A Hot Mess, Part Two

Left: Hamster Bowl; Right: People Cup

6 October 2018

I am Queen of Hamster Bowls.

I was looking forward to the third studio session, or, as the college calls it, "lab." I was looking forward to making pumpkins with my assigned lab partner. I was hopeful that I could improve upon my tiny, misshapen, hamster bowls.

A text message arrived while I was driving. I read it after I'd parked. My lab partner couldn't make it tonight. "Well, I'm already here," I thought. 

After I freaked out about flying solo and some back and forth between the advanced students and the studio manager on duty, we arranged for the advanced students to jump in and help me as needed. 

First things first though, I had to document the starting temperature. 

Only 97? The Devil's Asshole wasn't even trying today.

When he wasn't making his perfect vases, ones I can't show you but if you go to the Red Tulip Gallery's site you'll be able to figure it out, one of the advanced students worked with me, providing a constant running commentary.

"Shut me up if I'm getting on your nerves," he said.

"No! It's great!"

When he was working and I wasn't, I peppered him with questions. "Shut me up if I'm getting on your nerves," I said. He didn't mind.

The other student made a giant fish. He also helped me. I was dripping sweat at the bench and he said, "It's not always this hot in here."

I lost a vessel when it fell off the punty and landed in the block bucket, shattering and sinking to the bottom of the murky water. Here it is at the end of the night after I emptied the bucket:

Last week's vessels were out of the annealer. They were tiny. They seemed bigger when I was working on them. I put them next to my water bottle for scale.

With the evening's work in the annealer, I hoped they'd be bigger and more even:

The studio temperature had come down all of two degrees for Wednesday evening's class. Somehow we were in week 5 already.

My classmate and I practiced making vessels and punties. We messed up sometimes, and we got a few pieces into the annealer. One of mine had broken unevenly off the punty, leaving a blob on one side of the opening. I decided to try to make a spout by pulling on the extra glass. The glass was too hot for that and the entire top distorted unevenly. Oh well. It was fun pulling anyway.

I packed up the bowls from the third studio and third class and took them home. I lined them up on the kitchen counter, oldest on the left, newest on the right. Clearly I hadn't improved much at all. The most recent vessel was arguably the worst, and I liked the shape of my first one the best, even though it was more of a glass doorknob than a vessel. I put all of them in a box, out of sight.

When I arrived at the studio for the next lab I found out that my official lab partner had dropped the advanced class. One of the advanced students told me that someone else would be here to take her place tonight.

The temperature was a chilly 82 degrees.

My temporary partner's plan was to churn out pumpkins. I helped him where I could, giving him air when he asked for it, keeping the pumpkin hot while he got glass ready for the curly stem. The advanced students jumped in to help him with that. It was far more involved and difficult than I'd presumed it to be. In the end he finished three, each a different mix of colors, and I made three more vessels, none much bigger than before, but I was getting the hang of opening them up, and I felt more in control.

It was clearly pumpkin season in the studio. The tray of scrap glass was festooned with remnants of pumpkin stems.

I took a picture of the vessels I'd made during the last class. I might have improved a little. It was hard to tell. The spout was uneven on the experimental piece, but, if I posed it just right, it looked better.

I fell asleep thinking about molten glass and I wondered if, should time permit, my lab partner would help me try to make a pumpkin bowl next week.

Wednesday's class was going to be "critique night," where we were to bring in a sample of our best work. All of the pieces I had at home were uneven. I hoped that whatever I'd done in Monday's lab would be better. I took everything I had and lined them up from best to worst. I loaded a six-compartment box with five of them and left the rest jumbled in another box. I supposed I'd eventually bring the rejects back to the studio to be melted down.

Mid-day Wednesday the class assistant texted me: "Just in case you haven't heard, the Newtown campus of BCCC* is closed today and tonight because of a police investigation, so no class."  I hadn't heard. I stayed at work for a 10-hour day instead. At least I'd get another shot in Monday's lab to make better vessels for critique night.

Monday rolled around, October already.

The colored glass discard bucket was full of pumpkin rejects.

The lab partner I worked with last week was back to help me. I tried, and failed, to make bigger pieces. One was too thin for me to handle and I gave up on it. A second failed as well. The third glooped to the floor when I went in for a second gather while the core bubble was too hot. My partner scraped it off the cement. "Keep it!" I said. I liked the shape, and our instructor had told us to work too hot just for the experience. Well, now I had proof. He put the flattened blob in the annealer.

He and I took turns, although he did let me go twice after I messed up. He was making more pumpkins, experimenting with different colors. He used a lot of glass, and when it was my duty to keep the pumpkin hot while he got the glass ready for the stem, I had to work to keep the pipe turning and not to bump the piece against the walls of the glory hole. With a week's more practice his stems were turning out better too. I lent a hand for one of them, holding the metal rod while one of the advanced students held a torch to the ribbon of glass that my partner twisted around the rod.

I had given up on making larger pieces and stayed small, landing two in the annealer by the end of the evening. I was working hotter, too, which was a big help.

My partner was willing to help me make a pumpkin bowl. He guided me through every step. It required an extra gather of glass and blowing into a mold. The first mold I chose was small, which I figured would be better, given my inability to work big. I messed that one up, though, by heating it too much until the walls, too thin, collapsed in the glory hole. We tried again, using a bigger mold with deeper ridges, but I screwed up the punty and the piece fell off when we broke it free of the blowpipe. The third try, though, did work. 

Afraid to lose the shape, I didn't open it up very much. Here it is in the annealer with one of my other vessels to the right and one behind.

I brought last week's work home and rearranged the box, discarding more earlier pieces and adding all three new ones. Once again I hoped that what I made tonight would be better than anything in the box.

So here we are at week 7, critique night. I arrived early and went to the locker to retrieve and assess Monday's work.

All of it, even the gloop, was better than anything in the box.

There being only two of us, the critique was more of a discussion. It was over and done in a few minutes and we went into the studio to learn how to make real bowls.

I had a bad night. I messed everything up. I messed my work up. I messed my classmate's work up. I was grumpy and frustrated. Things I had done for weeks were somehow beyond my grasp.

"I usually save this lecture for later in the semester," our instructor said, and went on to assure me that there are always times like this. We'll slide back for a week, maybe two, and then come back better than before. He compared it to yoga. In my mind I converted it to bad weeks on the bike.

I did learn why my pieces are so small, though. In glassblowing, mistakes follow throughout the entire piece. I'd already learned the hard way that an off-center starter bubble would make for uneven wall thickness later on. After the starter bubble is the second gather and blocking it to shape the glass and push it off the pipe. Turns out I wasn't blocking correctly. I'd get the shape, but a third of the glass would still be on the pipe, leaving me far less to work with once the bubble was blown out and the jack line put in.

Speaking of jack lines, the advanced students had added to the instructional drawing we'd been given several weeks ago.

The advanced students are cheeky.

I, on the other hand, was murky. I just wasn't getting the blocking thing. (Only when I thought about it later, in bed, eyes closed, did what I was doing wrong and how to correct it sink in. D'oh!)

My first bowl was going fine until I tried to work the jack line after we'd blown the piece out. To make a sharper line I had to heat the whole piece, and the walls started to go wobbly on me. Figuring it would be irretrievable I knocked it off the pipe. My classmate said I could have saved it by putting a punty on anyway, knocking it off the pipe, and working it back into shape after opening it up. I didn't have that much confidence in myself.

I wasn't any help to my classmate either. The punty I brought him didn't have enough glass on the sides, and when we broke the piece from the pipe it fell off the punty too. The next one he did he brought his own punty too, but we took so long to cool the jack line that the piece cracked.

All I could do was apologize over and over and over again. My classmate seemed cool about it. He reminded me that he threw one of his own pieces away tonight too.

Angry at myself, I tried another. This time I managed to push a little more glass off the pipe and got a straight-sided bowl into the annealer, thanks to my classmate's good punty skills.  At the end of the night I attempted a bowl with angled sides. I opened it a little, reheated, opened it some more, and managed to get it to flare a little. It was off-center, though, and as I was trying to fix it our instructor said, "It's beautiful. Put it away."

I apologized to my classmate again. It seemed unfair that I ended the night with two pieces but ruined two of his. "I work in a field where we get yelled at for making mistakes," I said.

"Not here," our instructor said.

At home I put the pumpkin bowl in the cabinet with all the other pieces I'd made over the years.

The two cups wound up in the kitchen cabinet,

until I cut my finger on the sharp punty breakoff spot at the bottom of the glass. 

Among my beading tools is a small file that one of my beading companions had convinced me to buy years ago as a way to soften the ends of silver wire. I dug it out and filed down the sharp bits. While I was doing this I realized what our instructor had meant when he told us that we were making our punties too big.

For the next two weeks we'll be working on bowls. If I can get my hands to do what my head has finally figured out then I'll be able to make something my cats can drink out of. If not, I'll be watering a lot of thirsty hamsters.

(*Hi, Marketing Department! I know you're watching me.)