Hill Slug Chronicles: Wheaton Arts Weekend

My Name Tag

17 November 2017

I ran away from my friends again. I ran away from a promise to help John W paint two rooms in my house. I ran away from participating in Cranksgiving. I ran to Wheaton Arts for the weekend, to blow glass for two days.

I'd been wait-listed and told that my chances of getting in were slim to none. I'd forgotten about it until the email two days before the class.

So while I was driving along a deserted Route 55 in the depths of South Jersey, Tom was lining up the Slugs for another tribute to my absence. I expected middle fingers; I got hearts instead.

The entrance to the glassblowing studio is lined with antique molds, old tools, and an array of glass pumpkins.

I'm not fond of underlying colors with opaque glass. I want a pumpkin I can see through.

The size of the furnace was daunting.

There were eleven of us for two instructors: Skitch Manion and his assistant, John. Skitch has been blowing glass for 20 years. He started when he was 10.

We broke into two teams. I wound up with five others and Skitch as our instructor. He said we'd only make three pieces over two days. I was disappointed, after having churned out 12 ornaments in one day three weeks ago. But this class was designed for beginners to learn the basics. We spent a lot of time on learning how to handle the glass.

In my group there was one other person who had blown glass before. He was a twenty-something cut-up who is destined to be that uncle who knows everything about everything. This was his third class with Skitch. When he wrote "Mr Trouble Maker" on his name tag, I wrote "Glassblower Wannabe" on mine. I watched him, hoping to learn from his ease with the material. He was there with his future mother-in-law. There was also the law professor who I spent some time talking academia with, a line worker for PSE&G, someone who had worked in the now shuttered Wheaton mold shop back in the day, and another guy with a fine arts degree.

The other team was a group of four guys celebrating a birthday, and a twenty-something who didn't seem to be with them.

We spent some time learning how to turn the glass, making a marble in the process. In the afternoon we each made a paperweight. In between was an hour-long lunch break. I'm not used to having that much idle time. Everyone disappeared, and I was left sitting in the stands at the back of the studio, eating my PB&J, watching one of the masters make a vase, and reading politics on my phone.

This is the annealing oven our work went into. Skitch moved the cover on and off so fast that none of the pictures of our work the first day came out well enough to use.

The paperweight was fun. Rather than blow a bubble in the glass, we got to twist and pinch and shape it. I would gladly have made a few more if I'd been allowed.

At the end of the day Skitch gave us a guided tour of the Wheaton Museum of American Glass.

The current exhibition is called Emanation 2017. Artists give the glassblowers their ideas and the glassblowers get to work.

This is a nest of eggs, each a couple of feet long, by Flock the Optic:

Inside, Michael Joo recreated the studio in glass, right down to an exact mold of a sawhorse, a mold of the dustpan, and one of Skitch's paddles. Skitch cut a few 55-gallon drums lengthwise to put hinges in them, then blew glass into them to create the large vessels:

They went through great lengths to turn paper and plastic bags into molds for Michael Joo:

A single Flock the Optic egg rested on a nest in the courtyard:

Therman Statom, a glassblower, painted faces on large vessels:

Vanessa German mixed glass with fabric to create a parade of figures and a few birds.

Emily Brown painted on the inside and outside of large vessels, firing them to harden the paint between each layer:

She broke my no-opacity rule sometimes, but I liked her work the best.

Then there were some other groovy things in the permanent collection:

This one is called "Beaker." Ha. Ha. Ha.

An Italian chess set featured Jews versus Catholics:

One of the guys from the other team admired this cube and wondered how much it cost. "I'd have to live in a cardboard refrigerator box, but at least I'd have a cube," I offered. He agreed.

I drove home in the dark hoping I'd get more time with hot glass tomorrow than I had today.

We started Sunday by blowing bubbles as big as we could get them before the glass glooped and shattered onto the floor. I went first and, not knowing this was just an exercise, made my best attempt to keep the giant bubble on the end of the pipe. "Keep blowing!" Skitch ordered, and the glass film finally collapsed. Mr Trouble Maker (who was now That Godzilla Guy) blew a bubble that stayed intact as a thin thread of it swooped to the floor in an abstract swan shape before it collapsed.

Here's a picture of the studio roof:

Next we made ornaments. By now I'd remembered that it's never a good idea to go first. If you take your turn somewhere in the middle you get to help others by blowing or paddling or shielding and you learn from their mistakes and experience.

Three weeks ago I'd blown and turned the glass myself. This time somebody else was blowing. It made for better control of the shape, and Skitch was there to help turn. My ornament came out the way I'd wanted the ones I'd made before to look. I'm going to keep this one.

Hot glass distorts color. This will be translucent red and yellow when it cools.

Our final project was a mug. I drew my idea on a name tag.

Skitch advised me not to use blue glass as the base because it would be too dark for the other colors to show. So I used clear glass and silver on the top. Again I didn't go first and when it was my turn to open the hole I was the only one besides Mr That Godzilla Guy to do it right. I'd remembered the feel from the workshop three years ago; we'd done a lot of that. My mug wasn't completely even though. It was close.

Here's the annealing oven with all of our work in it.

This is my square, with the ornament, paperweight, mug, and a hidden marble.

Then came the demo. Skitch would make something, we'd put our names in a bowl, and, after he was finished, he'd pull out a name and the winner would keep what he made.

I suggested he make a bowl and put his personal touch on it. He must have already had this in mind because it took him and John only a few minutes to set up.

He was going to make a Venetian-style bowl using cane he'd made himself.

Using this tool, he measured out a row of cane that fit between the straight end of the calipers. The curved end would show him how wide his glass gather would have to be in order to pick up the cane and have it wrap all the way around.

First he lined up the cane and John warmed it until the rods were sticking to each other.

Then he took a gather of glass three times the size we'd worked with and picked up the cane.

He rolled it until it was smooth on the glass.

Next he trimmed the end.

A chunk fell to the floor, still glowing.

He blew into a mold to give the glass ridges:

More trimming and twisting:

More marvering:

He gathered another layer of glass on top of the twist.

The trimmings on the floor had cooled and exploded:

With John blowing into the pipe, Skitch began to shape the bowl:

They put a foot on:

The glass was so hot that it set the beeswax on the paddle on fire.

More shaping:

They put a punty (that's a piece of glass on a solid pipe) on the foot end and broke the pipe end off. Now it was time to widen the hole that the pipe left:

They put a lip on:

Then Skitch began to widen the mouth:

He was spinning the hot glass so quickly that it deformed as he shaped it, but that's what was supposed to happen.

Wider and wider:

Each time he went to the glory hole for a re-heat, John had to open a wider door. Eventually the piece was too big for the furnace.

As they worked, Skitch and John discussed whether or not there would be room in our annealing oven for one more piece. They decided there was.

The glass began to cool as Skitch put on the finishing touches.

John got ready to grab the bowl. The amount of heat thrown off by the large piece, and the chance that it might explode, required John to don a face mask and heavy, heat-resistant gloves.