Scrap Glass Glass and All the Cats
12/1/18
I might as well put some of my creations to use. I dig through the pile of mugs and pull out my second-favorite one. It's got a good coffee mug shape. The handle is thick and a little crooked. It's not completely comfortable to hold but it'll do. Our instructor had warned us that the glass we're using isn't good with high heat. I know I'm tempting fate when I fill the mug with coffee. It holds up for the one cup I have time to drink before heading out on my bike.
We're not supposed to get rid of anything we've made this semester. I already broke that rule when I dumped my rejects into the re-melt bucket. Today I'm breaking the rule again by giving one of my riders the sand-blasted tea light, formerly a hamster bowl that was destined to be melted down until he asked for it.
In the evening he texts me a picture of the tea light with a candle in it. I'm glad he likes it.
12/2/18
The second time I pour coffee into the second-favorite mug I hear a crack.
So much for that. On the other hand this absolves me of any duty to perfect coffee mug handles.
12/3/18
My lab partner this evening is one of the advanced glassblowers I met the first Saturday. I remember him from the multi-colored tape he puts on his blowpipes. He shows me two of the pieces that he made over the weekend. I ask if I can steal some of his color. He's cool with that; he says he must have a hundred pounds of colored glass at home. When I tell him I like transparent colors he pulls out a bag of iris gold. It'll be transparent yellow and if we hit it with the torch we can reduce it to a silvery sheen.
I'm still hella jealous about my classmate's molded, pulled-stem goblet. I tell my lab partner that I want to figure out how to use molds. I'll just try to make cups, since I'm not very good at making straight edges either.
He instructs me, step by step, the whole way through. As I melt the frit into the gather he lays out some spare shards of blue thread and shows me how to pick them up. The cup ends up keeping the mold pattern and being fairly straight, but still uneven. I like that it has thin walls though.
He takes his turn, melting a series of colored cylinders onto the clear collar of his pipe. The result is a vessel with horizontal stripes.
When it's my turn again I have another go at the mold. This time there's a wait for the break-off table, and, because we torched the piece to reduce the color, I don't flash it. When we break it off it breaks. "My fault," he says. "It got too cold. Go again." So I do and this time the piece collapses in the glory hole. "Go again," he says, so I do, and this time the piece makes it all the way to the annealer. It's still not straight, probably less so than the ones before it, but the walls are thinner than I've been able to make them so far.
I'm finished with cups. I want to make a cat. They're much more fun because they don't have to be straight or exact. My partner shows me the trick to using the torch to soften the glass without having my tweezers stick, and I get a good set of ears out of it.
"Blue eyes!" my partner exclaims and darts off to his bag of glass to retrieve yet another thin, blue thread. He melts two little dots on. I forget completely that I was going to try to make a nose. He brings a bit for the tail, I wrap it on, we reduce the color, and he shows me how to break the piece off at the bench using jacks and water the way we would during a punty transfer.
As we clean up for the night I get talking with the two advanced students who have been the Monday night regulars all semester and who have been working with each other so long that they hardly need to talk when they're working.
"This is our last lab," they tell me.
"Wait, what?" I ask, confused. "What about next week?" Our last class isn't until the middle of next week, which would give us one more Monday.
"They're shutting the furnace down on Monday."
If that's true then Wednesday will be my last chance to blow glass until classes start again in January.
12/5/18
I'm feeling pressure now. I dig through my box of glasses and bowls with the idea of sand-blasting a few of the less impressive ones.
At work we have a glue gun and a good workbench. I find a few minutes to embellish two early cups and an early wrap bowl.
I get to the studio early enough to sand-blast all three. The cups work well. The bowl, which I had hopes to blast everywhere except the wrap, doesn't work as well; there are too many places where the glue covered the side of the wrap or where the sand couldn't reach well. I peel the tape and glue off and blast the whole piece instead.
My classmate arrives carrying a box of finished work, minus the goblet. "I'm still hella jealous about that goblet," I tell him. "I got lucky," he demurs. He sets some of his pieces out on the table next to mine. When I ask if I can take a picture for the blog he's fine with it.
One semester in and our styles have diverged already. He's fond of molds and is good at using a lot of glass to make thick, even vessels. I'm exploring non-vessels and post-production edits.
Our instructor verifies that this will be our last class. The furnace is going to be drained on Monday. Wednesday will be our final. We are told to bring in samples of our progress.
He's letting us play tonight, but first he wants each of us to show him we can make a straight cup, no molds, no wraps. I'm done for. I can't make a cup straight. Instantly I'm nervous. My classmate goes first, getting it perfect. I go second, getting it curvy, but at least it didn't break or go wobbly on me.
My classmate is digging through the pile of broken glass on the mesh table, picking out shards of color to roll into his next piece. He's making a cup from it.
While I'm sitting on the stool waiting to give him air, the building technician comes in and asks me if I want to fill an empty slot on Saturday morning.
"Yes!" The pressure is off.
I dig through the scrap pile. "I'm going to make a calico cat," I tell him, and describe the steps so that he'll be ready with the torch and tail. It goes pretty well.
He starts in on another scrap glass cup. When he asks me to give him air I blow as hard as I can but nothing moves. He brings the piece to the glory hole, but before he gets there he blows into it and the bubble moves. This is the second time this week that I've been unable to blow hard enough but my lab partner can. "I don't get it," I whine. "I'm in shape! I can ride my bike fifty miles!" When my classmate gets back to the bench and asks me for air I blow so hard that the side wall explodes. The piece collapses into a curvy shape we both like, but he hadn't put a jack line in so we can't break it off.
"Wanna go again?" I ask him.
"Nah. Your turn."
I make another scrap glass cat.
He makes another scrap glass cup. Our instructor is pacing around the studio, looking down intently at a marble he made. I'm sitting on the stool again while my classmate heats his piece in the glory hole.
"Let's see," I ask, and look down into the marble. The bottom half is dark, and arising from it are leaves of color, like lichen, twisting out from the center. One leaf sparkles like dichroic glass. He's not sure he likes it; it wasn't what he was going for. I like it, of course.
"It reminds me of a Roger Dean drawing," I tell him, and add, "That's not an insult. It's like a 3-D Yes album cover."
As I help my classmate I watch our instructor inspecting his marble. This is what artists do, I guess. Then I think, "Like you don't do that too?" Truth. Hell, what are these blog posts if not one long, navel-gazing retch?
I'm not sure if I'm going to do a cat or a cup next. It all depends on what the color pattern looks like once the shards melt into the glass. These pieces are red and yellow; one of the yellow scraps is a ring.
I decide it'll look better as a cup. It ends up being the funkiest thing I've ever made. It's almost straight too.
And that's it for me.
My classmate makes a scrap-glass bowl while I grind down the second molded cup from Monday. The fist one came out of the annealer with a hole in the side; I put it in the scrap bucket.
At home I unpack and show Jack each piece. He likes how the sand-blasted cups turned out. One of the glue casts came off fully intact, so I pose it next to the cup. This is an early piece, from when I first got past hamster bowls.
This one is more recent and straighter. The curve fits perfectly in my hands, which, I assure you, was a complete accident.
Monday's iris gold cat reflects the light fixture above it, giving it a nose it doesn't actually have.
The molded cup shows room for improvement next semester.
I like how thin it is and that it still has pattern. If I can remember all the steps and get it to open up straight I'll be happy.
This is one of the early attempts at wrapping. Sand-blasting has given it new life.
12/6/18
I'm staying late at work to use the glue gun again, this time on two of the semester's earliest cups. I let the glue drip down on its own. Both times the glue is so hot the entire cup heats up and I wonder if they're going to crack. They stay intact.
If these go well I'll have a handful to choose from for the final.
12/8/18
I'm skipping a trail ride for one last chance to blow glass before the semester ends. My car thermometer reads 27 degrees at 8:35 a.m. The studio is comfy.
My partner today is one of my other sometimes partner's regular partner. She's been at this for a couple of years. We start off by showing each other what we've made, talking about color (she's going to share some of hers), and making plans for the day. One of the other advanced students, whom I've worked with a handful of times, gets into the color talk with us. He has an opal white he hates, a pink he doesn't, and he gives both to us to play with.
While she makes ornaments I make one cat with her iris blue color, one with the opal and pink combination, and one with scrap glass. The first two go well (she picks orange for the blue cat's tail), but a piece of heavy scrap gets in the way of my jack line for the third one. We manage to knock it off the pipe in a jagged line that will require a lot of sanding. I make a scrap glass cup too, with a scrap glass wrap. It looks straight-ish.
I spend some time at the grinder and at the sand blaster, touching up and straightening out. There's a queue at the grinder; everyone is trying to finish up before next week's final critique.
Students are coming and going, and, so far, because of my rotating cast of lab partners, I know almost all of them. The conversations are almost all the same: "Whatcha got?" "That's cool!" "What colors did you use?" "Are you signed up for next semester?" "Great!" "See you in January!" I'm showing pictures of the glass cats to the people who helped me make them.
One of my sometimes-partners says that he's seen a lot of beginners and my classmate and I are among the best he's seen. I'm flattered, but, really, with only two of us we get a lot of practice that we wouldn't have if we had been two of fifteen.
One student I worked with once likes to play with colors to see how they'll react to each other; not all colors get along. He's made a vase with aventurine green, the same green that one of the Monday night advanced students used to make the vase I bought from him:
"I hear it's hard to work with," I tell him.
"Next semester I'll show you aventurine," he says, and he knows that it'll have to be on a rainy Saturday.
The studio is buzzing with activity. It's time for me to leave. I carry the box of finished pieces out through the classroom door, out of the building door, and around to the sagging blue picnic table. My fingers are freezing as I set out the glass.
From the foot-high crack under the studio's sliding door comes the drone of the furnace and the fans, chatter, and laughter.
At home I set everything out on the sofa and try, unsuccessfully, to figure out which ones to bring to the critique.
I place the leftover glass from two of the cat tails -- my partner saved them for me without my knowing -- and place them on top of the melted blob I took home early in the semester.
"Art!" Also, Sharp!
12/9/18
I have an idea for that complete lack of grace under pressure cup I made last week. It requires a trip to Staples to find small, press-on stickers.
"What I Learned in Introduction to Glassblowing"
12/10/18
It's 6:00 on what would have been a lab night. I'm carrying two boxes, one for sand-blasting and one for sanding down. The sliding metal door is closed; I enter through the inside of the building.
The studio is silent. The studio is empty.
The furnace is off. Buckets of blue-white glass tilt over the drains in the cement floor. The colored scraps are in a drum set for disposal. Every once in a while there's a crackle from a bucket as a piece of glass snaps or falls.
I set about sanding off a shard of punty from the bottom of the wrapped scrap-glass cup. It takes a while. The regular Monday night studio technician wanders in and out, checking on the glass drained from the furnace this morning, moving things around, chatting with me, and leaving again.
The thing finally sits straight.
Next up are the cats. I start with one at a time.
I take a break when an advanced student comes in. He's one I haven't met. I go over to the sand blaster while he uses the disc sander.
He's finished quickly, and I'm back to sanding cats and trying to polish the bottom of the glass, which I don't quite get right but I'm getting tired of standing here. I have a headache and I haven't had dinner.
Enough is enough. Nobody's going to get cut on any of these.
I pack everything away and take one more look around.
I look at the dusty pieces left by students, covering shelves, outcrops, and anywhere else that will hold something. From one vat of molten glass, a pile of colored frit,, and a hollow pipe comes all of this, infinite.
There's a universe in here.
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