Hill Slug Chronicles: A Hot Mess, Part Seven: Interlude

Wheaton Arts, Millville, NJ

16 December 2018

"I think you have something to say."

I had no idea what he meant. We were standing around the table in the back of the studio, a semester's worth of the best of what we had to offer spread out between myself and my classmate. I looked over at my classmate and at the advanced student working at the grinding wheel who was sitting in on our final critique. They looked back at me, silent, as our instructor waited for me to say something.

"I'm clueless."

Only during the drive home did it dawn on me what he'd meant. Maybe it wasn't fully developed, and maybe it wasn't quite clear, but maybe what he'd been saying was that I'd found my voice. It was James Brown's, and it was saying, "Make it Funky."

Meanwhile, the plan I'd hatched months ago to drag some Hill Slugs down to Wheaton Arts on a rainy day finally came together. Four days after the final, on Sunday morning, a soggy Plain Jim, TEW, and Winter Larry showed up on our doorstep for the long drive down to Millville. Somehow we got Jim and Larry and all their legs into the back seat with TEW, Jack stuffed up front, and me in the driver's seat.

Part of the parking lot was flooded. Not that it mattered; there was only one other car. The entrance was flooded too. I used my BCCC student ID for the first time to shave a few dollars off of the admission price.

I had two goals in mind: first to introduce the Slugs to the world of glass; and second to figure out for myself what I wanted to do next by looking at shapes and colors.

While the Slugs ran loose in the museum I took pictures of pieces that caught my interest. There were opaque pieces, cut crystal pieces, heavily molded pieces, and multi-media pieces. None of these wound up on my hard drive when I got home.

The lower part of this pitcher is an elaboration of something I nearly stabbed myself attempting to try in class:

While explaining to Jim how to affix a handle, I noticed that this one was crooked. Somehow this was comforting.

I'll take a kilo of frit in each of these colors, please:

This. I want to make this.

(So far, I can do this:

)

This was done in a mold but it doesn't look as if it weighs a million pounds:

Opaque is okay I guess, as long as it's got something growing in front of it.

Dude! Fuchsia!

Make a flower, then turn the stem into a swan's head. Got it. (First, make a flower though.)

Heat and pull and heat and pull and?

I have no idea how this was done but I want to do it.

Not Tiffany, not transparent, but still groovy.

Check out the crinkles on the top of the one on the left!

I think our instructor made one of these as a demo.

There was a special exhibit on the work of Paul Stankard, who has taken paper weights to a new level. You can see some of them here.

We trudged across wet leaves -- the paved paths were under water -- to get to the hot shop. In the entrance were two stands of Skitch's work.

The next demonstration wouldn't be for an hour and a half, but there were two pairs of glassblowers working in the front of the studio when we got there. I narrated for the Slugs as we watched the artists work.

Then, from the back, Skitch appeared. I called out to him and he actually remembered me. The first thing I did was tell him what I'd been up to this semester. He was glad to hear it. "What next?" he asked. "Another semester," I told him. When I pulled up photos on my phone I think he even liked the cats.

It's a small enough world that Skitch's assistant had worked with our instructor, and Skitch knew one of the regulars up at BCCC too.

Under the railing by his work bench were four pieces he'd made recently:

"Hey," I asked him. "Whatever happened to that big, black thing you made last time? The one that was supposed to wind up in the museum? I didn't see it."

"Oh, it's still back here," he said. "I'll go get it." We'd all brought him bits of glass for him to stamp, either with a face or a mulberry. I'd chosen the mulberry because the faces were creepy.

He returned, standing it on a roll of masking tape, because he hadn't yet ground down the punty.

We stuck around to watch him and his assistant make a large vase in the same style as the pieces on display. Again I narrated. He and his assistant must have heard me because they chimed in. Jim and Larry peppered him with questions that he was happy to answer.

I convinced the Slugs that we should go into the shops. "It's like a museum in there, but you can buy the stuff," I explained.

I didn't buy anything. I was still on a fact-finding mission.

We wandered among Christmas trees loaded with ornaments.

"What here floats your boat?" Jim asked, and I pointed him towards a tree in the back corner:

On the day of the final our instructor emailed me a picture of a glass mouse for sale here, with the message, "something for next term." Well, he'd made a piggy bank as a demo for us; now I'm going to up the ante. If I make a mouse he has to make a flying pig.