Royal Purple Half-Flops
13 April 2019
Settle in. This is a long one.
I: Pop
25 March 2019
I've lost control. Gone are the days of straight cups and clean lines. Now that I've got a suitcase full of color I'm making nothing but mistakes.
Our instructor warned us that this would happen. "You can't see the bubble," he said. That's the least of it. I don't know how the color is going to respond to heat. I don't know how it's going to bend. I don't even know for sure what it's going to look like when it cools.
The piece I spent so much time on the day before vacation, the one with 9 layers of neodymium lavender, the one that went rogue on me at the end, the one with so many air bubbles they look deliberate, is something teetering on the line between art and garbage.
I mean, any one part of it is pretty,
but the thing as a whole is a mess.
The one piece that went well for me that day is in the cabinet in about eight pieces. LT2 tells me it exploded on its own after he took it out of the annealer. "Champagne does that," he says. I look at the shards. The color combination of champagne and the reactive mix was a good one. "I'll make another one and see if it happens again." I have one piece of champagne rod left. I might as well try it.
First, though, I want to coat a core bubble with that royal purple frit that looked like pus the last time I used it. Maybe it'll be different if it goes on inside and gets stretched out.
It does. It's smooth and light purple with slight dark swirls. When it opens up into a shape I'm not content with, I decide to go for a floppy bowl. We've been warned they're difficult to make, and that we'll mess up a lot. I spin it out and stop it. The edges flop a little. "Get it hotter next time and it'll flop more," Glass Ninja says as I bring it over to the break-off table.
It shatters when I knock the piece off the punty. We carry the shards to the waste bucket. I'll collect them later. The color has been discontinued; I want to use it again. It's pretty.
Glass Ninja gathers two rods, coats them in clear glass, and rolls the cylinder onto a set of warm canes. He gets it almost exactly right, and by the time he's blown the piece into a vase all of the canes are evenly spaced and spread out to cover the entire body as if they'd been painted on.
And for the second time in as many weeks the punty gets cold and the vase crashes into the block bucket. This time it's spectacular. As the hot glass falls the bottom breaks, sending a spout of steam and water from the mouth of the vase to within inches of where Glass Ninja is now standing. "FUCK!" he yells. There's no rescuing it. The vase crumbles into hundreds of pieces like a windshield that's been struck by a branch.
He walks it off in the studio. "Next time," I offer, "I'm moving the bucket as soon as you're done with the blocks."
"Yeah," he says, "but then I'll obsess over the dent where it hit the floor."
My turn again. I ask him to teach me how to draw on the core bubble with threads. I pick up another rod and practice making dots and squiggles up on the glass that's on the pipe. When I have enough confidence I move down to the rod, drawing dots and squiggles with random glass scraps.
When it's time to blow out the core bubble I blow too hard. The glass almost collapses, but Glass Ninja shows me how to save it by marvering it flat again. We proceed, and everything seems fine until I'm at the final stage of shaping the cup. That's when the sides start to collapse; they're too thin, a remnant of the blown-out core bubble.
I'm not sure what I want to do with it at this point. Throw it away? Put it away? "When my pieces go wonky on me," Glass Ninja offers, "I get random with it. Pull on the sides with the diamond shears."
So I do, making, well, I don't know what. Art, I guess.
Prodigy is working with LT1 tonight. Both of them have such exquisite control. Their lines are smooth and even and symmetrical.
When's the last time I did that and it didn't wind up exploding somewhere?
When I go again I coat the champagne rod with reactive mix. It's getting late, and if this piece is going to explode I'm not going to bother with taking time to shape it.
I've always liked the way our vessels look when we first break them off the pipe. They're halfway between bubbles and eggs. I open the mouth a little and keep the bubble-egg shape.
All right, then. I made one piece that didn't go south on me. It probably will later.
At the end of the night I pull the purple shards out of the bucket and take a picture.
Piece by piece in my backpack as I bike to work, the animals return from critique to my desk. Red Mouse looks better from the side, so I balance him on last semester's wrapped cup.
Green Mouse joins Pinocchio and the Apple-Cherry on the windowsill.
28 March 2019
OK, let's see if the champagne rod exploded in the cabinet again.
Nope. Not yet. I now have a half-egg time-bomb.
I like this one, even though I ought to have done more by opening it up and shaping it. The frit mix looks good against the champagne background.
As for the wonky rod-doodle bowl, I'm not sure. Half of glassblowing is the art of the save. I suppose I rescued this one. Anyway it's fun to look at and play with. The color, a rod from the starter pack, is called "Blue Jade," but it sure looks green to me.
It's class night, which means that who we work with ends up being whoever signed up before or after. By chance my partner is Glass Ninja. When I work with him I tend to try to make pieces that are at the edge of my comfort zone. He knows how to do everything, and he stands by to guide me when I'm about to go off-course. Sometimes this means I'm not completely sure why I'm doing what I'm doing until after I've done it.
His piece takes a while to set up. As I wait to assist him I chat with My Classmate. I complain about my slump. He empathizes. "When I look at my stuff there's always something I don't like."
"Yep."
I try another Royal Purple floppy bowl. Again it only flops a little bit. This time it stays in one piece when we put it away. Again Glass Ninja says that I need to get the glass hotter before I spin it out.
I tell him I'm going to move the bucket away when he's finishing his piece. "Notice I didn't argue with you on that," he says, and suggests that what he really wants is an asbestos landing pad. Me standing by with gloves on will have to do. I move the bucket and his vase stays on the punty.
I still have some color out. I want to pull some threads so that I have something to play with. Our Instructor and Glass Ninja help with the pulling, both eager to go home. Everyone else has left. That's usually the case. I stay until the very end, even if it means I have only fifteen minutes to make something. Fortunately, threads don't take very long, and with two experts at hand, we get a lot of threads.
It's fun to do. First, gather glass on a punty and roll it in frit. Heat and roll and marver over and over until the color saturates the glass. Then get it drooping hot. When it comes out of the glory hole, have one person grab the end with pliers or tweezers and slowly pull on the glass while walking backwards. Keep tension on the punty and pull a little. When the glass starts to cool, lower the thread to the floor and break it off of the punty. Let it cool for a few minutes, then tap it every two feet with pliers to break it into workable lengths.
The Woman from the Gym (I need a better nickname for her) appears with a tube for me to carry the rods in. She's been blowing glass here for twenty-something years and knows where to find anything. She's also full of advice and warnings. I should call her Sage.
On my way home and at home my mind is full of insecurity. Nowadays nothing is going to plan. I've been stopping short because I've been convinced I'll screw up if I keep going. At least I like the shape of half-opened vessels.
I don't know what my endgame is here. It's that time of the semester when small boxes full of rejects take over. I have half a mind to auction them off as donations for a couple of bike charities at our club's spring gathering. But only half a mind. The other half looks at the pile and thinks, "These are too sucky to give away."
I have a head full of ideas and no room in the house for any of them. I have no time to practice all of the things I'm supposed to be learning, and nowhere to put the failed experiments.
I go into work the next day still trying to figure things out. The MD-PhD student who got the other green mouse as a graduation present swings by and I show him the red mouse. We talk about color and shaping.
I hear myself saying, "I want to make stuff people can pick up and play with. I like dimensionality."
And there it is. There's my goal.
III: Flop
1 April 2019
Glass Ninja is on vacation. Grace is here instead. Prodigy is working with Go Big again.
Even though it failed to flop, I like the way the bowl turned out.
Today I want to try again. This time I'll use the shards from the one that exploded and from a failure early in the semester. I'll put fuchsia on the core bubble and pick up the shards on the second gather.
Something goes terribly wrong early on. I have trouble getting air into the fucshia gather. Then I forget to pick up the shards on the second gather until after I've blocked the glass, leaving it too cold to pick up most of what I've laid out. Then it blows out thin, so thin that I decide I need to put a foot on it if there will be any hope of saving it. LT2 calls it a "rookie cookie." Whatever. Grace is good at setting it up. I can't quite get it round, but at this point it doesn't matter. The sides are already misshapen. When I go to knock it off the punty the foot comes off instead, taking some of the bottom with it. Grace puts the rest in the annealer. When she goes to set up her glass I take it out.
Grace is working on horses again. Now most of them are winding up in the annealer instead of the punty bucket. She's working on getting them to stand on their hind legs. After she makes close to a dozen horses she says it's my turn again.
I want to try another bowl. Again I forget to gather the shards, so I proceed without them. This bowl is small, and when I go to spin it out it doesn't flop at all. Instead it takes on an oblong shape. The size is perfect for a cat dish. I put it away. LT2, who wandered in while I was working, says that the piece was too small to spin out anyway.
Grace makes more horses. LT2 encourages her to keep the ones she messes up on. "To show your progress," he says. I start taking everything from the bench to the annealer.
My turn again. Given my sucky progress, I'm going to try something simple this time. I'm going to make a cup from Aurora Sunrise frit. I coat the first gather then blow the core bubble. Then I roll the next gather in more frit.
Maybe I blocked off-center, or the core bubble was off-center; either way, when we get air into it the glass blows out unevenly.
I have a choice. I can chuck it now, or I can try to save it.
I'm going to try to save it.
I "heat the crap out of it," as Glass Ninja would say, and attack it with wet newspaper while Grace gives it some air. After a couple rounds of this I manage to wrangle the thing nearly back to a cylinder. I shape it some more when we get it onto a punty. When I put it away it's almost straight.
Half the art is in the save. I have to learn somehow.
Grace makes more horses. On one she's dissatisfied early and starts pulling randomly with the tweezers. It takes on a hydra-like shape, somewhat floral.
"That's pretty," I tell her. "Keep it." She pulls some more. LT2 walks over, curious about what she's up to.
"Looks like horse salad," he says.
Grace stops, looks up at him, and replies, "Well that's kinda gross." Then she puts a jack line on it and breaks it off into my waiting gloves. I put it in the annealer.
My turn again. I'm going to make a cat. When all else fails, make a cat.
I mess up the eyes. I need more practice drawing with threads before I try this again. The face has gone a little flat, too, between the heat of the torch and the time I took me to make the eyes.
I can't even make a cat anymore.
"I'm in a slump," I complain. "I can't control anything." I'll snap out of it eventually. Right now, though, I don't even know why I'm here. I go over to the schedule and pencil in my name for Thursday afternoon.
III: Stop
4 April 2019
I have more unused vacation time than I thought possible. I'm taking half a day off today so that I can try to get out of my glassblowing slump.
When I arrive fifteen minutes early, only Go Big is in the studio, doing a crossword puzzle from the pile of newspapers we use to shape hot glass and wrap finished pieces.
"Whose puzzle?"
"New York Times," he says.
I go to the cabinet to fetch Monday's work.
Yeesh. The cat's eyes are a mess. The little bowl is wonky in a non-artistic way. The big one didn't flop and I have half a mind to smash it. And the Cup of Saves? It's far from straight when I get up close to it. I take everything to the sagging blue picnic table for a group portrait.
I'm going to call this one "Sad-Eyed Kitty" and give it away.
This one's too wonky to give away. I'll drink from it myself.
Moxie can have this one.
Yeesh.
I dunno.
This afternoon I'm working with Tiny, which I'm pretty psyched about because she's sweet, she's a good glassblower, and I like her work. At the other bench are Go Big and another beginner who, after a year away from the bench, decided to take the beginner class again. She's clearly not a beginner, judging from how she handles the glass.
Tiny goes first, drawing zebra stripes with black thread on a white core bubble. She uses a mold to make the stripes ripple the way a zebra's stripes do. At the end she decides to spin it out into a bowl. For whatever reason, one end spins way out and the other folds over the center of the vessel. "Oh my god," she says.
"It looks like a scallop shell. Keep it! It's a zebra-scallop! Put it away! Put it away! This is so cool!" She's not so sure but we put it away anyway.
When it's my turn to draw I'm not at all in control of the thread and the flame. The best I can do is a series of random little dots and squiggles that I hope will stretch out into something interesting. I'm drawing on a rod that claims to be "Apple Green." I make an angled cup, getting some of the clear glass color onto the top of the vessel, which makes it look uneven. I can't tell if it's round or not. Tiny says it is. We put it away. I sneak a picture of it in the annealer.
Fuck it. I'm going to make cats for the rest of the day. When the going gets tough, make cats.
The piece is bigger and thinner than usual because the bubble goes all the way up to the top of the head. That doesn't help at all when I want to put eyes on. The face falls flat from the heat and horizontal position, just like Monday's cat. I put it away, disappointed. Tiny says I should go again. "Do it while it's fresh in your mind," she says. I get as far as shaping the head when I see the same thing happening. I knock the piece off the pipe and into the waste bucket.
I can't even make a cat.
I'm in full-on self-deprecation mode.
Tiny gives me a pep talk. "Last semester all I did was make tiny vases," she says.
"I remember. They were perfect."
"I tried again this semester and I can't do it at all." She tells me that I need to stop comparing myself to everyone else and to enjoy what I'm doing. She was in the same mental space last year as I'm in now. She realized that none of that matters and now she just makes stuff for herself.
"Slow down," she says. "You're rushing through everything."
She's right. I've gotten so used to working fast between Glass Ninja's hour-long pieces and within the last fifteen minutes of class. That's no good if I'm trying to learn something new or to set up a piece well.
I smile and grab my notebook. At the bottom of the page I write in large, capital letters, "SLOW. DOWN." I show it to her.
I take deep breath and try another cat. I don't like the neck so we put a collar on. I don't bother with eyes. The glass is still too thin, though, and when I give it a final heat I leave it in the glory hole too long. It looks like it's about to collapse so I pull it out and give it a puff of air. The cat collapses into a mushy mess.
Tiny has to leave to fetch her daughter for class later tonight.
On my own I set about making another cat, and, damn it, this one is going to work. I pick a song for my mental soundtrack.
Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobblestones
Looking for fun and feeling groovy
Hello lamppost, what'cha knowing
I've come to watch your flowers growin'
Ain't you got no rhymes for me?
Doo-ait-n-doo-doo, feeling groovy
Ba da-da da-da da-da, feeling groovy
I got no deeds to do, no promises to keep
I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
Let the morningtime drop all its petals on me
Life, I love you, all is groovy
At the end of it, after I've slowly put in a bubble by myself, warmed it, shaped it, and asked the beginner to babysit it while I make a bit for the tail, which she then holds as I apply it, I have a squat, white-speckled cat. It's okay. It's head is too far sunk into its shoulders, but it's a cat.
I take a dinner break at the sagging blue picnic table. Classmates trickle in for tonight's session. We have a little lecture first. Our Instructor gives us our final assignment: we have to make three pieces that somehow go together.
I'm going to go back to basics and wrap cups.
Tiny's Daughter is my partner tonight. I make a cup from Brilliant Yellow frit and she makes a Light Reseda Green bit. The cup is small and the bit a little too cold but I roll it on anyway, moving the pipe towards myself. The bit gets so cold that I have to recruit Alchemy to help me turn the pipe on the final rotation. I have to fight the glass when I cut the end off. I pull too hard and the piece splashes into the block bucket.
I stare at it for a second, waiting for it to crumble. It doesn't. I pull it out with the jacks and carry it to the color waste bucket, where I gently rest it. I wonder, if it doesn't shatter into thousands of pieces right away, if it'll stay together and I can take it home.
"No," Sage says. She and Our Instructor, who have been sitting next to our bench, had been watching the whole thing. "It's going to crumble."
Then the two of them tell me everything I did wrong.
"Hang on," I tell them. "Lemme grab my notebook." I write it all down: put the thread on while the piece is still on the pipe so that I have more control, leverage, and time; roll the pipe away from me so that I have more room to work (if I roll towards me and run out of space, I'm stuck); break off the end of the thread and heat the piece, then bring it back to the bench to give it a puff of air that will secure the thread to the body; put a button on the bottom -- a sculpture punty -- so that when I break the punty off the bottom I won't take any color with it.
"I've had some success putting the thread on after," I tell them.
"You'll have more if you put it on before." I wonder how I'll shape the outside if it has a thread on it. I'll have to do more while the glass is on the pipe, I guess.
I jump back into the fray to help Tiny's Daughter use the threader for a feathered vessel. When she runs into trouble (the core bubble seems to be gone or pinched or something), Tall Vase and Classmate's Partner, come in to help her and I stand back to learn.
She gets air into it eventually but has to sacrifice the smooth jack line. Instead the top is uneven. She looks at it and asks, "What
is this?" But she doesn't give up. She opens the top with random pulls, and the piece ends up being beautiful. "It'll be the envy of crit," I tell her as she puts it away.
I've been going back to the waste bucket every so often. The cup has stayed in one piece so far, but now I spot a stray shot of green wrap on the other side of the bucket. I don't go back again.
We clean up. I walk out with Tiny, Tiny's Daughter, and Classmate's Partner. It's now after 10:00 p.m. I've been here for 9 hours. I'm exhausted and jangly at once. All I have to show for the day is a warped bowl and two failed cats.
At home I unwrap Monday's bowl and place it next to the one from last week. Now that I see them together neither one looks as bad. If I can try one more time with these colors I'll have the set of three I need for the final assignment.
The flat-faced, sad-eyed cat almost fits into the small, oblong bowl.
The Cup of Saves looks fine from a distance. Up close is another story. I guess I'll take it to work and use it there.
5 April 2019
The Cup of Saves isn't finished with me yet. I discover, during a meeting, that it's got a slow leak. Fortunately we have quite the assortment of adhesives in the lab. One of the post-docs sets me up with a UV-curing glue that's meant for glass. I flip the cup over and apply a hefty gob of adhesive on and around the punty mark. With a hand-held UV light I cure the glue and give it some extra time to set before I fill the cup with water.
The leak is gone, and, it turns out, the slightly off-round shape and the little dent near the top fit my left hand perfectly. The Cup of Saves is staying at work.
I give the oblong bowl to Moxie.
8 April 2019
Ugh. This cat's face is too flat. The eyes are almost invisible too. It looks better from behind, except then the tail is in the wrong position. Dang it. So close.
Chunky boy:
Yeah, no. Bigger lines next time.
At least the shape is good.
It's hot in here today.
Glass Ninja is back from his vacation. I tell him that my plan is to try to flop another bowl. Once again, despite his coaching, I don't get it hot enough, and it doesn't flop. I reheat it and he presses on the edges with a block handle to indent them a little more. It winds up looking like the other two I've made, which is kind of what I was going for as a second choice anyway.
"You need to go thinner and hotter," he says. He suggests I work with clear glass first so that I can see what's going on. That's a good idea, of course.
But for later. Right now I want to remake the green-wrapped yellow cup. This time I follow the rules and it works, mostly. I lose the tapered shape when we give the vessel air after I wrap it. I'm a little unsteady opening it; the wrap is throwing me off. It's good enough for a first pass. We put it away.
On my next turn I try again with Capri Blue and a Brilliant Yellow wrap. This one goes much better. The vessel is small and almost spherical, not quite what I had in mind but I like the shape.
So I had a good night. I've gone back to principles, slowing down and making sure that I have a good core bubble before getting any color onto the glass. I'm doing what I know works for me, even if my classmates gather color differently.
The slump has been broken.
V: Hey!
9 April 2019
I take the reversible cat to work so that I can live with it all day and decide what to do with it. Halfway through the day I pack it up. It's going into the reject box.
I drink out of the Cup of Saves all day. In the late afternoon it catches the sunlight and splashes color onto the desk.
The red butt-less mouse now lives under my monitor, wedged outward by a piece of Blu Tack, something else we have plenty of in the lab.
10 April 2019
It's guest demo night. I'm here early enough to fetch Monday's work and take pictures. I don't know how I did it, but it seems I've managed to make the same mistake three times in a row. I now have a completed set of half-flopped bowls for my final project.
The yellow cup was supposed to have a green wrap. I don't know what happened. The wrap is thin, sure, but it only looks green at the very bottom, where it's thickest. Weird.
, who runs East Falls Glassworks. He's here with an assistant. Several people shadow them with their phones recording. I hope they post the video soon because these guys are doing impossible things.
(If you're on Instagram and search for Jacklyn Valentino, scroll through her videos in the "glass" section and you'll find it. You'll also see how good she is. And no, I'm not telling you which of the many aliases in this blog belongs to her.)
At home I line up the half-flops for a group picture.
This is the final piece of the set:
They don't really stack well. Don't try this at home.
If I can get a few more of these I'll have a backup set for the final.
Definitely no green here. The flecks are black soot, from the inside of the pipe, baked in. Sage says this happens sometimes no matter how well the pipes are cared for.
4/11/19
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Our Instructor is writing on the blackboard: "Selection for the student show will be 4/18/2019. Every advanced student must bring in at least 3 pieces for me to select from."
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
What student show? I'm gonna be that kid who doesn't get picked for dodgeball, aren't I? My heart is racing.
"What's the student show?" I ask Our Instructor while my partner for the night, Classmate's Partner, is over in the glory hole. He's sitting next to Sage again. I'm working at the same bench again.
It's for the whole arts department, he explains. He has twelve slots. There's paperwork. He tries not to pick only the very advanced students' work. He tries for a range of pieces.
I try to look calm but I'm doing the math. Aren't there fifteen of us, not twelve?
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Tiny's Daughter gives me a pep talk. "I was so bad in the beginning," she says. "You just have to stop being negative. I used to be negative and it came out in the glass. Now I think of every day as progress. No matter what you do it's progress."
My turn. I pick up a chunk of Cherry Red rod. Classmate's Partner does his best to calm me down. "I bring a bunch of stuff," he says. He tells me not to worry. He's really good at calming me down. I like working with him. He's so chill.
He helps me through the core bubble and first gather. It's a little on the small side, only a #6 block. "I'm gonna get some more glass," I tell him. When I come out there's so much glass on the pipe that I have to skip the #8, which is the one I'm used to, and go all the way to a #10, which I'm not used to at all.
I mean, there's a gigantic gob of glass on the end of my pipe, and once we get air into it, it gets even bigger. Fortunately this color lets me get a jack line in, and it's transparent, so I can see what I'm doing as we give it air and shape it some more. I'm trying to stay calm but it's not working. I can feel my heart racing as I heat the piece.
I've got a tall glass going. I call for a bit, which will be a dark violet wrap. He brings it good and hot. I start the pipe near myself and slowly roll it away. The glass comes off the rod slowly and mostly evenly. I get to the top and push it away smoothly. We get some heat into it and then give it some air while I flatten the bottom.
Time for the punty. This is going to be interesting.
I fasten it on. It looks to be centered. The breakoff is clean but whoa is this thing flopping around. My punty must have still been hot. I hustle over to the glory hole, turning and balancing the glass at the end the way I saw the demo guys doing it yesterday. I ease it into the glory hole and don't spend too long in there because it's still moving. I get it back to the bench and do my best to center it until it's cool enough to stay in place on its own. Yikes, that was close.
It doesn't take much to get the top good and hot. I open it up and we put it away.
Holy cow.
I give Tiny a high-five. "See?" she says.
I stick around to help Tiny's Daughter make another threaded vessel. Classmate's Partner is her main assistant. I help set up the bits and hang around until the very end of class. Like last week, Tiny, Tiny's Daughter, Classmate's Partner, and I walk out together.
13 April 2019
I'm working with Sleepless today and I'm psyched about that. Yesterday I loaded a box full of glass for the art show audition. Two of the four cats were ones I made with her. The other two were with Classmate's Partner. Looking at the labels on the pieces I packed, I notice that it's those two I make most of my best pieces with. It's those two who set me the most at ease.
She makes two goblets, now seamlessly, and I make two cats, less smoothly. I'm mostly relaxed today. I like the Saturday morning crew: Sleepless, Grace, and Tall Vase.
The first cat goes well enough. The second one I use a rod for, in a color from the starter kit. The plan is to keep the color in the body and make the head clear. I have no idea how this color is going to behave. I wind up with a tiny-headed, bulbous beast. Next time I'll make the bubble smaller and the head bigger. I'll make more cats on Monday; right now I have to go to a meeting.
Before I pack up I sign up for next Saturday morning. I know, I know, I should be on my bike. But after this semester Sleepless is transferring to another college and I like working with her.
Our Thursday pieces are cool enough to take out of the annealer. Mine needs a little bit of sanding down before I take pictures.
And here it is, my first big piece. I like it.
After seeing pictures of the giant red thing online, two of my friends suggest I should put a candle in it. I reply that I have a bag of battery-powered LEDs. "Do it," I'm told, so I do.
)
