Time to Make the Donuts

I've been interested in making food items in glass for quite some time.  My goal is to ultimately make sushi and sushi accessories such as plates, soy sauce bowls, and chopsticks in a fairly large scale.  One of the people I respect in glass, and certainly has a bunch fun making his large scale food, is John Miller.  John makes large scale works of things like hamburgers, french fries, beer bottles and other great items.  The hamburger alone is probably 20" across and must weigh 50 pounds.  

I made some small sliders - more on that in a future post, but John is the king of diner food and I wanted to create something of my own.  I settled on donuts.  Over the past few months I've been making various jelly donuts.  These include chocolate glazed and powdered strawberry stuffed, as well as chocolate covered cream stuffed eclairs (we call them long johns in the midwest).  

While I was at Corning recently, I took advantage of the great photography skills of the resident photographer, Ann Cady, to get these great photos which show off the idea.  Ann's business is called ARC Photographic Images and her website/contact info is here.

Now all I need is a nice cup of coffee...

 

Back Home from Corning

I just returned from The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass where I participated in the workshop on glass casting led by Richard Whiteley.  What a great experience!!!!  I've now been privileged to attend 10 workshops at The Studio and I think this one ranks up there as #1.  There are too many things to go into - suffice it to say that if you ever get a chance to work with Richard - take the plunge.  It will be rewarding.

First off, workshops at Corning have a "teaching assistant" whose main job is to herd the cats (workshop participants), fire the kilns, and generally keep people from doing silly stupid things.  We had much more than a TA though.  Heike Brachlow was our TA for the session.  She should have been considered as co-instructor.  She did so much more than the typical BA.  She is a world class glass caster in her own right.  Check out her work here.  One of her movement pieces was featured on the cover of the Bullseye catalog #7.

Check out Richard's work here.  Richard treated the workshop more as a very abbreviated class he would teach at the Australian National University.  This is very different from what I've experienced in past workshops.  There was an equal amount of thinking/planning as there was actual hands-on work.  At first, I questioned this approach but I think it was much more effective.

Richard and Heike were sticklers for safety and health practices - requiring dust masks, eye and hearing protection.  Here is a picture showing how we usually saw him during the day.

And here is a picture of me working on a mold.

I'll post some additional topics about the actual pieces I made during the workshop in the near future, along with photos.  

I'm off to see the Wizard

My bags are packed, the car is loaded, the cooler is full of Diet Dr. Pepper, and I'm just about to depart for the beautiful town of Corning, New York.  Seven and a half hour drive, give or take 30 minutes.  I'm taking the Richard Whiteley workshop "Addition and Subtraction" over the next two weeks.

Above is the picture from the Corning Museum Of Glass website for the course.

I can't wait...

Richard Whitely - Watch Out Here I Come!

I a little more than 96 hours, I depart for another visit to The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, in beautiful Corning, New York.  I attending a two week workshop with the great glass caster from "Down Under" - Richard Whitely.  You can see his work here.  I'm really looking forward to it - however I've been putting off preparing to go.  Last time I took a casting class, I showed up with several molds ready to cast, and made a bunch more - all in a week's time.  

I guess I am getting lazy in my old age.  I know what I want to do, and have even drawn sketches - that will be the subject of an upcoming post.  But I only have one clay original ready.  I have a few originals in wood that I want.  And I have one wax of "The Rock" which I thought was the subject of a post from a long time ago.  But my mind is failing me - I don't see it.  So I'll post about that too in the near future.

The Rock is a nice rock I found in the backyard one day that was the perfect size for a suiseki display I was thinking about.  This is the art of rock display much like bonsai, although you don't have to prune and water the rock (unless you want to, of course).  I made a nice little display base that I cast.  I found a rock that fit perfectly on the base.  I made the two piece mold, mother mold, and even two waxes of the rock, but never got it cast.  I have the glass, the waxes, the original mold, and now a reason to do it.  

I can't find the picture of the rock and the wax right now - I did find the process photos of making the mold.  Here you can see the rock and the mother mold I'm cleaning up.  I poured a rubber mold as the next step, just to learn the process.

 

The other things I want to do are all over the map, and I'll not have the chance to do them all - but if I can get a few out of my head and into glass, I'll be very happy. 

ArtFest on the River - 2012

Williamston Michigan has held a small art fair/festival for a number of years, however the last one was in 2007.  I think it started in 2001, and I started participating in 2002.  There were a lot of circumstances that caused a four year hiatus, including a tornado that took out the park where it was located.  I'm very pleased that it's back and was held this past Saturday.  Check out the website here: ArtFest on the River.  One thing we all were worried about was the weather.  July can be a crazy month of heat, humidity, and rain.  It's been extremely hot here since early June, with the temperatures approaching 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and even higher on the heat index.  Luckily it was a nice breeze and only about 89 in the afternoon.  

I was the only glass artist participating this year, although there were some fused beads and things.  I did quite well, selling about 18-20 pieces.  The attendance was pretty good, but a lot of "lookie-loos" and "be-backs".  Everybody loved the pieces, but not as many actually plunked down cold hard cash for them.  Or should I say "cold hard plastic"?  I signed up for a Square account and got their free card reader.  I have a nice iPhone and it really came in handy.  Very few people carry cash anymore, and even fewer have checkbooks.  I can't recall the last time I wrote a check but its at least 3 years ago!

I had one person pay with cash, three wrote checks, and the rest used credit/debit cards.  I have my money in my hands this morning - and my bank didn't even put a hold on it.  Square promised to deposit my money on Sunday night and it was there.  I still have a hold on the checks, so this was worth the small fees they charge.  One thing of note that I didn't realize on the first transaction was that the reader plugs into the headphone jack.  The little thingie wasn't pushed all the way into the hole and wouldn't read the card.  In the heat of the moment, I just typed in the card number and it worked great.  It ended up costing me about 39 cents more but had a happy customer. 

Planets and Planetoids

I've been exploring a rounded, closed form lately.  These aren't quite spheres like the marbles I've made, but spheroid which is kind of a squashed sphere shape.  These aren't solid, but blown.  Most of the ones I've done lately are between 9 and 10 inches across and slightly less tall.  They have a very small opening so aren't really useful for anything other than display objects.

After doing several of these, I began to notice some patterns evolving.  I was looking at some photos on the NASA site and the various planets looked a lot like my glass.  Or was that my glass objects looked a lot like the NASA photos?  The above reminded me of the moon Europa.  I'm working on a series now called "Planets and Planetoids" and exploring various colors and patterns.  Another one is shown below.

I haven't named this as I'm still looking at photos - but this one reminds me of some exotic undersea adventure.  I have a lot of these in various stages of completion - some will have highly polished openings similar to the Rothko series which should add even more interesting effects when looking into the pieces.

Jelly Beans from Leftovers

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.