I'm Back!

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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...