A cat in a bowl in a bowl in a bowl
Week 11
14 April 2024, 6:42 p.m.
Week 11 already! I arrived at 8:05, and before we even got started I raised the rolling metal door to halfway open. Sunlight poured in at an angle low enough to reflect off the water in the upper block buket, making reading my notebook difficult. A thick scent of some spring flower wafted in. Lilac maybe?
A text came in from the friend who got the shiny vase last night. She now has a shelf full of my glass.
CP started off with his usual warmup pitcher. I dove right into a lip wrap bowl and almost got it symmetrical. (By "almost," I mean I had to sand down one side of the bottom to straighten it out.)
"Go again!" CP said. He always says that as I'm wiping the sweat off my face from the thing I just made.
I went again. The bottom felt thin but I plowed on ahead. That came back to bite me in the end, when the punty welded itself to the bowl and, after several rounds of water, still wouldn't come off. I hit it hard and the bottom of the bowl broke in two. CP was more disappointed than I was.
Once the shards in the scrap bucket cooled down, I realized that I wasn't working with the lime green rod I thought I was. It was another color, bronze, that I'd worked with twice before and never much liked. Not only that, but the gold ruby lip wrap was nearly invisible against it. No love lost there. Next?
I helped Sage with a long, pretty vase while CP set up one of his sculptural pieces. These are intricate works that take a lot of planning on his part. He only ever makes one per class, if that.
This time, I took pictures. Now you can all know what I've been talking about all semester.
I forgot to mention that, amid all the annealer chaos last Monday, Sage discovered that one of the low, wide, metal buckets we use to hold our wooden tools (called "blocks") was empty. The blocks, dry for who knows how long, had cracked. She'd grabbed the hose to fill the bucket again, and the water immediately poured out from the bottom. There was much squeegeeing and finding of small buckets to hold the surviving blocks.
Today, Pumpkin Master was in the metal shop, dropping spots of hot metal over the rusted holes. He brought the bucket back as Rose made her second appearance of the day, on her security rounds.
"There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza," she sang. I joined in. "A hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole."
Pumpkin master grabbed the hose and began to fill the container. It dribbled water from one of the sealed spots. Immediately: "There's a hole in the bucket, dear PM, dear PM! There's a hole in the bucket, dear PM, a hole!"
"With what shall he fix it, dear PM, dear PM, with what shall he fix it, dear PM, with what?"
He said, "Grab me some chalk." (What?) He drew an outline around the offending hole and disappeared again, pulling his welding mask back over his face.
Rose came over carrying two new bags of frit. "Looooooook!" she said, jiggling them. She is ready to play tomorrow night.
In the big oven, I had the little violet bowl from last week. I made a sky blue bubble and blew into the bowl, giving it a second chance at getting the shape I was after. This one wasn't as precise as the two I'd already made, but given that there were three different colors, each wanting to do their own thing, this came out about as well as I could have expected. (There would be some bottom-sanding on this one too.)
"Go again," CP said, because these pieces don't take much time, I guess.
So I coated a bubble with metallic cobalt blue powder and rolled it in a light coat of reactive opal and silver clear, the same colors as the failed floppy I made and rejected last week. This coating was under a layer of clear glass, so, unlike the bowl I was about to pick up, these colors wouldn't go metallic from the big torch.
"Y'know," I said to CP as I waited for my core bubble to cool, "It's a shame." I gestured towards Sage. "We've trained each other up, and next semester we'll all be apart. I can't do weekdays."
The overlay was thick. It looked like it wanted to be a vase instead of a bowl, so it became a heavy vase with texture and a mirror finish.
CP used some of the same blue to make a shiny heart.
Next door, at the art gallery, there was some high-end to-do with the new college president and our dean. Rose had seen them there. Of course, we hoped they'd stop by.
We finished the day on time. I sent the annealer down. We never did see the president or the dean.
19 April, 12:29 p.m. (stuck waiting for car maintenance)
The cherry tree in the front corner of the building was beginning to bloom, hiding all the ornaments Tall Vase hung from the branches. Soon enough, the fallen petals will blow into the classroom. I hope we're still in session when that happens. There's something about a floor strewn with cherry flower petals that livens up the place.
The classroom was 95 degrees when I walked in at 5:05 on Monday. Pumpkin Master had already opened the rolling metal door all the way up. I turned on the big fan by the back door and the little fan next to the glory hole. By 5:30, the temperature had gone up to 96.
Rose was eager to play with her two new frit colors: Purple Passion (I have this one too, in a smaller size) and Tortoiseshell Mix.
Low Key was with us to make up a class. She wanted to put the bottom of a sawed-off cup into the small oven. "It's gonna explode in here. We need to use the big oven," I told her. We moved it, and Rose laid out two sheets of dichroic patterend glass to blow onto.
Low Key said, "I saw Murano do this. He blew a bubble right into it."
I said, "I've been doing that all semester."
"But he blew right into it." He'd used the small oven. I guess he got lucky. Rose and I have only had explosions that way.
We stood at the big oven, showing Low Key what to do. "But you can't stand here and blow into it," Rose said. "You'll fry yourself."
I don't think I've adequately described the big oven. Imagine a 3-foot square box about 18 inches deep, elevated off the floor by about six inches. Inside is a layer of sand, on top of which is a ceramic platform where one sets one's glass. A band of metal wraps around the outside of the oven, with two handles up front and a hinge in back. These handles get hot when the oven is up to the 1050 degrees we need. One has to wear gloves to lift the lid up and back towards the wall while the person with the blowpipe comes in, stands over the oven, gets a blast of hot air in the face, and picks up their glass.
"You have to take it to the glory hole right away," I said. In the end, I volunteered to do the pickup for her so she could see what we were talking about. I have no doubt that Murano did it in one step at the small box, but we're not at his level. Unlike the big oven, which takes an hour to come up to temperature, the small box gets to 950 in something under ten minutes. The small box is about a foot square. Inside, there are maybe eight square inches to set one's rods in. On a crowded day, we can get 9 pieces in there. If Murano had a piece in there, it must have been small and thin.
We fired up the big oven and got to work on other stuff while we waited.
I started off with a little bowl using an opal neo lavender under chunks of jewel tone mix frit. Neo lavender changes color depending on the light. In the classroom, under mercury vapor lamps, the bowl looks like this, a pale blue:
Under the flourescent lights in one of the bathrooms, it looks like this, faintly pink, almost white:
In my kitchen, under a combination of CFL and LED, the pink comes out more:
CP texted. He was stuck at work. I decided not to abandon my plan for a night of lip wraps. I remembered something Tiny's Daughter said to me years ago when I asked her how she did something about which I've fortotten: "Trust your partner." I would have to trust Rose and Low Key.
Now the thermometer, positioned in the hottest corner of the classroom, was reading 97 degrees. In the middle of a piece, while she was still on the pipe, Low Key handed the pipe to Rose and went outside to the courtyard. She was feeling sick from the heat. I was also on the pipe at the moment, working on a bowl from a rod of hot pink (a color that, in my hands, always looks like chewed bubblegum). I couldn't do anything to help, and Pinky couldn't help me with the lip wrap I was going to need.
Low Key came back to transfer her piece to a punty, then left again. Rose stood by the glory hole, keeping the vase warm, not sure what to do next. "Open it up a little and put it away," I suggested.
Low Key reappeared, with Pumpkin Master in tow. I nabbed him to help me transfer and fetch the violet rod I had in the small oven for the lip wrap. I thanked him profusely for the rescue. Only after I opened the oven again for my next piece did I see that he'd picked up the wrong little chunk. The bowl in the annealer was hot pink with a hot pink lip wrap. The wrap being denser than the bowl, it still looks like two colors, if those two colors are shadeds of chewed bubblegum. (It needed a dose of sanding down to straighten it out.)
Low Key took a break by walking over to another building to watch a wood-turning demo. I helped Rose pick up one of her dichroic sheets. I'd already done three of these and knew it required me opening the oven door then running to the glory hole to open those doors wide enough to fit the square. She ran into some trouble when she gathered over the whole thing and inadvertently blocked her core bubble. I took over and showed her how to gradually introduce heat to get the bubble moving again. We got it about halfway after ten minutes of this. Low Key returned to watch the drama. We decided to just cut off the bottom half, which was solid glass. After all that, the bubble went wonky, and Rose decided to ditch the thing, saving the glass to smash up for later.
Texting back and forth with CP, I told him that his magic lip wrap spot was working wonders. I drew on the floor again just for fun.
I decided to make the best of the lip wrap mixup by using the violet rod for a bowl and asking Rose to make me a lip wrap from the sky blue frit I conveniently had out anyway. I told her that I could make the bit then hand it off to her. "I'm really picky about the shape," I said. "I knoooowww," she chided. When she made the bit, the shape was so good that we didn't need to trade off. I'm still not as good at rods as I am with frit, so the top was slightly wavy. (I didn't need to sand this one down!)
Low Key had regained her strength. I helped her blow into her cup. She made a perfectly flat plate out of it.
I gathered some sky blue frit and showed Rose how to pick up the violet rod sliver I still had in the oven. She delivered the bit for the wrap and I got a bowl to match the previous one. (No grinding!)
The two stack well enough.
All three from the same day stack together. This doesn't mean that they're nested. It means that I pretty much made everything the same size, the oppposite of nesting.
Low Key went home, leaving me and Rose to play with her tortoiseshell frit. Knowing it was a dark color, she laid some white frit under it. I made a bit from the mix for a dark lip wrap. There were gradations of color in the wrap as she laid it on. She spun it out, hoping for a bowl. It really wanted to be a floppy-top vase, and that's what she got.
Looking at the color as it cooled, I asked if she'd mind me using some of the frit to make a cat. I had Clementine in mind. I laid the color on top of a coating of white frit, denser on one side for the back, and Rose brought me a bit made from the frit for the tail.
When Clementine jumped up on the counter next to the cat, I grabbed my phone.
Rose agreed it was a good likeness, and now she wants to make calico cats.
I stacked the latest round of lip-wrap bowls. They take up far less space in the cabinet that way.
The jewel tone mix bowls, thicker and not flared, don't stack as well.
These two were supposed to match, but I failed twice.
With two weeks to go (four more sessions), I've already started to fill the penultimate shelf in the glass cabinet. I feel a purge coming on.
Week 12
27 April 2024, 9:30 p.m.
When I arrived Sunday morning, Pumpkin Master was sweeping cherry blossoms from the floor.
There was a new block bucket to replace the leaky ones. Behind it, and bordered by the base of the big fan, were more cherry blossoms.
I hadn't slept well the night before. My brain and my body were both in class, but they weren't on speaking terms. I was one step away from finishing a neo lavender square mold mug with an opal neo lavender lip wrap and a clear handle when I banged the far end of the punty against the workbench rail and the piece fell to the floor, shattering. I shrugged. I didn't like the way I did the wrap, nor the way the opening bulged. I swept up the pieces while Sage looked on.
Fotunately, I didn't screw up when I assisted CP during his turn.
I had rods warming in the little oven. Dale and Sean came in. I became very deliberate in all my movements, making sure I knew where my feet were and where my pipes ended. I picked up a piece of poppy red rod and shaped it into a bowl with a bit of narcissus for a lip wrap. The bottom was wobbly, but the overall shape was what I wanted.
Sage made another of her colorful vases. She manages to get dark blues and earth tones to work together. CP set up for a sculptural piece. Dale and Sean captured the moment he swung the hot glass out of the glory hole. The threads flew out from the top and the piece ended up being so long that it barely fit diagonally on the annealer shelf.
I repeated the bowl, this time with a narcissus rod and a poppy red lip wrap. Once again, the bottom had tilted on its axis at some point while I worked, giving the lip a gentle wave that matched its mate.
For my last turn, I used a purple rose rod. As I was shaping the rod on the marver, it picked up a stray piece of Sage's frit. A wise glassblower will make sure the marver is clean before using it. I wasn't in wise shape. I sat at the bench, pondering whether or not to spend five minutes mangling the rod to pull out the offending frit. I decided not to bother. "It's a birthmark," I said to Sean and Dale, knowing that the frit was going to match the sky blue lip wrap I planned to put on.
Once again, the bottom got wobbly. The birthmark would be a reminder of the day I was wobbly myself and had Dale and Sean to hang out with when I wasn't assisting CP and Sage.
CP advised me not to go so deep into the glory hole during my reheats next time.
I was halfway through packing up while CP finished a heart when Rose came in. "My sister is coming to watch. Can you make a cat?"
We decided on blue aventurine. She got PM to give us an extra fifteen minutes. CP brought me the bit for the tail while Rose took pictures and her sister looked on.
If there's one thing I've gotten better at this semester, it's blowing glass with an audience.
I arrived early enough on Monday evening to fetch the bowls from the annealer, which had already come down to 125 degrees. I had time to set up and start sanding the bottoms down to make them look more level. I took my first half hour to finish the job as Sage and Rose came in and started working.
My first piece was with the neo lavender again, this time with a dusting of jewel tone mix. The neo lavender is a gummy color. I don't seem to be able to blow it thin. I spun out a bowl with a mediocre shape. Perhaps the extra weight of the lip wrap helps with the flaring out, and this didn't have a wrap. The blue (or pink, depending on the light) was subtle with this one.
CP arrived in time to help me with the square mold again. I was determined to try the neo lavender mug again. This time, I let it get too cool and had trouble getting the jack line in after going into the mold. When we went to transfer, the punty came right off, despite the waterfall I'd poured onto the jack line. We tried again. I hit the pipe hard. The piece fell off the pipe and the punty at once, shattering on the floor.
When CP said, "Go again," I said "No."
Sage watched as I swept up. "Was that the same thing that dropped yesterday?"
"Yeah," I said. "Different reason. It's a tough color to work with. It's gummy."
When my turn came up again, CP brought me a purple rose wrap for the opal sky blue bowl I was working on. This time, I kept the bottom out of the heat, and it stayed level. I didn't have to sand it down when I picked it up on Wednesday.
At the end of last semester, All The Glass gave Rose a sheet of fused glass he'd made. It was red and orange and green and blue and thick. "It's too much glass," Rose said, and offered it to me. It was now warming in the big oven.
I blew a clear bubble and picked it up. In the glory hole, I let it collapse on the bubble. It folded unevenly and heavily, forming a lumpen wad around the too-thin bubble. I heated and blocked it over and over, hoping to get something uniform out of it. I wound up with a sort of avocado shape, the top so thick I had to pull it thin before I tried to open it.
"Put it away," I said.
"You don't want to spin it out?" CP asked.
"Nah. It's so uneven it'll go all wonky."
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
There was a thick layer of glass on one side and less on the other. It seemed to me to be almost uniform in shape, but CP thought it was uneven. "Must be my eyes playing tricks on me," he suggested as we put it away.
Only after I got a photo of it in the annealer did I see what he meant.
I should know by now that when CP asks that sort of question, he's trying to get me to take a closer look at what I'm doing. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I should have spun the thing out. Oh well. I stared at the photo enough times to figure out what I needed to do to rescue it.
I wrapped up the blue demo cat and put it in my backpack to ride to work with on Tuesday.
Leaving work in time to get to the classroom before the Wednesday evening bike ride, I had 45 minutes to slice the avocado mess diagonally, and get it to an almost polish. It wasn't worth the time or effort to go back and get the surface completely even. The saw does a rough job; I was glad to get the edges as smooth as I did before I had to change into my bike clothes and scurry off to Washington Crossing.
Somewhere in the middle of the ride, I figured out that the sliced avocado needed to be a geode. Before bed, I dug out some jewel tone mix frit and the bottle of UV-curing adhesive, and got to work. It didn't take long.
This semester really has been all about giving my failures a second chance.
Speaking of failures, the multicolored orb I'd called "Spiders on Drugs" that has been sitting on a rock in my back yard for years finally met its end. I blame the squirrels.
No, I'm not going to make another one. I'm in purge mode. Something from inside can come out. I chose a failed witch's ball ornament that I'd lopped the top off and turned upside down so that it looked like a Van de Graff generator.
I've been going through my collection, pulling out pieces a few at a time. A handful from this semester have wound up in a box marked "rejects." Another bunch has been moved to the collection that will serve as gifts or go up for sale.
There's still a bit of space in the second cabinet, the one that was completely empty a year ago. But that's because I've stacked the bowls.
While I was grinding the avocado on Wednesday, the tech on duty told me that we'd be able to sell our glass at the arts event on campus next Sunday. In previous years, that was the day we'd have the studio open for demos all day long, and we'd have tables full of glass to sell to raise money for the classroom. Now, the furnace would be off by the time the event rolled around. Would anyone even want to try to sell their work, let alone raise money for the class we're not even in?
I only got around to texting the group this morning. I double-checked with the arts center director, and he was all for it. So far, Murano is ready to set up a table. Pumpkin Master and Sage said they'd put a few pieces in. Tomorrow I'll ask CP if he's up for it.
Me, well, here's the thing: On one hand, I want my Sundays back. On the other, my shelves are full. I have to get rid of this stuff no matter what. I can sacrifice one more Sunday with a suitcase full of rejects and leave whatever is left over to the student sale box. I can spend hours photographing and uploading the details of the better pieces to Etsy, where, if they do sell, I'll likely lose money by the time Etsy and the post office take their cuts. I can tell my friends I'm selling, but how much of my stuff can their houses take?
My supply of favorite colors is dwindling, and I'm not sure I want to replenish it. I'm already paying through the nose for the fall semester. At this pace, I'm going to run out of space completely by December. I want to replace one of the smaller cabinets with one that will better use the space, but that will only put off the inevitable. This has to end at some point. There's a part of me that hopes the demise of glassblowing class comes soon, a graceful exit.
