looking for a country map. Looks like about 150 miles. Whoops, that’s 250 km for those on the Metric system. No problem. I drive that far most days here in the States.

So it’s off to Sweden for me. Turns out that I have to be in Paris the following week for company business. I need to be in Sweden Wednesday through Friday. That leaves to weekend for adventure. All set. Those who know me well will understand the fatal flaw in my “preparation”. Those who don’t, stay tuned.

All goes well at the office and client. I really enjoy meeting people from other countries. My mother’s side of the family originates in Sweden, so I was looking forward to the trip. I really didn’t know much about the country, or the people, for that matter. Friday afternoon I lay out my plans to my Swedish compatriots. I could have guessed the response. Boy, that’s a long drive. No problem, I reply, sometimes I drive that many miles or more just commuting to work.

But I need a rental car. My host was gracious enough to ferry me around to the rental car places until we found a car that had an automatic transmission. Thanks to Johan for his efforts on a Friday evening. Along the way we found a tourist kiosk while we were looking for more detailed maps of the country. They actually had a decent map and luckily enough, a pamphlet on the “Kingdom of Crystal”. At least I got the one in English.

Here is the map from the back cover of the guidebook. This map was used during the day trip through the “Kingdom of Crystal”. Almost every back road is shown here. You can get a sense of how isolated the area really is.

Everything is ready. Friday night, rental car with unlimited miles, and I don’t have to be in Paris for 36 hours. I am set. I have a brand new Volvo S60 2.4L with only 344 km on it. Nice car. It also has studded tires. Holy smokes, Batman, I haven’t seen studded tires since I was a kid. The wheels in my head don’t always turn at the right speed. Again, for those who know me…

I wrestle with the map and the pamphlet during dinner. Swedish food, but that’s another story. I plan to get up early Saturday morning. Most of the glass places look like they open at 10:00am. If I leave around seven I’ll have more than enough time to drive over and arrive just around opening time. That’s the plan.

All night I tossed and turned. I was anxious to get going. So of course when I did get some rest, I overslept. Get up, shower, pack, and check out in record time. Finally get in the car at 7:30am. A normal Jeff start. But it is a clear, crisp morning. Then I realize its still dark. Very dark. Like middle of the night dark. Check the time on my phone and the clock in the car. Both say 7:30. Both are on European mode so if it were still night they would indicate something like 22:30. Nope, both check.

So off I go. There is construction near the hotel. I’ve been going through it for four days now but only from the other direction, and not with me driving. I turned left when I should’ve turned right. For those that know me… But I do get to go through town and it is only an extra ten minutes. It’s always easier to go to the next expressway entrance than turnaround. That’s an American Male thing, anyhow.

As I’m driving through Gothenburg, which is around 900,000 people, I realize how clean and nice it looks. The actual town is about the size of Detroit proper, but incredibly nicer. But, like Detroit, this is a ghost town this time of day. I only see a few cars during my ten-minute drive through town. NO problem finding the entrance for the highway. This time, at least, I seem to be headed in the right direction.

Halmstead is about an hour south of Gothenburg. I travel for many miles, or even more kilometers, at a stretch without seeing any other cars. And it’s still dark. The car is great. I understand now how great heated seats can be. I wonder why they aren’t more common in the U.S. Halmstead is the junction where I leave the expressway and begin the trek across country on two-lane roads. Already I’ve gone 135 km. As everywhere else I’ve been, there are gas stations on the corner. I must stop: breakfast and pit stops require my attention.

Refreshed and fueled up with a 1.5L Coke and six mini-muffins, I’m ready. It is now about 8:30am and just getting to be daylight. Take off down the road, and for the second time in a row, I’m heading in the right direction. The road signs and markings are very well done. Even out here in the middle of nowhere.

Headed east and drove for at least 30 minutes without seeing another car. Or town, or house, or horse, or anything. Sweden is very sparsely populated. Rural, isolated, but strangely beautiful. Hills, rocks, and trees everywhere. Then it hits me. The landscape could pass for western Pennsylvania where I was born. Now I know why my relatives settled there. I could be home.

What’s that sound? There is a strange buzzing. It gets louder and higher pitch when I go faster, and softer when I slow down. Oh yeah, that’s the studded tires. Even though there has been a fine film of frost over everything, I haven’t had any problems. I like these tires but they must do damage to the roads. However even out here in the boonies the roads are like brand new. Wish the U.S. would take notice.

I’m headed for the town of Växjö. It is really the first town on road 25. Don’t even ask me to try and pronounce it. Looks to be about 10,000 people. Its about 60 miles away. OK that’s 100 km from Halmstead. Should take about an hour. I pass through several towns, some are just houses on either side of the road.

Then there are the traffic roundabouts. I don’t really understand all the traffic rules and some of these have five or six entrances and exits. Gotta pay attention to the signs. As I get close to the towns, I encounter some traffic. The car in front of me is now driving on the shoulder. What’s he doing? He is slowing down. I slow down. He slows down even more. He gets further on the shoulder. What should I do? I have no choice but to pass him. No cars coming. OK, easy to get around the little car with my high-powered sports car. He then pulls out behind me and off we go. Oh, I think I get it, you are supposed to get out of the way of faster vehicles. Friendly. Try it a couple more times. Same thing. I like this kind of driving.

Wait, what’s that signpost up ahead? Next stop, Crystal Kingdom. Well, Magic Kingdom this ain’t. A sign indicates visitor information in 500 m. I slow down and pull over where the visitor sign indicates. The “information” turns out to be a board, about the size of a sheet of plywood, covered with a map of where the various glass houses are. Then I realize it’s just a bigger version of the map from my pamphlet. Not much else but it does indicate that the weekend times for most of the shops is 10:00 to 16:00. That’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon for us from the U.S.

The “Kingdom” could sure use some of Disney’s magic marketing. But at least I’m in the Kingdom of Crystal and its only 9:30 in the morning. The “Kingdom” is an area about 50 miles east to west by 30 miles north to south. There are sixteen factories/studios located in this area. They are all marked with signs on the road pointing to “Glasbruk” which means “glass works”. I make a mental plan of attack to get to as many of the sixteen as I can. The first one is just a little way up the road.

I see it!! My first “Glasbruk” sign. It points me off the road into a very little village. I follow two or three more similar signs. There it is. Its “Orrefors i Hovantorp”. Orrefors is a, no the only, name in Swedish glass I know. Wow. I made it. I feel one of my “a-ha” moments coming. I look around the parking lot. There is room for probably 200 cars. There is only one car in the lot. And it’s frosted over. But the sign says they are open. I park and go in.

As I walk up the stairs, I read a sign stating “Blowing demonstrated on Weekdays only”. Wait, what is this? This wasn’t in the pamphlet. This wasn’t on the Web. Oh well, there are 15 more places to visit. I enter anyway. I am treated to a fantastic array of production glass. I see more goblets in one place than I’ve ever seen before. All of them are handmade. Impressive. I wander around feeling a little lonely. The frosted car must belong to the lonely person behind the counter. Its 10:30 and I may be the only visitor of the day, most likely I am the first judging by the parking lot.

I feel my glassblowing talents diminish quickly as I walk around. The pieces are wonderful. There are “snake” goblets where thick colored glass wraps around the very thin stems of the clear goblet. Easy in concept, wonderful in execution. There are “threaded” platters where the clear platter has a wonderful spiral color threaded out from the center. Again, I marvel at the simplicity and the elegance of the pieces. The last thing that catches my eye are the assortment of “color drop” drinking vessels. From shot glasses, to tumblers, to massive goblets, these clear vessels each have a small drop of blue color in the base area that tapers from a large bulb to a tiny pin point. I still wonder how they achieved the effect.

My eyes then notice a studio behind a glass wall. There are worktables neatly lined in rows. There must be twenty of them. Each one is the same, yet different. This is where all of the painted glass items are created. Clear items are brought in on carts to be hand-painted by the artist at the bench. It looks like each artist does something different, based on the colors of paint and tools on the worktable. I would love to watch these items being created but, again, they only work weekdays.

Inspired and disappointed. The next stop will be even better I tell myself. I try not to let the thoughts of chasing alligators cross my mind. Not yet.

Next stop is Studioglas Strömbergshyttan. Just a few minutes up the road. I pull into the gas station I passed on my way through the little village. Restrooms are a key need of mine. But that’s another story…

As I pull in to the parking lot, I see a large building called Sandvik. This location isn’t marked on the map but is discussed in the guide pamphlet. Sandvik seems to be mainly a factory outlet for Kosta, Boda, and Orrefors. This place is big but not nearly as nice as the last stop. There’s that sign again. Blowing only on the weekdays. What is this? I’ve come 6,000 miles to see some real glassblowing and everyone is home. What are they doing? Don’t they love the glass and the heat as much as I do?

I look around but am somewhat disappointed. I see a lot of what I’ve already seen. This is an interesting little area and there are lots of other things to do within the grounds. One of note is a “Radio Museum”. Looks like a lot of old radios in the window. Maybe some other time. There is a little glass studio on the grounds as well. Better check it out while I’m here.

Studioglas Strömbergshyttan is a small artist studio similar to the ones in the U.S. that I am familiar with. I walk up the hill from the Radio Museum. This isn’t a large factory. It’s a small house. OK, this may be what I’ve been looking for. I walk in and don’t see any of the familiar signs. I hear the roar of the furnace. This is more like it. I wander around the front room looking at the displays. Thoughts of the Ann Arbor Art Fair drift through my head. Animals, fruit, vessels, normal “artsy” things. Good work. Most would sell well in Ann Arbor, land of fruits and nuts.

A couple of things catch my eye. Glass candy sitting in dishes. They look just like wrapped hard candies. Neat. I also see the most creative item yet. One that I instantly know would be the $20 hit of any art fair. Glass eggs. No, not eggs in the shell colored similar to Faberge eggs. These are fried eggs! A close inspection reveals how easy these are to make. The “yolk” is a little yellow candle. It just sits in a small depression on a cookie of white glass. The white is streaked, not solid. Perfect. From three feet away I would swear these were real fried eggs sitting on a plate! I know that I could sell a million of them. Well, maybe ten. But thoughts of plates of eggs, bacon, sausages, potatoes, a real breakfast feast, are spinning. Now that’s art. This is one place I would like to spend time talking with the artists.

I can see through the door back to the shop. The tools, benches, and other paraphernalia all look similar. The shop is messy. That too is normal. But I don’t see any signs of life. I ask the young woman sitting behind the counter if anyone will be working today. No, only on weekdays. That “a-ha” feeling has now been confirmed. I am not going to see any glass being blown today. So close, yet so far away. I see a lot of glass but that is only a small part of why I made the trek. I walk out into the brisk air, all I can think about is alligators and the trip to alligator alley. I wonder if I should call home and tell my wife. No, on second thought it’s already been 17 years and I still hear about those damn alligators. Besides its noon here but six in the morning at home. There are more shops to visit, and maybe I’ll get lucky.

I brought a camera but haven’t taken any pictures. I feel very uncomfortable in the places I’ve been thus far. In almost every one, I haven’t seen anyone else. This part of Sweden is definitely a summer tourist destination. They must get a lot of people visiting since all of the studio parking lots are huge. Some are K-Mart parking lot huge. Taking pictures of the works seems out of place. I try making a mental note of all I’ve seen but my memory isn’t as good as it once was. A list of all of the neat ideas will be a must to carry back with me. I start to think about how another “business” trip to Sweden can be arranged so that I have one or two weekdays free to visit the shops and actually see the artists.

So far, the three places I visited have been on or very near the main road. Now when I say main road I don’t mean like the highways in America. I mean that these are two lane backcountry roads that we are used to. I am feeling adventuresome. Why not. I have all my belongings in the car. At least I learned one lesson from the alligators. I have almost a full tank of gas. Time to hit the Swedish version of back roads. Bergdala is a small village up the back roads about fifteen minutes away.

I am just a little bit concerned. The other villages on the map at least show a little spot of a town. Bergdala is nothing. Just two lines crossing on the map. I turn the trusty Volvo onto a narrower, but just as well maintained, road. There just isn’t any sign of civilization. Or anything else, for that matter. A few minutes later the Glasbruk sign points me onto an even smaller road. One more sign and turn and I am definitely in the back roads. Then I see the village. Well collection of about ten houses. Most of these turn out to be part of the Bergdala glass works. There is a restaurant but it looks closed. There is a children’s play area and small buildings, but they look empty too. There is the workshop. That’s empty as well. I walk into another large display area for glass. And, you guessed it, a sign stating that tours are available every weekday.

I see some different types of glass here. Bergdala is noted for “Bergdala Blue”. This is one of the deepest, richest blue colors of glass I’ve ever seen. It is used on everything. On clear vessels, it is used as a decoration or lip wrap. It is used as the main color of other pieces. Blue, blue, everywhere. But not a drop being blown. There is more variety here to see than some of the other places.

Some of the neatest pieces I really have a hard time describing. These are large, heavy objects that I would call “faceted bowls and eggs”. The eggs are solid pieces of glass, with many layers of varying colors. These are then encased in a textured glass (frit, for those who know glassblowing) covering. Of course, if this was all there was to the piece it would be quite uninteresting since only the covering would be visible. But the piece has a slice cut off at an angle. This facet is highly polished, exposing the core of the layers of color and texture inside. This reminds me of gem collectors cutting an ugly piece of rock and finding something marvelous inside. The bowls are done in the same fashion but are hollow inside.

Another interesting variation was a solid clear glass egg with a colored “tube” in it. Imagine a ten-pound clear egg that someone pressed a finger into. The depression extends about three-fourths of the way through the egg and is colored. Some eggs were clear, some were frosted, but all were striking. Easy to do but marvels to look at.

All of the “factories” have little signs or cards stating whom the designer was. I learn that an artist designs most of the objects. These people don’t actually blow glass but tell the craftsmen what to make. The designer’s name is associated with the piece. The glassblower is just a machine. Each shop does allow the glassblowers to create their own designs. These usually were some of the more “arty” works I saw during my visits. Having designers makes sense but I wonder what the glassblowers think. Too bad I won’t be able to ask any. What if I walked up to some of the nearby houses? I’ll bet that most of the workers live nearby. Would they want to talk? Probably not to some crazy American knocking on their door in the middle of winter.

Next stop is Skruf. The first trick is to weave my way back to the main road and then meander the back roads south for ten or fifteen minutes. This turns out to be almost trivial. If I can’t see glassblowers then at least I shouldn’t get lost. This is a smaller place than some of the others. The sign says this is a four-person shop. I cannot tell if that is four designers or four glassblowers. Their main product is the water barometers that are becoming popular in the U.S. They say they make 600,000 per year. I hope they have more than four glassblowers! The rest of the display area is mostly funny cartoon heads of animals, birds, I don’t exactly know what they are, on a stick in a base of wood. Reminds me again of Art Fair stuff. Most of the other stuff is hand-painted. Again, cartoonish figures are used extensively.

One of my favorite pieces, after the sunny-side up eggs of course, is an interesting tea-light I saw at Skruf. These are very simple in form but look wonderful with the tea-light burning in them. A small ball of textured glass is blown, then cut off at an angle, similar to the faceted eggs. A tea-light candle is placed in the bottom. Instant tea (light). I must attempt to create some of these things when I return.

Here I see many bowls with threads of color wrapped around them. I know that some of the pieces I’ve made similar to these are better! I see one of my ideas, which I haven’t actually made yet, on display. It is a bowl with several threaded colors interlaced on a bowl. “I coulda been a designa”, I think to myself.

I am feeling overwhelmed by all of the things I’ve seen. But there is much more to go. Hi ho, hi ho, its off to Johanfors I go. This is a critical decision point. I’ve been working my way west to east. I can either backtrack get on the main roads and get to Johanfors, or I can go the “back way”. I choose the latter.

This turns out to be a wonderful idea. The roads are empty, I’ve got a great car, and my mind is racing. I follow the road for about twenty minutes. Up and down the hills and valleys. On either side of the road are huge pine forests that are touched with frost and a little snow. Out here there is some snow covering everything but certainly not like to two feet of white stuff I left in Michigan. There are probably only a couple of inches of the white stuff here. It looks so tranquil. I am glad I came this far. And I am determined to make the best of the situation.

Johanfors is interesting for two reasons. First the glasses and vessels are whimsical. I particularly like the “Birdie” pitcher. This is a white pitcher with a yellow beak for a spout. It sits on a yellow pad that reminds me of a duck foot. The handle is also yellow and shaped to resemble a wing. Cute. Second, they have a “Glass Museum”. This is an interesting little tour to take. You can see Swedish glass from many different periods. The museum contains some “art” pieces that are, well, arty.

I am getting really tired of visiting glass shops and just seeing glass. I came to see glassblowers in action. And all I see is the finished product. I need to be bolder. Johanfors workshop is in a separate building from the sales area. The building is long and fairly narrow. Probably 200 feet long and 50 feet wide. The sign for visitors points up a ramp. There is no one around. Maybe its left open. Locked. Well so much for that thought. I peer in the windows and see a real Swedish glass factory. Fairly messy but I recognize all of the equipment. The steady glow of the furnaces is the only indication that this is a working shop and not some remnant of ancient history. Glassblowing tools have changed little in the last 200 years.

There is a catwalk all around, about fifteen feet from the floor, where you can peer down on the activities when the shop is open. The ground floor exterior has many large windows. Most are dirty and hard to see through. But there is one window open. Of course, it’s the middle of winter but the furnace keeps the interior quite warm. I stick my head in and look around. A working studio! Everything is geared towards teams of workers. Each bench area is for a single “gaffer” or master blower. The assistants keep him busy. The benches and tools are certainly customized. Some benches have old kitchen chair cushions taped on. Others are carved like the seat of a Windsor chair. When you spend eight hours a day sitting and making glass, I guess this makes sense.

OSHA would never approve of the working conditions. There are gas lines for torches running all over the floor. This is a dangerous place, no doubt about it. One thing that is different than small studios in the U.S. is the continuous annealer. Glass needs to cool slowly once the piece is finished or else it will crack, and in some cases, explode. Not a good thing. Studios use box-like ovens, called annealers or lehrs, which gradually cool down the glass overnight. This obviously is impractical for a large factory. They use an annealer that operates much like a commercial pizza oven. Put the hot glass in one end and a moving conveyor belt slowly moves the piece through the oven. By the time it reaches the other end, the piece is finished. I could see the finished pieces from Friday’s work sitting at the end of the conveyor belt ready to be polished and sold when the crew starts work again Monday morning.

I could stare in the window like a kid with his nose pressed against a candy store window. But its cold outside and I must press on to the next stop. Which, as usual needs to be a pit stop. A pass a small gas station, where I dutifully stop, use the facilities, and feeling guilty, buy a Snickers candy bar for lunch. I still have some of the large Coke left. A very nutritious lunch, the lunch of champions. But I really am more excited about some of the ideas I’ve seen than eating. A rare occasion indeed for those who know me…

The next Glasbruk is Åfors, located in another ten-house town. I get a sense of déjà vu. Many of the pieces for sale look identical to some of the others I’ve seen along my journey. A sign says the Orrefors company has bought or merged with Kosta, Boda, and Åfors. They also own the first place I went to, “Orrefors i Hovmantorp”. Pieces made at any of these places are sold at all of the various outlet stores. So the painted pieces from Hovmantorp are available at Boda, and so on.

There are some very interesting pieces here at Åfors. I’m not sure where they are actually made, though. The “Machine Series” has a high-tech feel. These are clear glass jars in various interlocking shapes. These would make a nice set of canisters for a counter. The lids are very large industrial cap nuts, probably 3 inches across. There is a matching hollow bolt for the nut to screw on to. The glass is clear and very angular. Must be blown into a mold to obtain that shape. The angles of the pieces are designed to nestle together. I don’t think they are meant to be functional canisters but would be quite decorative filled with colorful items.

The bottom is as perfect as the rest of the pieces. When a piece of glass is completed, a small mark or dimple is left on the bottom from where the blowpipe or punty is attached. These dimples must be ground and polished to remove these marks. This operation is the most boring, painful part of the whole process. I suspect that the people who do this operation are among the most underpaid of all the studio employees!

One of the things that people identify with glass from Sweden is the so-called “Swedish Foot”. The foot is the piece of glass at the bottom of the piece. Pieces I’ve created in the U.S. have a very large, thick foot that is referred to as a Swedish foot. Well, I haven’t seen any that look like that in the several thousand pieces I’ve looked at today. The feet are all very small and delicate. Again, this is a testament to the skill of the glassblowers.

It’s getting on towards mid-afternoon. Most of the places close at 16:00. That’s four in the afternoon for us westerners. No time to dally. I begin to realize that my plans of staying in the area and driving to the airport in the morning might not work out. I haven’t seen any open restaurants. The guidebook shows a few hotels, but they are still about 20 miles away. They might not even be open this time of year. I wouldn’t want to show up and be the only one in the place.

Kosta is the next stop. I realize that almost all of the factories and studios are named after the town. So the Kosta Glassworks is in Kosta, of course. Along the way, I drive by SEA. This is one of the few outlets that aren’t named for the town. I drive by but it looks like more of the same from what I can see from the driveway. So I keep driving. Kosta is just down the road.

Guess what? Same stuff here at Kosta as I’ve seen elsewhere. The one new piece that struck me as neat was what I can only describe as an “optic pineapple twist”. This piece has a latticework of lines with tiny bubbles at the intersections of the lines. These tea-lights are quite unique. I have several ideas how these are made; probably all of them are wrong. Bought a tea-light here. It was 100 Krona. Less than 11 bucks. I like the look and figure I can make some. But I need one to examine. I pick out a nice one. Can’t help but thinking I’ve seen these tea-lights someplace else.

I’ve now seen most of the Glasbruks along roads 25 and 28. The third major road in the area is 31. There are seven factories in the area that I haven’t seen. I have about two hours to closing. Getting pretty close to last call. I decide that Orrefors is the only remaining factory that is a must see. So I have about 20 minutes cross-country along a back road.

Again, what a beautiful ride through some scenic countryside. Wait, there is someone running along the road! Where are the houses? Where did this guy come from? As I approach closer I realize he isn’t running, he’s cross-country skiing. But there isn’t any snow. He’s skiing on skis with rollerblade wheels. I pass about three more of them spread out over a mile or so. Since there isn’t anything for about 30 km, he is really far from home.

Orrefors is another small town. A few houses go by and then a very large parking lot comes into view. This is home base for the Orrefors company. There are many buildings here. There is a large picnic area with tables. There is only one other car in the lot!

The outlet store is huge. I should mention that I really haven’t paid attention to some of the signs in the shops I’ve been in. Here I do. These are “factory outlet” stores where they only sell seconds. The “best” pieces are shipped around the world to be sold in retail stores. I spend quite a while examining pieces to see if I can detect the defect. Rarely can I detect any. For example, one of the pieces had a very small bubble in the foot. Others must meet some incredible criteria of which I don’t have any clue. These are the closet things to perfection that I’ve seen in glass. I could spend days examining pieces to figure out how they were made and gathering ideas for my own work.

I exit the store with my mind swimming. There are some brochures here and I pick up a few. I wish the other shops had some available. There is a gallery and exhibit hall in another building. The exhibit is old glass, some dating to the 1750’s. Most of the works on display were from the period of 1900 to 1950. I really didn’t believe the dates at first. These were incredible works of art. I compare what was being done in Sweden at the turn of the century with the “art” from the studio glass movement in the 1960’s and 1970’s in the U.S. Absolutely no comparison. The pieces on display were museum quality, pieces from the same period in the U.S. look like child’s play. I realized then that the factories in Sweden have been around since the mid-1700’s.

A woman is giving a tour of the exhibit hall, albeit in Swedish. I hover around to see what I could learn. There was a demonstration bench and tools set up. Most were identical to that we use in small studios in the U.S. Except that everything is made of wood. The bench arms aren’t parallel to the floor, which is what I am used to. Instead, they angle quite steeply toward the floor. Curious. The wood blocks are the same as in the U.S. but kept in a wooden bucket in from of the bench, instead of behind it. The blowpipes are much longer and thinner. They also don’t seem to have the nice plastic mouthpieces the U.S. pipes do.

The glass shop is a building about 300 feet long and 60 feet wide, about the size of a football field. This is really much smaller than I expected given the amount of glass they sell. Looking through the windows there appeared to be 30 to 40 individual areas, and each bench has its own “glory hole” for reheating the pieces while it is being worked. Again, as in the other factories, each bench area is individualized. Also, there are special tools for handling the pieces being made at that bench. I really need to come back here and watch!! I would love to be able to talk to the workers. I’ll bet they speak English since everyone else I’ve met in the country does. Elsewhere on the grounds where the designers studios. The signs indicate that you can actually meet the designers. Bet they only work on weekdays also.

Another pit stop and I’m ready for the road. Only I really should get some gas. I have a long trip back to the other side of the country. The Volvo either gets incredible mileage or has a large gas tank. Either way, the trip computer says I only have about 200 km left to empty. I’ve already driven about 500 km. I passed a small gas station and convenience store on the way in from the main road. So I decide to stop there.

What kind of gas does this car take? I know from my trips to Germany that the Mercedes-Benz cars take premium gas. I look through the owner’s manual for the answer. Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised but I couldn’t read it. It’s in Swedish! But I know enough to find the section on fuel. 89 Octane, or at least I think that is what is says.

The pump looks easy enough. I get out, find the filler door, and get the car on the correct side of the pump. But no gas comes out. I expected that this self-serve would work like in the U.S. Pump and then pay inside. I don’t think they have a problem with drive-offs! But nothing happens. I select the 89 octane, lift the lever, and pull the handle. Nothing. I recheck everything. Nothing seems wrong. Then I hear someone yelling at me. Looking up, I see the owner pointing to a machine, which looks like an ATM machine. He comes out and starts talking in Swedish. I shrug my shoulders and say something profound. “Huh” is what I think I ended up saying. He says “English?” “Yes” I reply.

He tells me I must pay first. He walks me over to the ATM machine. It takes cash or credit cards. I have lots of Swedish Krona bills so I jam a 100-Krona note into the machine. He smiles, waiting for me to put more money in the machine. I say no thanks. He looks at me strangely. 100-Krona is about $11.09 or some such amount, and gas is 9.9 Krona per liter. That’s works out to about $4.00 per gallon! So I just bought two and a half gallons of gas. Lets see, the car is getting about 10 miles per liter, or so the trip computer says. That gives me about 100 km more travel. Guess that does it. Thank the owner and pump my gas. The whole transaction is over in about seven seconds.

Well, since I’ve taken all his time for this little transaction I figure the least I can do is buy something. Inside looks like any gas station in the U.S. Fast foods but I don’t recognize anything. A bag of cheddar cheese popcorn and a Coke Light (Diet Coke) serves as a late lunch. I’ve really been eating healthy today.

I have time for one more stop. I must also make a decision. The hotels listed in the guidebook are in Nybro. A big small town. Looks to be about a half hour from where I am. But it is also the farthest away from Gothenburg where I need to be for the trip to Paris tomorrow. Do I retreat and go back to Gothenburg or do I press on to Nybro? There might not be anyplace to stay or eat in Nybro. Especially considering everything I’ve seen thus far. Decision time. Make on more stop and then head back to Gothenburg.

The nearest shop that is in the right direction is Målerås, in Målerås of course. If I travel northwesterly on 31, I can stop before they close at 16:00. I pull in the parking at about 15:30 (3:30 in the afternoon).

This factory is famous for it’s crystal blocks “engraved” with animals and birds. These look like irregular-shaped, one-inch thick, paperweights. These are meant to stand on end instead of laying flat. These are obviously made in a mold, since there are so many of each one. I can see several hundred different animals and birds on display. These are the “bread and butter” of the factory.

The more “artsy” items include nude torsos of women done in a similar fashion. These torsos are muted by frosting the glass. The actual torso is done in a different colored glass powder. These are quite unique. I haven’t been much of a fan of cast glass but these are obviously better than anything I’ve seen before.

There is also an attached exhibit hall at Målerås. These are large, museum-sized art pieces. They are disturbing. They are all by the same designer as the animals and torsos. But I dare say this exhibit shows the twisted side of him. I could stay longer but I get the impression that the only worker wanted to close early.

Well, that means no more glass today. I get in the car and contemplate the long trek back to Gothenburg. I now understand the maps and feel like I know the area intimately. I did not make any driving errors and I didn’t get lost! That is a tremendous accomplishment by itself. I have about 250 km driving (150 miles) to get back to Gothenburg.

The fastest way back is via the back road between Kosta and Lessebo. No problem now. I knew where I was but something bothered me. The sun never really rose very far above the horizon all day. Now it seemed to be setting. It was dropping fast. Then I remembered where I was, about 250 miles south of the Artic Circle, in the winter. The sun never really rises much. It comes up around 9 in the morning and is completely set by 4 in the afternoon. Short days, indeed. I would hate to be farther north in the perpetual darkness. Of course this makes summer days incredibly long.

Driving along the back road, I saw a wonderful sunset. All alone in the woods and the colors coming through the trees was certainly worth seeing. In retrospect, I was disappointed that I didn’t see any glass being created. But I had a great adventure and started thinking about how to get back here during the week.

Once the sun had set, the frost set in fast. The roads were getting covered quickly since there really isn’t much traffic. Then the fog begins. Pea soup thick in some places. I am questioning the wisdom of driving at night, even if it is only 5 o’clock. Can’t go nearly as fast as the trip in, but I press on. Wave goodbye at the sign that says “Leaving the Kingdom of Crystal”. Not much better on the backside of the sign than on the front when I came in this morning.

I see a truck in the distance with yellow flashing lights, which are extremely bright. As I approach I see that it is a sand truck. No environmentally unfriendly salt here. It seems to work well, and with the studded tires, I feel quite safe. I have to pass quite a few slow moving trucks. I like the courtesy of moving out of the way of faster vehicles. I feel quite invincible until I feel the need for a pit stop. I only get about an hour before the need sets in. I am truly in the middle of nowhere. It still is over 30 minutes to Växjö. What to do? What every boy does in the woods. Pee. I realize that there are little pull-off areas on the side of the road about every two miles. I pass one. Perfect. I pass several vehicles and put a good deal of distance between them and me. Here is the next pull-off. Quick. Stop. Turn on flashers and turn off lights. Out. Pee. Zip up. Back in the car. Lights on. Go! Back on the road just as I see lights in the distance from the cars I passed. Glad no one was coming from the other direction. No one is the wiser, until now.

In Växjö there is a McDonalds. All right!! Get some real food. Swedish food is good but I have been junk-fooding all day, might just as well keep up the trend. I park and go in. Use the facilities just in case. The Playland area looks like any other of the thousands of Micky D’s I’ve seen in the U.S. Guess what? Order by number. A “Number 1” here is the same Big Mac meal as in the U.S. Back on the road, eating in the car, only the fries aren’t quite as good. They are pretty mushy and taste different. Yet I do recognize the taste. The potatoes in the restaurants taste the same. You can make things look the same but not quite the same taste.

About an hour later, I arrive back in Halmstead. Pull off in the same gas station I visited this morning. Perform a ritual pit stop and pick up a candy bar and Coke Light for the remaining hour. One more hour and I’m back in Gothenburg, getting off the expressway at the correct exit.

A short trip through town and there is the hotel, just like I left it at 7:30 this morning. A quick glance at the clock. Its 19:30. Three hours, forty-five minutes from deep in the heart of Glasriket to the hotel. About an hour longer than the trip in. Twelve hours door to door for the whole trip. 805 km or 499 miles. Not bad and it’s a good thing I had unlimited mileage on the car. The trip calculator indicates that I have about 90 km of gas remaining. The airport is about 30 km so I think I gauged the fuel correctly!

As I enter the hotel to check in, I see several tea-lights on the counter. Then it hits me. That feeling I had back at Kosta about tea-lights was right on. I’ve seen these everywhere. They are all over the counters, in the lounge area, in the restaurants, everywhere. Must be a popular item.

I am exhausted but exhilarated at the same time. A good nights sleep and its off to Paris for four days of meetings. I buy some glass candies at the airport the next day on my way to Paris. Only now I know where these were made.

Now I was mentioning at the outset of this story something about those alligators. Trips like this for me don’t ever turn out as expected. This one wasn’t too bad. All those miles and hours to see glassblowing. There wasn’t any. That’s my luck. A similar trip, but this time with family in tow, took place in Florida. There’s a road there called “Alligator Alley”. A short trip to see some alligators, that’s the grand scheme. Drag the family along on a “wild alligator chase”. But of course, we don’t see any alligators. We see them the next day at Busch Gardens. A 500 mile, 12 hour trip then too. For those who know me, this is normal, but that’s another story.

Deja Vu All Over Again...

2009-12-29T07:14:00.006-05:00

So I was reviewing the posts from this blog yesterday in an effort to see where I've come from since I started this thing in late July. Probably haven't done enough blogging. My hope was for two or three entries a week. This will be the thirty-seventh episode of Glass Musings. Twenty-three weeks have elapsed. That makes a little more than an entry and a half per week. Better than I thought but less than I'd hoped.

One thing I did notice is that the last post seemed familiar, even as I was writing it. It finally hit me that I'd written about that piece before, or at least one that was very similar. Not entirely sure how that happened. Sorry 'bout that.

I got a new version of Photoshop for a Christmas present. That is something that I've been wanting for a long time. In order to better make use of some if its features, I decided to clean up or at least better organize my digital photos. I stumbled across a bit of writing that I did in early 2001 about a trip I'd made to Sweden in January on business. I had a free weekend as I had to be in Paris the next week. Rather than come all the way home and go back to Europe the next day, I made a side adventure to visit the glass blowing factories of the country. I had a lot fun, but there wasn't much glass blowing to be seen. That is the basis for the story I wrote. I plan on posting it here, but it will probably be in several parts as it is twelve pages long! I haven't quite figured out the best way to do that yet, but will come up with something.

Anyway, for a gratuitous image for this post, I'm including the map of the region called "Glasriket", which means something akin to "glass making area". Without reading the whole story to refresh my aging memory, I seem to recall that I made it to all but one of the factories or studios shown here on the map. The northernmost one, Lindshammar" seems to be the one I missed.

Stay tuned for the intriguing story of "My Adventures in Glasriket".

Merry Christmas, Everyone

2009-12-24T12:04:00.004-05:00

We are expecting a white Christmas!! I wish everyone a joyous Christmas and a wonderful new year.

Using Everything . . .

2009-12-24T10:30:00.007-05:00

I've been cleaning up my hard drive and trying to organize some of my pictures, especially of glass. As I've previously written, I like to keep reference pictures of every piece I make. This makes a nice way to refer to what I've done, what color combinations work well together, and a hundred various other reasons. Having a good reference photo is not the same as what I'd use to submit to a gallery, juried exhibition, or whatever. Also, having good images of a piece is the only way to sell it on eBay and other sites. I decided to sell this piece earlier in the year. I just have too much glass and nowhere to display it all, nor do I have enough storage room to keep it all. I really liked this series of bowls and thought they would sell well. Unfortunately, the last two summers have been a bust at local art fairs - as they've been cancelled, changed, or I haven't been able to attend. So the pieces that I'd normally sell quickly were piling up. But to sell it online, I'd need better pictures than the one reference shot I had.

Now I don't pretend that these are the world's best photographs of glass. And they certainly could use a touch of Photoshop. Notice all the reflections and white highlights? I fact, I think you can see a reflection of one of my front windows in the upper part of this picture! I use a small table top light tent which provides a good background and keeps out most of the unwanted glare, but some is inevitable. But it already is a much better image. I took several pictures from all angles including the bottom to show my initials, year, and piece identification number. I won't post them all here, but they do show that this piece is unique from all angles.

Here is another view. The thing I like about these is that you can turn them every once in a while and get a whole new piece, without spending any money.

Which brings up the reason for the post. These pieces are made from leftover scraps of color. I gather up a bunch of little bits that aren't good for much else, gather them all together, twist and turn and cut and distort while hot on the pipe and then blow out the vessel. The only problem is that you never know what is going to happen. Which is why I like the process so much.

I noticed that I'm beginning to get a lot of leftovers gathering at the bottom of my tool box. Perhaps it is getting close to the time to make more of these.

Cooliris Photo Wall

2009-12-21T08:02:00.002-05:00

I've been looking around for a cool way to display the photographs on this blog in a quick and easy way. Why? Because I like to do things that are quick and easy - of course. The little "Favorites" over in the left side of this blog is kinda cool, but it's not easy to see, and I have to update it. This gadget is called CoolIris, and its from www.cooliris.com. It took all of 30 seconds to create. As you can see, there aren't a lot of images here, yet, but there will be. This looks to be a really fun and interesting way to make your images available from public sites such as Flickr, Picasa, and others. I use Picasa as it integrates easily into this blog.

They make a downloadable version that has some REALLY COOL features for browsing lots and lots of images, and you can browse your local images as well. Haven't had much time to play with it, but I will.

10,000 Hours - Really?

2009-12-04T13:41:00.003-05:00

I came across an interesting book that I want to read today. It's called Outliers, and the author is Malcolm Gladwell. Here is the Wikipedia link to the book description. Although it seems that the reviews haven't been too kind, calling it simplistic, it did spend time on the New York Times Bestsellers list early this year.

The main theme of examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success and that some people, what he calls "outliers", are fundamentally different and unique which are factors in their fame, fortune, and capability. One of the things that I heard about this book and what makes it interesting to me is what Gladwell calls the "10,000 Hour" rule. He posits that it takes 10,000 of practice to become a master of a subject. This applies to sports, music, art, and even jobs.

I'm not sure I buy that 10,000 is a hard and fast rule, but it got me thinking. That number is five years at a normal 40 hour a week job. In vocational jobs such as plumbing, five years is probably a pretty good estimate of going from an apprentice, through journeyman, and finally achieving master status. So I'm a little dismayed - I started my interests in glass late. I've probably only have two or three thousand hours over the past seven-plus years. I got a long way to go to reach that mythical 10,000 hours!

My question is - is this realistic to become really good at something, especially in the arts? What do you think?

Deep-Fried Turkey - mmmm Good!!!

2009-12-01T07:35:00.009-05:00

OK, another entry that is not glass related. But it's close. I really love deep-fried turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. I don't know why, but it is much juicier and tasty than the traditional oven baked variety. I guess the dry heat of the oven dries it out. My family really devours it, and there isn't a lot of left overs.

I can't be sure, but the process of cooking it may be the most dangerous thing I've done in my life. Hey, maybe it is related to glass. Standing next to a vat of boiling oil, with a propane burner pumping out 100,000 BTU's of open flames, on a windy day, kinda reminds me of standing in front of a glass furnace. Both are hot. I can see how people burn their houses down with the process though. It isn't for the faint of heart if you value your life, limbs, and loved ones.

Anyway, I saw a TV cooking show called "Good Eats" where the host, Alton Brown, rigged up a contraption to assist the process. It is hard to see in this picture but there is a metal cable and pulley system hanging off the bar clamp on the ladder. The turkey is brined in salt and brown sugar for 16 hours or so. No matter how well you drain it, it still has a lot of moisture in it. The oil, which I keep at or under 325 degrees, is just sitting there all nice and quiet. It looks innocent enough. But when you put the turkey in it, it turns into a roiling, spitting, bubbling monster.

Deep frying something as large as a turkey is a delicate operation and you need to GO SLOW. They don't tell you that in the directions that come with the turkey fryer. Although I'm not sure I understood a single word on the photocopied page that came with the bloody thing. Dropping the turkey in fast is a recipe for disaster. Lowering it slowly keeps the boiling over to a minimum. After a few nerve-wracking minutes, the whole bird is immersed and cooking away to a golden brown moist deliciousness.

The pictures are from last year's setup. Note the leaves - they fell early and then it was wet and cold from early October through April and the yard didn't get cleared. This year, at least, has been a nice fall and all the leaves are done - nothing to clean up in the spring. I had to clear a spot last year to set up the rig in case of fire. Note the fire extinguisher. Better safe than sorry. This year, for whatever reason, I added a little too much oil to the pot for the size of the bird. The picture from last year is what should be the level of the oil. There is enough room to contain the boiling oil. This year, it was much, much closer to the top!

My pot holds a 12 or 13 pound bird perfectly. Any bigger and its rubbing on the sides. I measure using the "displacement" method. Oh, that's another reference to glass. That is how I measure glass for casting. Only this time, after carefully measuring, I got a little too much oil in the pot. When I lowered the bird, I immediately knew I was in danger land. It was bubbling over the top quite a bit more than usual. Luckily enough spit out and went far enough away from the flames that it didn't cause any problems.

Waiting the 30 minutes was very stressful. That's right, it only takes 30 minutes to cook the 12 pound bird. Then 30 minutes tightly wrapped in foil to rest, continue cooking, and drain any excess oil. I think the bird was tastier this year because of the excitement. I had to cook another bird for my daughter and her family. This time I took about 5 cups of oil out of the pot and it was much less stressful!

Greece

2009-11-14T04:47:00.005-05:00

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

2009-11-02T13:24:00.006-05:00

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. ???

2009-10-26T16:32:00.005-04:00

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?

2009-10-16T12:41:00.013-04:00

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!

2009-10-11T07:11:00.007-04:00

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

2009-09-30T14:28:00.005-04:00

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

2009-09-25T09:49:00.005-04:00

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.

Grinding a Pillow

2009-09-23T12:17:00.007-04:00

This piece combines optical crystal glass, the clear part, and a slab of a Bullseye casting billet glass. I made this during the same time as the "Bird" sculpture. This piece is quite interesting. It's about 6" high, 4" wide, and ranges from about 1" to 1.5" thick. The two glasses were glued together with a glue called "Hxtal" which is an epoxy that is able to be ground and polished much like the glass. In this piece the amber glass started out as slab about 1" wide.

The optical crystal slab represented the rest of the piece, about 5" wide. The two slabs were glued together and then ground and polished. The blank was a rectangular slab but I ground it with a reverse twist. This means that the top twists one way and the bottom twists the opposite direction. This isn't easy and you need to develop a rhythm when grinding to keep the twist uniform and, probably more importantly, not lose control over the piece. I also sloped the front top face to provide even more visual interest. The end result looks like a pillow that has been fluffed and placed on a bed.

The pictures are even more interesting in some respects as the capture some of what you see, and some things you don't notice when looking at the sculpture directly. For instance, the picture above looks like the piece comes to a point on the bottom, and yet the bottom is actually flat and the piece stands up perfectly fine. The picture below it looks as if the bottom is rounded.

Finally, note the amber color and how its looks like it is all throughout the piece. In fact, the amber is just along the left edge and the highly polished crystal is reflecting and refracting throughout the piece giving it a different look depending and where you view it from.

I owe a lot to the instructor, Martin Rosol, who taught the coldworking course at Corning that I attended. He showed me the possibilities of introducing complexity in a piece by utilizing the optical nature of the glass itself.

Sometimes simpler is more complex and interesting.

Recycled

2009-09-15T12:13:00.006-04:00

My wife claims I'm a hoarder. I don't think I am. Especially not after seeing the crazy TV shows about clean houses, hoarders living in/with cat feces, and the like. But I do tend to keep a lot of stuff around that I might, however little that chance might be, use sometime in the future.

This piece shows how I used two of those carefully packed away "treasures". I'd been glass blowing for a while, but wanted something I could work with at home. Blowing glass at home isn't for the faint of heart nor the weak of wallet. So I got a little 13" octagon kiln and started playing with fused glass.

One of the very first pieces we made was a slumped plate using a lot of scrap strips on a transparent green base. I say we - as in "my wife and I", she was all gung ho at first, but she lost interest pretty quick. Once it was fused and slumped the plate wasn't all that wonderful. It was dog-boned in as we'd heated too long, too high temperature, and all the other myriad mistakes one makes when starting out. It was an OK plate, but it fell into one of my "I have a use for this someday" tubs.

On a side note, I keep everything in those blue plastic tubs you get at any of the big box stores these days. I watch for sales and bought them by the dozen. I have about 20 of these filled with Christmas decorations, and another half a dozen or so filled with the outdoor holiday decorations. These are not part of the "Jeff hoards everything" collection. There are about 30 or so tubs stacked in the pole barn - they do stack quite well - filled with "stuff".

Another item in one of the "cool glass things I may use one day" tubs, is the small pyramid shown in the picture above. I cast this in a mold I have out of glass powders. I should have known better but it shrank quite a bit as the powders melted. I knew that. But it didn't turn out quite as big as I wanted - can't even remember the project it was going to be used for anyway - so I put it away for future contemplation.

I found the two items one day and had this crazy thought - could I fuse the pyramid to the plate. So I sawed off the dog-boned edges of the plate, turning a 12" square into about a 10.5" square but was able to save the pattern. I loaded the plate in the kiln on the slumping mold and contemplated the firing schedule. I was worried about the pyramid deforming and that would just be ugly. I set the thing to ramp up very slowly and go to a very low tack fuse point. I then watched it carefully to make sure it didn't deform. The piece had to have a very long anneal cycle. So I waited patiently until the next day and it did survive. There is some slight rounding on the edges of the pyramid, but not too bad. The pyramid is solidly fused to the plate. I can't tell if there is significant stress, but its been through about 9 months of sitting out on the shelf, including two periods of no heat (don't ask), and seems to be surviving OK.

It will probably end up back in the "what the heck I'm I going to do with this thing" tub pretty soon as it still isn't one of my favorite pieces, but it did show the way for some sculptures I've been pondering.
Anyway, I found it

Wondering What to do...Revisited

2009-09-09T08:33:00.002-04:00

In the last post I explained a bowl I was pondering. I was thinking of sandblasting parts of the bowl and rim to give a matte effect. I finally quit procrastinating this past weekend and polished the rim of the piece. I haven't taken any pictures yet to post, but I really like the look. It isn't a high-gloss polish like optical crystal glass can impart, but it does give a more finished look.

I never intended this piece to take so long to get to a finished state. I'm still not sure if it's there. I'm calling it "complete", at least for now. I know I'll revisit it sometime later. I need to move on to other projects.

I'll post a "finished" picture next time I get the camera, tripod, light box, photo tent, extension cords, and most importantly, the time to take some better quality images.

Wondering What to Do...

2009-09-05T09:17:00.004-04:00

This bowl is driving me a little crazy. I made the basic bowl during Marty Kremer's workshop at Corning this year. See my previous post about that workshop here. This is a quick and dirty photo to show what I'm talking about. The left half of the bowl is clear and the right half is glossy white.

I made the pattern bars that run down the center at home before I went to Corning. There I created a round blank by laying up strips of white and clear, along with the pattern bar, in a 12" round shape. Once this was fired, I realized how nice the piece was turning out. The blank was then slumped into a mold with fairly steep sides.

That was the easy part.

I really like the wide mouth/lip/whatever you call it look and proceeded to saw off and grind the lip. That is where I stopped and the consternation started. You see, I really had intentions of sandblasting the front and back, giving the whole piece a frosted look, except for the pattern bar area down the middle. The photo doesn't quite show it, but the piece is very shiny except for the lip where it was ground. I'd then use the goop mentioned in my post to make it have a nice satin finish.

But I really liked the shiny look for this piece. I really didn't want to "ruin" the piece by sandblasting. So the dilemma continues. I think I'm going to polish the rim to a high polish and see what the optics do. If that doesn't seem right, then I can always sandblast.

Help!

Marbles, Marbles, Everywhere

2009-08-28T10:26:00.003-04:00

I got bit by the marble bug last year. I really am intrigued by these little, and not so little, spheres. I didn't really like playing with marbles as a kid - never saw the fun it it. I know that will cause issues with some serious marble collectors though. I find the very small "play" marbles to be throw-away stuff. Most are made overseas now anyway. But some people seriously collect them. There is another faction that collects larger, hand-made marbles. These are considered art. Most are in the 2" to 3" diameter size range. This is what I learned to make. I make these in the furnace rather than in torch flame. This is the basic difference in "off-hand" glassblowing versus flameworking.
I've made about 250 now. Here is a picture of one I made that I quite like. It's a little over 2" in diameter. I haven't weighed it, but I think it would be around one pound. Photographing marbles is hard. You need to get a good close up and the lighting tends to cause reflections everywhere. This could be touched up in Photoshop but I haven't bothered on these type of reference pictures.

This piece is a black core with the swirls of color in white, yellow, red, and a sparkly special glass called dichroic.

Not shown in the picture is the north pole of the marble. This one has all the colors swirling together to a single point - similar to a vortex. The south pole doesn't swirl, the colors do meet at the pole but without the vortex. All in all a very nice marble.

New Work - Rothko-inspired Glass Vessels

2009-08-23T07:56:00.006-04:00

A certain individual (OK, it's my wife) has been pestering me for several months now to post pictures of my newest work. I've been delaying for lots of reasons which I don't care to elaborate on right now. This is work I've been thinking about for a while, but has evolved to where I think the pieces are good enough to share.

I wish pictures could impart the texture of the pieces. Glass is normally pretty smooth and glossy. These aren't. They are actually pretty rough. The surface feels a lot like about 120-grit sandpaper. This is in stark contrast to the lips, or tops, of the pieces, which are ground to a very high polish. In this grouping, the silvery blue color on the top half of the piece is very reflective, but still exhibits the texture. When you look down the top you can see the yellow interior reflected and the look changes as you change your viewing angle. Neat.

This work doesn't yet have a title - one of the things I'm still searching for - but the working title is called "Rothko", after Mark Rothko, the abstract expressionist painter. I love Rothko's work - one example shown here. The texture and color and interplay really are wonderful. You really should check out the "Rothko Room" at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

Favorite Art Haunts

2009-08-21T13:32:00.007-04:00

The Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France is perhaps my favorite art haunt that I've had the pleasure to visit. I go back there every time I get the chance. I've spent several afternoons enjoying the Impressionist art - both the paintings and the sculptures found within. The Orsay is built in the old train station which was first erected in 1900. It underwent significant transformations in the past century or so. I emerged as a wonderful place to display works of art as the building and the art within are from the same general period.

I often look for pieces that I can get inspiration from and embody the concepts into my glass art. The painting shown here is one such example. I'm not a good painter - I really can't draw at all, but that's another story. I really like the feel of color and the interplay of the patterns of the clouds. The piece is titled "Crépuscule", which means "Evening" in English, painted by Charles Guilloux in 1892. The photo is © ADAGP, Paris - Photo RMN, Hervé Lewandowski.

The picture at the left is my current favorite from the Orsay collection. This picture cannot do it justice. The dot pattern of the painting is meant to be seen from several feet away, at least in my opinion. I bought a reproduction of this picture in about an 11" by 14" size to study. I plan on using this style in my glass using glass powders and frits to attempt to get a similar effect. I need a lot of practice but this is one of the journeys I'm on right now.

The painting is called "Plage à Heist" which in English is "Beach at Heist", painted by Georges Lemmen in 1891. The photo is © photo RMN, Gérard Blot.

Selling my Glass on eBay

2009-08-21T08:01:00.002-04:00

With the decline in the number of art shows and fairs that we have in my local area, the number of pieces I've made started accumulating around the house. With the boss starting to make noises about how much stuff was on tables, shelves, and in boxes everywhere, I decided I needed to try some alternative selling techniques.

The first thought was that monster - eBay. I been registered for a long time but really didn't buy much. A lot of reading and research went into what I wanted to do. I decided to put a few pieces up for auction. I started with a nice piece to see what would happen. That is when I learned even more.

Shipping turns out to be the real issue. I know how to pack pieces for shipping and I've sent items all around the U.S., including Hawaii, and never had an issue. Of course I double box everything. That means that the piece is packed full of bubble wrap and/or newspaper if it is a hollow vessel. Then its wrapped heavily in bubble wrap and put in a tight fitting cardboard box. This box is then in turn put inside a larger box and "suspended" in two inches of styrofoam - either sheets or peanuts, or bubble wrap. This means the piece is pretty well protected. I think most pieces break from movement within the packaging. They are bound to be dropped or rough handled but if they are packed correctly they can't move and all the packaging absorbs the impact. I guess it's kinda like an airbag for the glass. It can take 20-30 minutes to properly package a piece and ready it for shipment.

The real surprise is that UPS turns out to be pretty expensive to ship packages. My father worked at UPS for 30+ years so I used them by default. In the first case, the shipping was more than what the final price of the piece was sold for!! I then went to the US Post Office, and with their priority mail one-price packaging, I can get a good deal on the shipping and you even get tracking numbers. PayPal makes it easy to print shipping labels and process payments as well.

Many people complain about adding a few bucks ($3 - $5) for packaging. I try to save every bit of bubble wrap, cardboard, and packing peanuts for reuse but I still end up buying stuff for packaging. When people see the piece arrive safe and sound, the remarks usually are "great packaging" or similar, but they balked at paying a packaging fee. I watch with interest people who have no issue with buying the latest infomercial product and then paying $7.95 for "S&H" when it clearly didn't cost that much for sending a small product or DVD, as compared to shipping a piece of glass.

I really didn't get a lot of bids on some of the pieces. I sold a couple for $10-$15 that would have been listed at $100 or so at an art fair.

So I have a few questions - What do you think of buying glass on eBay? What is a fair way to cover the packaging costs? I welcome your comments.

Photos on Glass - Something Old, Something New

2009-08-16T09:02:00.005-04:00

When the first photographs were made in the 1840's and for quite some time thereafter, they were "printed" on pieces of glass. The first type, called daguerreotypes were actually done on a mirrored glass surface treated with a light sensitive chemical solution. Of course with the invention of printing on paper, photos on glass died out. Paper was cheaper, much more portable, and not as easily broken as the glass. Well, things old become new again in slightly different forms.

The image of a glass plate shown to the left here is one example of the old but new again idea of printing photos on glass. However here the photo is actually "in the glass". Gaffer Glass makes a photosensitive glass rod that can be blown into any shape and then exposed to a negative, developed, and set in a most unique way. For those interested in the deeper technical aspects of using this glass, refer to the link above to read the details on Gaffer's site.

The process is pretty straightforward. The hardest part is blowing the blank. The rod is picked up and then encased the usual way. Here I used an opaque amber color. The base photosensitive glass is transparent and has an interesting tonal range. You are never going to get "Kodachrome" quality, but the effects are interesting. Picking the right backing color is important. I also created on in a deep blue thinking the hues would be complimentary. In fact, you have to look very close to see anything in that piece.

I'm not great at blowing rondels, a large round flattish glass blank. This is the same process as very old window glass was made. This piece is actually quite round, a first I think for me, and about 16" in diameter. The only unfortunate part is there is a slight dip in the center making this more like a large plate than a nice flat rondel. While annealing the blank needs to be kept in the dark and well covered until ready for exposure. It is actually UV light that exposes the image so some light is OK, but not for very long.

I created a bunch of negatives in Photoshop and printed them out on transparency film. That is me on a camel in front of the great pyramid in Egypt (but that's another story). I cut these into pieces as it was hard to get perfectly flat due to the shape of the blank. This is done in a dark room with photographic safe light. I then put the blank in direct sunlight for 30 minutes. Then the exposed blank was put into a cold annealer and brought up to about 1000 degrees and held for about 4 hours. This develops the image. Of course then the piece has to be cooled and annealed so it doesn't break.

One cool thing is that the process is reversible. I don't think I'm going to do that with this piece. Better exposure control could be done with UV lights, but sun works, it just isn't as predictable.

This is a process that needs a lot of practice - both in the blowing and in the image exposure/development process.

Grinding Marbles into Submission

2009-08-13T09:32:00.006-04:00

I make hand-blown glass marbles, which I've blogged a little bit about previously. I'm pretty good at it, but in order to be GREAT, you have to make quite a few. Unfortunately, I don't have the energy or time to practice enough to be great, so I'll settle for good enough. Sometimes I make a marble that is great in it's color, pattern, or something that says this one could have been great, but it isn't quite round or has some "skudge" on the surface. That's where cold working the marble comes into play.

A marble, to be great in my mind, not only has to have a great interior, but also be perfectly spherical. A marble is just a fancy name for glass sphere! I priced out sphere polishing machines that are normally used in lapidary (stone and gem) working. $2000 and up just isn't in my price range. Therefore I do what I usually do, figure that I can make one myself. How hard could it be? A few hours on the net and I saw that others had done similar things. I took the best of what I found, thought about it, and then proceeded to design my own. The video below shows the results.

I was absolutely astonished that it works. I really was a disbeliever in myself. This is less than $50 in parts. The only thing I bought were surplus gear motors at $7 each. The rest of the stuff I had around the workshop. I had the hinges, some extra T-Track, and the on/off switch. I've purchased a collection of pipe fittings and couplers from the big box hardware aisle. There is a whole story that can (and will) be written about what I've learned. The grit feed is absolutely genius. I didn't invent it, but think I've taken a couple of things I saw and incorporated it into a better approach. The grit is suspended in anti-freeze rather than water. This does two things, first it makes the solution more viscous and the grit doesn't come out of solution and sink to the bottom of the cup. Second, water would make parts rust, not good.

I've done a lot of testing, and the results are spectacular. The first marble I did was an early clear sphere that clearly wasn't a sphere. It was pretty squished. Ten minutes at 80 grit and the thing was perfectly round. Un-freaking-believable. It's pretty messy, but cold working glass usually is.

Someday I'll take a series of before, during, after pictures to post. If I could only remember to do it.

Cool Tools - Wet Saw

2009-08-11T11:55:00.005-04:00

This post is about one of my favorite glass tools. Most glass blowers would talk about their hand tools from Jim Moore or Carlo Dona and argue over which is best. Warm glass artists talk about their cutters and their kilns. But for me, right now, my favorite tool is my DeWalt wet saw. Here is a link to it on Amazon. DeWalt Wet Saw . This thing rocks. I spent a lot of time researching wet saws and using ones I could beg or borrow.

The biggest fault with a wet saw, in my opinion, is that I GET WET. I hate it. I don't want to be wet and sloppy and have to drag out my apron just to make a cut. I don't want to have to build an enclosure just to use the bloody thing and keep the water in the frigging saw and not on me, everything around me, on the floor, and so forth.

After a lot of research I saw this. Now I must admit for woodworking I love my DeWalt tools, including my table saw. It is perfect for me. There are better more expensive options but I'm more than satisified. So when DeWalt announced a contractor-friendly wet saw I was excited. I read all the reviews - not just the fluff articles but ones from real contractors doing real work day in and day out. This one seemed like it would make the grade.

It went on my Christmas wish list. I got it and was really impressed as I opened the box. One of the things that DeWalt did is make it portable. Now at 70 pounds, the think isn't light, but they did an interesting thing. It comes apart without tools into five smaller pieces. The saw itself sits in a tray that holds the water. There are two wings that just snap in to catch the water. The picture doesn't show it, but these are angled up to catch the spray and direct it back into the main water tray. The sliding table even lifts off. There is a reviewer on Amazon who built some carrying cases which are pretty cool. Note the rubber flap at the back that catches the spray as well.

I don't want to sound like a DeWalt shill, but there are just so many features like the adjustable depth stops, the tilting saw head, the rubber covered sliding table that glides like its on butter, and on and on.

I cut a lot of pattern bars and this thing is solid. The 1.5HP motor doesn't even slow down for 2" thick stuff. The water is fed by adjustable tubes on either side of the blade so the water coolant is directed right at the cut, not flying off and getting me wet.

This thing is obviously designed for professionals by people who actually use tools.
This is certainly my current "COOL TOOL" for the moment.

Most Popular Piece That Never Sold

2009-08-11T09:51:00.006-04:00

This year has been bad in Michigan for the economy - unemployment is over 17% and people just don't have a lot of spending money these days. For me this downward spiral started last summer about twelve or even fourteen months ago. I usually do a few art fairs a year where I do some pretty strong sales. I stay away from the big one here in the area - the collection of independent fairs collectively called the Ann Arbor art fair. I blogged on this previously. However the fairs that I've had the most success have been cancelled, at least for the time being.

So I'm left with a lot of pieces that I've made and they haven't yet been sold. I've had to pack, and repack them, several times as I look for a specific piece for someone. It's good that I have pictures of everything, but my anal-compulsiveness hasn't gotten so far as to actually track which pieces are in which blue tub. I love blue tubs. I have more than fifty of them. But that's another topic for another day.

I came across this piece packed away. It has a long history. I made it several years ago, and I really liked what happened with the colors. There is an interesting reaction with the "veins" that wrap the piece. They are a gold based color, but reflect several different shades of gold, silver, and blue, depending on the light. At outdoor shows, I made sure to put this piece in a sunny spot, which usually meant it moved throughout the day. I can't even begin to count the number of people that have ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the piece. Everyone loves it. Or at least, that is what they've said. But nobody ever bought it. It wasn't expensive - in fact I had it listed for about $95. Maybe it was too little. Other pieces, that didn't get as much attention went flying off the shelves.

At this point, the piece is occupying one of the coveted prime display locations in my house where the best glass pieces get some time on display. I'll create something else that is new, and therefore "better", and this piece will get packed away for a while. Maybe the next art fair will change things and it will find a home.

Cracked Ice

2009-08-10T09:05:00.005-04:00

I promised to write about each of my favorite pieces. I've already written about the "Bird" earlier. Here is another one. I call this one "Cracked Ice". Old paintings have a nice texture that is not done on purpose, rather it results from the cracking of the paint over a long period of time. We see the results after sometimes centuries and feel that look is what was intended. We also see this same effect on old houses and furniture where the paint is cracking and peeling. Crafts people go to great lengths to reproduce this effect in their "antique replicas".

In glass, this effect can be created, but the results are not always predictable. This piece is a good example of crackled glass. The base color is a deep cobalt blue, which certainly is reminiscent of cold, snowy climates. Before the piece is fully blown, it is covered in several layers of white powdered glass. This is similar to a nice snowfall building up depth on the ground. Once a sufficient quantity of "snow" is collected on the piece, it is reheated to a very hot temperature and the plunged in a bucket of cold water for several seconds.

That is when the magic happens. If there is the right heat, and the right length of time in the water, and then the piece is blown out just right, you'll get the crackle effect pictured here. The picture doesn't show it, but the cracks are quite deep, and there is a very tactile sensation when you touch the surface. You only get a short period to form the vessel as the white tends to melt into the blue and lose the nice crackled texture on the surface.

The way that the white fades out on the rim is quite interesting. Again, it is all chance in how the final piece will turn out given all the variables of depth of powdered glass, heat, cooling, and shaping that go into making the piece.

Favorites

2009-08-09T11:37:00.004-04:00

I am always thinking about my favorite pieces that I've made. That list changes on a frequent basis. Everyone asks to see some examples of my work. I need to update my website, which is really, really old. I think I last updated it in about 2004! I've been thinking that the blog is an easier way to display my work, my thoughts about it, and have an ever-changing view into my glass work.

As a way to get started I've added a gadget on the left side of this blog which shows some of my favorite pieces. I intend to write a little about each piece in an entry here over the coming weeks and months, and if all goes well, years.

I've uploaded about 20 images to Google Picassa. What would we do without Google? It's "free". I wonder what they are doing with this information, but I can't beat the price. If you click on one of the small thumbnail pictures, you'll be taken to Picassa to view the pictures full size.

Making it Clean and Nice

2009-07-30T10:05:00.007-04:00

One of the qualities of glass is that it is nice and shiny. Somethings this isn't what you want. You want a nice uniform matte surface. To me this is best achieved by sandblasting. However when you sandblast you get a nice surface, but one that is prone to showing fingerprints and other kinds of dirt quite easily. Cleaning is hard and tends to leave a lot of lint stuck in/on the glass regardless of the type of cloth you use to wash and/or dry it with. People have been trying all sorts of surface protectants for years with varying results. Some are pretty cheap and easy to find around the house. ArmorAll, Pledge, Rain-X, and other products have been used. None of these suited my tastes, but at least protected against some of the fingerprint oils. Liquid Lustre is another specialized one but is very, very expensive so I've only seen it used by others. I wasn't impressed.

At my recent workshop at Corning one of the participants in another session brought a product that we all were impressed with. Its called " Clean Shield® GEL - Shower, Tub & Tile Protectant" and is made by the Unelko Corporation. I couldn't find it in stores locally but is available for order on their website at $6.95 per tube, which should cover quite a few pieces. The shipping and handling for two tubes was over $9.00 so I wish I could find it locally.

Here is a picture of one of the pieces I made during the glass. It has been fused, cut and ground, and then sandblasted. Note the nice surface it leaves. You squeeze out a small pea-sized amount of the gel and work it in with the reusable lint-free cloth provided with the product. I suspect it will last for quite a while and a quick wipe with a cloth removes any dust without really disturbing the surface.

More Glowing in the Dark

2009-07-27T11:11:00.007-04:00

I just returned from the workshop at The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass. Refer to the post on "the class" below. I'll post more on that topic later. One of the side benefits of taking workshops at Corning is their wonderful photo studio. You can sign up for a one hour photo session with a very experienced glass photographer. If you've ever tried to photograph glass objects, you know its pretty hard. Glass is typically so shiny that there are reflections galore, hot spots, and other problems.

The photographer, Amy, is wonderful and can make your work beautiful. I threw her a real problem. I made some marbles that glow in the dark. Marbles are hard enough to photograph to begin with. They are smallish, round, shiny, and reflect distortions of everything. Then adding the "glow in the dark" part on top of it makes it more than I can do in my tabletop photo tent.

Here is a composite that we made - a "day and night" view. This really shows what can be done by a talented photographer.

Is it Art..and is it Fair?

2009-07-18T15:49:00.011-04:00

I've lived in or nearby Ann Arbor, Michigan since 1974. One of the biggest attractions, besides the University of Michigan Wolverines football games in the fall, is the annual "Ann Arbor Art Fair". There isn't one fair, as I'll explain in a moment. However, most people see it as one thing and that's how I think of it as well. The art fair covers most of the streets downtown and around the main campus of the U of M. There are literally thousands of exhibitors showing all types of art and craft. Some areas are very upscale, and some are pretty mundane. There is something for everybody. And, this being Ann Arbor, there is a collection of a hundred or so "political" booths as well. This takes place the third week of July from Wednesday through Saturday. All in all, quite a nice way to spend a day.

I've been attending the event since the summer of 1974. In fact, I met my wife at the art fair on a Friday evening. We've been attending together on Friday every year since.

Now, for those who just drop in for the day, trying to figure out the scheme and where to go can be daunting. We see hundreds of people with their fold-out, color-coded, maps looking lost. There is a scheme. We've developed, over the years, sort of a walking tour that lets us take in all of the four main fairs, and the few off-shoot display areas that show up for a year or two, and then disappear. We try to find something unique each year to purchase during our annual trek through the fairs.

There are four main fairs. The "Ann Arbor Street Art Fair" is the original, so they claim, and held the first fair on one street in 1960. This year was the 50th fair. This part of the overall spectacle has, what I consider, the most "art". Along with art comes high prices, and in general this part seems to have the highest prices. I find the most inspiration in this section of the fairs, but haven't bought much here over the years.

My second most favorite part of the overall event is the "State Street Area Art Fair". This fair possibly covers the biggest physical area, at least that's what my feet say. Overall, we've probably bought more art from artists exhibiting in this fair than any other part of the overall event.

The Michigan Guild of Artists and Artisans hosts the "Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair". This fair is for Michigan Guild member artists only. This is where I see a lot of people I know. I was a member of the Guild, and had hopes of exhibiting one day at the "art fair". However, after doing many one and two day shows, I think a four day event is just too much work.

The fourth official fair, is "Ann Arbor's South University Art Fair". This is where things get confusing for me. This fair is the newest, and it occupies the streets where the "original" art fair was held. Several years ago, the local merchants and the fair organizers had a falling out, over what else - money, and that's when the original fair moved onto the grounds of the U of M. We didn't see this fair this year. It is quite a distance away from everything else, and I never found anything I wanted to buy here, so we've stopped going over there.

Finally, there are a few nameless areas that sell very crafty items, or stuff that has been imported from China. Usually these are tucked away in parking lots, alleys, etc. We stroll through, but usually don't find anything we want to take home.

So after thirty five years - I've come away feeling kind of sad about the whole thing. We didn't buy anything last year, and nothing again this year. Everything is the same. Even the artists we like bring the same old things. I don't even see people carrying stuff away from booths anymore. It's more of an event to get out in the sun, take a stroll in a nice city, have some food and drink, and talk with friends. Not much art buying going on - from what I see. Another thing I miss is what used to be ubiquitous at the art fair - "Shit on a Stick". That's what I called the $20 items that people would sell for people to stick in their gardens. It really didn't matter what you made, you had a bucket of shit on a stick in your booth. And one of the best spectator sports was trying to avoid getting hit in the face with people wielding their shit sticks while talking, walking, and trying to chew gum at the same time.

My favorite thing from the art fairs, and I only saw them one year, was the guy who made $20 "chia pets" from old panty hose, potting soil, and some grass seed. He'd cut the panty hose off near the ankle, filled it full of potting soil, and put some grass seed in it. Finally, he painted simple faces on them. he must have watered them for a couple of months as the hair (the grass) was several inches long. A wonderful, clever, innnovative idea, and I saw them everywhere. Probably a college student who is now some doctor somewhere!

Also gone are the bird houses with the old license plate roofs. Some of these were quite clever. Maybe the license plates aren't available anymore, or everyone who would buy one has one. I don't know but these were usful shit on sticks.

So I'm left wondering, where are the new things?

Sandblasting - it's a BLAST!

2009-07-14T07:12:00.002-04:00

One of the things that I learned in my glass travels is that there are many things that can be done to glass after it is blown. There are all sorts of surface embellishments that are done "cold" that significantly enhance the piece. One of those techniques is sandblasting. The picture here shows a fairly complex sandblast process. I did this piece at The Studio at Corning Museum of Glass during a workshop on Photographic Processes in Glass.

This is a several step process. First, an image is prepared in Photoshop or some similar program. A half-tone screen is applied in Photoshop to break the image up into little dots, much like how a newspaper is printed. The image is inverted - blacks become whites and vice versa. This is printed on transparency film with as dense black ink as your ink jet printer can produce. This "negative" is then exposed on a photographic resist and washed out. Washing out the areas that were exposed to the light.
Once dry, this resist mask is glued to the glass to be sandblasted. On this piece, this was harder than it seemed as there were subtle compound curves in the glass that I blew. The "blank" was a base glass of black with an overlay of white. The overlay was pretty thin. The sandblasting cut through the white layer and exposed the black. I really went deep into the black to give texture. Note that there is one of the fish where the resist lifted and the sandblasting took out a portion of the white fish.

Sometimes "luck" happens. Once I got back from the workshop I started pricing out a good sandblast set up for use as home. This looked like it was going to be quite expensive. I then stumbled on an auction on eBay for a complete set up including the compressor (the most expensive part) that was fairly local. The seller was about 60 miles away and we could go pick it up - way too heavy to ship. I won the auction but had to go a little higher than I wanted - aren't auctions always that way? I now have a complete set up at home and have been learning to sandblast a little better.

Glowing in the Dark

2009-07-11T07:27:00.005-04:00

Objects that glow in the dark have always fascinated me. There are some mysterious and magical qualities in the chemical and physical properties going on. For those of us who live in the 21st century where everything plugs in or runs on batteries, we expect to have to turn on a switch to have something light up.

During one of my courses at Corning, the instructor, James Nowak, made an off-hand comment about glow in the dark glass. We pressed for details and were treated to a wonderful demo. Sure enough, once the demo piece was complete and annealed, we took it out in the sunlight for a minute or two. Upon moving back inside, even though it was lighted and not really dark, it was clear that the piece was glowing a deep green color! Fantastic! Cool! And whatever other adjectives apply to this amazing idea.

This is actually a little harder than it sounds. First, you need some special "glow in the dark" power. This can be obtained from Glow, Inc. I got the Ultra Green v10 Glow in the Dark Powder and the Ultra Blue Glow in the Dark Powder. Based on the rating system on the website, the "Ultra Green V10" is the brightest and longest lasting. The "Ultra Blue Glow" is the next brightest. The rest seemed pretty weak in comparison.

Most people would expect to just roll the hot glass in the powder to coat the glass. That doesn't work. The glow powder doesn't melt, even at the hot glass temperatures of over 2000 degrees Farenheit. It just rolls right off. Pretty tough stuff. The solution we used is to create a little cup, put a teaspoon or two of the powder in the cup, and seal the cup with hot glass. This takes two people to do effectively. In order to spread the glow uniformly throughout a blown glass object, you need to gather over the cup a few times to get the mass of glass you want to use. Then repeated stretching, folding, twisting, and bending are needed to distribute the powder. Since the powder is melted, you are attempting to encapsulate a few grains of powder into little pockets all through the piece.

The picture above was taken indoors in a completely dark room and a photoflood spotlight used to "charge" the vase for about 10 minutes. The piece can be charged in sunlight, even an overcast day, in a few seconds, but a bright light takes a lot longer. My windows get bright sunlight but the glass panes must block out a lot of the UV spectrum as that is what is required to excite the glow powder. I need to create a simple base with a small UV black light as that works well to charge the glow particles.

Here is a picture of the vase in normal light. The glow glass is the base color and then coated in black. The black was sandblasted away to expose the glow layer.

I've made some great marbles with this technique, however I haven't got any pictures to post. See the "1000 Objects - More or Less" post for the reasons behind that sorry tale.

Workshop at CMOG (Corning Museum of Glass)

2009-07-09T16:53:00.008-04:00

On a countdown until I leave for beautiful Corning, New York and another week long session at The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass. My glassblowing friend and I try to attend one or two weeks of workshops a year. This year we are taking a class from world-renowned fusing artist Marty Kremer. Be sure to check out his website.

Martin Kremer

Here is the description of the class from the class catalog:

Within the Walls

This technique-intensive workshop will focus on the potential for expression and discovery between the inside and outside of a vessel. Working with the bowl form, the class will explore the intended and the unexpected in "windows" through the vessel wall. Students will learn how to make and use different types of pattern bars, torch-worked elements, and prepared glass (painted, fritted and powdered, and confettied) as inclusions. Various surface techniques also will be explored.

Martin Kremer has been working with glass for more than 30 years. His current work includes large sculptures, which have been featured in museum and gallery shows, and a wide range of glass bowls and platters, which are shown at galleries internationally. He has studied blown and fused glass at the Penland School of Crafts, Urban Glass, and The Studio.

I can't wait. I leave on Sunday morning a little over a week from now. The long eight hour drive is worth it. Although the one time I went in January and there was a foot and a half of blinding snow. Driving through the mountains wasn't very pleasant at all. A summer drive is much nicer.

I've been creating pattern bars, rollout blanks, and other stuff for use in the class. I don't know exactly what we'll end up doing in the class. Each time I come prepared, we end up doing something completely different - and very wonderful - than what I expected.

Stay tuned for updates - I'll try to post during the evenings after class, but usually only get about six hours of sleep during the session so who knows...

Kindle-ing a New Flame

2009-07-08T17:16:00.007-04:00

So my loving family gives me a Kindle 2 for Father's Day. I've been watching the Kindle since it first was announced, but was waiting until they got the kinks worked out, they dropped the price, or both. So being the proverbial "Person for Whom There is NOTHING TO BUY", they broke down and got me one.

For those that don't know what a Kindle is - it's a new way of reading books from Amazon. This amazing device stores thousands of books and has some sort of magic electronic ink which requires very little power. The thing reminds me of the old Etch-A-Sketch toys. It is just fantastic. Amazon did a great job on this device and the packaging, form factor, operations, and usability are very close to an Apple product. Glad they made it almost idiot-proof. The only area that could be improved is the user site at Amazon itself where you purchase books and manage your items - iTunes it ain't.

Here is a picture - notice the high quality that can be read, even in bright sunlight. I can sit on the patio in the evening and read just fine. I love the ability to change the font size. I can make it big enough to read without "cheaters" (a.k.a. reading glasses).

Another feature is that you can add free books that are available on the internet for downloading to your computer. Mostly these are older, out of copyright, works but I've found a few good ones. Transferring to the Kindle is pretty easy. Plugging the Kindle into your computer turns your Kindle into just another removable drive - much like the ubiquitous USB thumb drives. Just copy files to or from the Kindle using a file explorer and you are in business.

Another picture that really makes it clear how nice this little device is. Pretty easy to hold in one hand - much easier in some ways than a "physical" book.

The WhisperNet function which is the built in wireless connection back to Amazon works flawlessly, as long as you can get a signal. I haven't had an issue connecting yet and downloads are extremely fast. I usually turn the wireless off to save battery life when I'm just reading. I know that the first battery charge lasted over 15 hours so that is great for long distance plane rides.

Note - I got a nice leather cover as a gift as well. I wouldn't want to use the Kindle without some sort of cover as I'm afraid I'd scratch the screen. I can just look at the abuse my video iPod recieved and know what this thing would look like in a month.

I've got a lot to learn about sending documents and what the limits are for pictures, but I'm very satisfied - now I have to get back to my latest book.

Losing My Marbles

2009-07-08T09:25:00.006-04:00

I'm fascinated by how easily "non-techie" types can create and post videos on YouTube. They make it sound so easy. Thus was born a goal to create and post my very own video and become famous on YouTube. Now, I'm a fairly techie type. I know computers, I know cameras, I know video editing and producing. After all, I was the "Producer of the Year" back in 1996 at our local cable broadcast station. I produced, directed, or otherwise assisted in creating about 100 hours of live programs that year. So I figured it would be a no-brainer for me.

First up, I had the computer and the software, but I needed a digital camera. When I buy something, I want the best - but spending a $1000 on a new HD camera just for a whim didn't make much sense. And settling for something less wouldn't make me happy. Then I remembered, we gave our daughter and son-in-law a digital camera for Christmas about three years ago. I had a plan. I'd borrow the camera and all would be just dandy.

Camera in hand, I started playing with it. That is when the first issue occurred. Even though it was an auto-focus camera, everything seemed blurry except a certain zoom setting. Hmm. So I do what I never do, read the frickin' manual (RTFM)! That didn't help. It said the auto-focus should actually focus on the subject. After about two hours of futzing, I came to the realization that the focusing mechanism didn't work any more. A call to my daughter confirmed my suspicion. Oh well, I have a massive tripod from my photography days. I'll just set it up and keep the camera locked in one position. Not the best, but it would work.

Now I decided I wanted to make a short video about my marbles. I really hadn't taken any photographs of them - see previous posting on that long, sorid tale. I filmed (oops I can't say filmed, or even taped any more as these are obsolete technologies, guess its "videoed") about 15 minutes of stuff. I even tried some movement trying to keep the focus in check. All those years of handholding a camera paid off as I think I had usable footage.

Next hurdle was moving the video from the camera to the computer. Did I mention that this camera is "only" three years old? Again, I was faced with obsolescence. It uses a small re-recordable DVD to store the video. I had to download drivers for the computer to actually read that disk. Another hour wasted - but had the files onto my computer.

And then the next hurdle - I have to convert the file to a recognized format. Back to the 'net to find a suitable converter. Oh crap, all of them cost $. Look for another hour before I find one that works, doesn't have a watermark, and is free, at least for the time being. Looks like this Saturday is getting taken up on this adventure.

The file is now recognized by the sofware I plan to use - Camtasia. Maybe not the best, but I own it, I know it, and it should do the job. This turns out to be the easiest step by far. Drag a few clips, edit them down, find a suitable royaltee-free piece of muzak on the web, create some titles, and transitions, blah blah blah. This is where all that TV production experience comes into play. Piece of cake. Gee, I can have some fun doing this.

I log on to YouTube, create an ID, upload the file, and I have a VIDEO ON YOUTUBE!!! Eight or nine hours later, but I've done it. I didn't spend any money in the process either. Nor did I have any trips to the big box stores (Lowes, Home Depot, Meijer, ...) which is my usual Saturday morning conversation - "I'm off to Lowes".

1000 Objects - More or Less

2009-07-07T07:40:00.007-04:00

I keep track of things. It's in my nature. So when I started blowing glass it was only natural that I keep track of my progress by numbering each and every piece that I created. Since my first class in late 1999 or early 2000, I've made just over 1000 pieces - more or less.

And the "more or less" part is the interesting thing. For the better part of this decade of creating glass objects, I've made two or three per week. I rent time in a public studio at the Toledo Museum of Art and share a blow slot with a friend. Therefore making a couple of nice objects is about all the allotted time allows. Every few months, I'd collect up all the pieces, photograph them, and engrave my initials, the year, and the object's number on the bottom of the piece. Any piece I brought home followed this process. Those that were "floor models" or otherwise didn't survive were not included. This gave me a record of the piece after it was sold, and gave some provenance to the buy of the piece.

After taking a marble making class with Mark Matthews a year ago that all changed. I was making five or six marbles per session, sometimes more. Although they took up a lot less space, the numbers grew quicker. I started with marbles around piece number 777. I have pictures up through 776. Although I keep track of the items in my blowing notebook, I never got around to taking pictures. I hadn't figured out how to label the marbles with my initials, date, and serial number. Still haven't. So I figured it was easier to figure that out before taking the pictures.

So about a month ago, I realized that I was nearing 1000. Wow! Now I didn't make just marbles during this time, but I know I made less than fifty blown vessels. Hard to believe. Now I'm faced with the daunting problem of trying to sort out a couple of hundred objects and then photographing and marking them.

And the story gets a little more convoluted. For some strange reason, I haven't been including objects that I make in classes and workshops in the count. I don't know why. This probably adds another fifty or so to the count. And to make matters even worse, I haven't included those objects that I make in the kiln. I have a small kiln at home for warm glass work (kilnforming) as I can't afford the utilities it takes to keep a glass blowing studio running at home. I've made probably another fifty or sixty objects in the kiln at home.

I think that I'll have to create a new numbering scheme for these objects - yeah that's the ticket. Thus I don't really have a picture of the lucky object with number 1000. It could be anything at this point. So the picture shown in this post MAY include the 1000th object - or it may not.

Bird

2009-07-05T18:07:00.000-04:00

This sculpture is one of my favorites - I call it "Bird".

Of course, each time I create a new work, I'm tempted to call that new piece "my favorite". This is a cold-worked piece. It is made from optical crystal glass and heavily cold worked to bring it to a full polish. The blue is a single line of of special glue called "Hxtal" with a blue dye in the glue. Two pyramids of glass are cut and polished along one face. This forms the glue line. The glue takes a few days to cure under a warm lamp. I kept this for two days in a cabinet with a strong light bulb which kept the temperature about 105 degrees.

Once the glue was cured, and the glass cooled down to room temperature, it was cut with diamond saws, ground with various grits and diamond wheels, and then fully polished to a high sheen.

Even though there is just one small plane of the blue, it reflects internally creating really nice reflections. The piece sits on one of the two compound curves and rocks if given a slight push with your fingertips.

I call this one "Bird" for what I hope are obvious reasons. It weighs about 8 pounds. Optical glass is fairly heavy. Bird measures about 9" along the longest diagonal.

It was fairly scary as I got closer and closer to finishing it as the two points are quite fragile and could have easily been damaged by the grinding and polishing wheels.