Wheaton Arts Glass Studio
18 April 2017
I: Sunday
I'm in a better mood this morning. The drive down to Millville starts in a mist. Eighty minutes later it's full-on raining. I enter the studio through the back door this time.
The vases along the shelf between the studio and the bleachers have been cleared away. In their place are four vessels of shiny, white glass and single-color swirls.
I'm early so I walk around, taking pictures of the studio. One of the half-dozen glory holes stands ready.
Behind the heavy door of the furnace is the supply of clear glass:
And in the back, a black and white kitty! We're instant friends. She's so into head-butting that she tips her food bowl.
These plates had been in the annealing oven yesterday. Skitch said they'd made them for the museum.
The assortment of goblets stands where it had the day before:
Discarded glass is sorted by color. Perhaps it will be re-melted.
By the rearmost work bench is a pail of discards from a mold:
We break into our small groups again. Today we're down to three, B's wife having other plans. It's just me, B, and T with Skitch now. That means we'll all be doing something all the time today.
We're going to make vessels like the simplest one on the rear shelf, but in clear glass so that we can see what we're doing.
I find out that B is coming all the way from Morganville. That's an hour northeast of where I live, yet, somehow, it only takes him ten minutes longer to get here. I lament that there isn't anything closer to us. B, who has his own protective sleeves, which signals a certain level of commitment, asks me, "How serious are you?"
"I don't know."
We're in the back, gathering glass.
He knows of a studio, still in deep South Jersey, but farther north than this, where he's been able to play around for $25 an hour, a little more if one wants an instructor. "I was there for four hours," he says, "and I didn't make anything." I'm having trouble with this concept. "We just played around."
"I'm not ready to be by myself," I tell him, as I dip a rod into the molten glass. I'm still figuring out how to gather correctly. Having arm protectors and a heavy glove helps.
B makes his vessel first. It comes out looking something like an Erlenmeyer flask. Been there, done that, but smaller and lumpier.
My turn. I don't take as much glass as B did. I manage to control it on the marver table as Skitch instructs me to marver, blow, marver, and blow. Then I heat it up (it's a long bubble now) and let it hang until it's longer. With help I keep it centered and we flatten the bottom. We put a punty on and open up the other end. Here's where I mess up and make the mouth wider than I'd wanted. I hang it a little more, hoping to make the neck longer. That helps a little, but the shape is pretty much set.
"We're done," Skitch says. My flask is slightly less Erlenmeyer-y than B's. I don't much like how it came out, but at least it's almost uniform. I wanted a longer neck.
T gets a big gather. We could stand sunflowers in his vase.
Because there are only three of us we finish before the other groups. Skitch has us practice making punties. He wants us to gather the right amount of glass and marver it just so, with a perfect, pointed dome of glass at the end. At this point I'm feeling pretty confident about gathering glass. I even know which of the assorted rods are going to be hotter to the touch.
I tell Skitch I had a bad day yesterday. "I need to learn the rhythm of this," I tell him.
Lunch break. I try sitting outside, at a picnic table under a wooden roof, but it's too cold. I go back to the studio and sit up in the bleachers. Down below, a glassblower and his assistant work. Skitch sets up for the afternoon. I take pictures.
In the front furnace is black glass. Nobody has gathered from it all morning.
I'm glad for the dreariness outside. It means I have no bike envy today.
After lunch there are still more vessels to be made by the other groups, so Skitch sets us up with an assignment. He blows a bubble. One of us serves him a punty. He knocks the bubble off the pipe. The server now has the ball on the rod. He heats the ball and sits at the bench. The next person brings him a punty. And on and on it goes, the ball getting more and more misshapen with punty lumps, holes, and cracks. The goal is to keep the ball going as long as possible, serving punties from the top and sides.
We drop it. We spear it with a hot rod and punty it along. Pieces fall off. We learn how to keep it centered anyway. Eventually the thing collapses and shatters. Skitch blows another ball and we start over again. As the second ball gets full and misshapen I ask if I can keep the final product, ugly as it is. But Skitch has no mercy for the sorry-looking thing. He wants to keep it going as long as possible. "We can get a hundred on here." I don't know if we're that good.
We're not. It falls and bounces. B attempts to pick it up with a new punty. He gets it a foot above the ground and it falls again, shattering this time. We're laughing.
On to bubble number three.
Now a second group is also playing puntyball. I hear it drop. M throws up his hands in mock victory or defeat; it's hard to tell.
Meanwhile, at the bench by the furnace, a team of two has been attempting all day to clear a mold of solidified glass. The gaffer carefully blows into the mold, carefully lifts the bubble out, rounds it off at the bench, lets it cool, inspects it for extra glass, taps it off into the waste pile, and prepares another gather for the mold. They've spent the better part of the day doing this. They've made nothing but a glistening waste pile of intricately-patterned transparent spheres.
"How serious are you?"
B's question rattles around in my head.
"I didn't make a thing."
There's not much time for pondering. I'm either making a punty on the marvering table,
or heating the puntyball in the gory hole and keeping round at the bench while the next server gets ready,
or centering the punty before breaking it off my rod:
The puntyball gets warty fast:
This sad little Sputnik could have lived on my shelf next to a label: "This is a Punty Practice Ball."
Everyone has made their vessel now. There's an hour left, not enough time for each of us to make something. Instead Skitch is going to make a large cylinder out of black glass. We're going to bring him bits of glass that he'll stamp with either an antique Venetian raspberry or face. When it's finished he'll have us all sign it. "I'll ship it to you," he tells those of us who live far away. No way. I guess I'll be coming down here one more time. Once we've signed it he's going to put it in the museum as an example of what a group class can make.
The black glass, he explains, comes from an ashtray factory in France. Melting in the furnace now are twenty-two hundred pounds of black ashtrays. With his two trained assistants, Lauren and Katie, he gets to work, gathering and shaping more glass than any of us has dared balance on the end of a pipe. T gets to blow for him:
He has J, a Millenial whose parents have been watching him all day and who clearly has more talent than the rest of us, wield the propane torch to keep the bubble warm.
The glass is so hot and the paddle so new that flames leap from the paddle when Lauren holds it to the glass.
She brings him a gather of glass for a lip wrap.
The remains cool on the rod.
More flames as J is assigned the paddling.
The rest of us can only watch.
Katie turns and heats the cylinder while Skitch prepares the punty.
Now it's time to open up the other end and put a lip wrap on it.
Finally the rest of us get to do something. One by one we bring little gathers, "bits," he calls them, and let the glass drip onto the cylinder as Skitch guides it, cuts it, and pushes the excess away. Here's where the punty practice is paying off. Also, I've done this before, a long time ago in a studio far, far away in Hunterdon County.
When it's my turn, I say "raspberry." I don't want my stamp to be a face. It's too creepy.
The stamps accumulate.
It's almost ready. L, another advanced classmate who spends a lot of time at the studio, helps Lauren into a heat-proof suit that makes her look like something out of Star Wars or Doctor Who:
Or maybe Star Trek. Lauren is the High Priestess of Molten Glass.
When Skitch knocks the cylinder off the punty, Lauren is there to catch it
She hustles it away, to the back of the studio, where it will anneal forever and a day.
Class is over. I gather my stuff and head towards the back, where the assistants are talking to L. I walk past, invisible. At their feet is a gray and white cat. I follow her towards the high table where her food bowls are.
One of the senior glassblowers sees me getting friendly with Chirpy. He tells me the backstory of her and of Mona, both rescues, both free to a good home. They seem content here.
I wonder if I could be.
II: Monday
"How'd class go?" I share my office with two other technicians. The artsy one likes the lumpy flask, the off-kilter vase, and the slightly oblong ornament on the shelf above my desk. "What did you make?"
"Not much." Somewhere between the vase and the punty ball I reached another level. I'm not focusing on finished product anymore. I want to be able to control the glass, make whatever shape I'm aiming for look smooth and effortless. I try as best I can to explain what happened -- the bad day, the doomed Sputnik punty balls, my indecision.
I give the ornament a tap. "Like, this little goober. It's not quite round." He laughs at the name. For the first time since I hung it up, I feel affection for the little goober.
Later in the day I pick up the flask for the first time in years. I have it turned good-side-out. It really is pretty bad. I think I did better with the one I made on Saturday.
There's an email from Wheaton Arts. Our pieces will be ready on Thursday. They're thinking of letting us rent studio time at a reduced rate, whatever that means. They're offering more classes.
I don't know. I just don't know.
III: Tuesday
"One of my clients is a glassblower," the trainer tells me. I'm at the gym, lifting weights before biking to work.
"Where?"
"At Bucks County Community College." Maybe it's closer to here than I thought. The college has come up before. Both times that I blew glass up in Hunterdon County, Don told me I should take a class there then come back to work with him. Both times I figured I simply wasn't good enough and was wasting his time. Both times I dismissed the idea. I have a demanding day job and enough after-school activities as it is.
"Can you put me in touch with her?" I ask him. "I need to figure stuff out. She'll probably get where I'm coming from. It's like I just went on a ride on a borrowed bike and now I'm trying to decide if I should buy one for real."
In the early afternoon, still coasting on the morning's caffeine, I search for glassblowing classes at Bucks County Community College. I find one, for the fall semester, and the syllabus freaks me out. I walk away.
Later in the day I come back. I find the instructor's email address and send him a message:
Hi, K---.
I'm interested in taking your class in the fall. Maybe.
I've done a little bit of glassblowing over the past several years. I've taken four intensive classes, two with Don Gonzalez in his studio, and two at Wheaton Arts with Skitch Manion. I now know just enough to know that I'm still not at the point where the glass isn't controlling me. I'm interested in sharpening my basic skills so that I can go back to Don or Skitch and not waste their time.
I'm not a Bucks County Community College student. I'm not interested in earning credits nor in getting a grade. Would your class be appropriate for me?
Thank you for your time.
I don't expect the answer so quickly:
I would love to have you join us. You are a little advanced for my beginning class but I think you will enjoy that class. So I recommend the intro class over the second level class. I hope to see you in the fall.
Well, okay then. I spend the rest of the afternoon and early evening figuring out how I can do this and my day job at the same time without giving up my highly guarded exercise time (without which I am miserable). If I could choose the studio time on the same day as class, I'd only have to give up one day. To do that I'd need permission for time off. Might as well ask. I send the email before going to sleep.
I'd like to enroll in an off-campus class this fall. It's an evening class but it has a weekly studio requirement. Would it be possible for me to take half days on Wednesdays between August 22 and December 13?
IV: Wednesday
There's a one-word answer in my in-box:
Yes!
I can't sign up for the class unless I'm accepted as a student first. Before I leave for work I apply to Bucks County Community College. The online form asks where and when I went to high school (choosing between Bucks County and the rest of the known universe), what level of math I reached (calculus, not that I remember any of it), whether or not my last math class was more than three years ago (thirty-three years ago, but who's counting?), and what my high school GPA was (I don't know! I never knew!), and whether or not I'm applying for a degree (No! A thousand times no!). Have I had any college experience, and where? There's space to list the where, but not the what. Even if I want to, I can't tell them I have more degrees than I'll ever need.
All I want to do is blow glass. All I want to do is make the same thing, three times in a row, with confidence, and without messing up.
So now I wait.
No comments:
Post a Comment