Purple Passion Kitty in Enamel White Doodle Cup
15 April 2019: Cats, Cats, Cats
I'm going to make cats tonight.
I get caught in traffic; there's an accident in the I-95 construction zone where the road is already down to only two lanes. I get to the studio 20 minutes late.
As I round the corner to the driveway that leads to the corrugated metal studio door, I spot something in the ground among the bushes and metal sculptures next to the walkway.
It's our class project, the flower in the vase with the broken bottom. Last I saw it, Tall Vase had it among his work at the critique. He must have planted it here.
Small, hidden, and anonymous, that's the flower he helped me make. That's my color on the petals. That's Grace and Sleepless holding the flower.
Glass Ninja has already started. Tonight he's making Easter eggs with cane he pulled on Saturday. The first egg takes over an hour, so I fill the next hour with three cats.
The first is a simple one, with Purple Passion frit mix and a Dark Violet tail. The next one is dark violet encased in clear glass so that it won't reduce. I've got white frit out for a core bubble doodle later, so I use that for the tail.
Next up is Iris Gold Reducing, which I want to reduce completely. So far this semester I haven't liked how it looks unreduced. My first gather is on the small side. I go in for more glass and come out needing a #10 block. Behind me, Glass Ninja says, "She's going for a big kitty!"
"Not on purpose," I whimper, doing my best to block the glass evenly. The frit is powder and I coat the glass three times with it. While I wrestle with the ears, Glass Ninja gets a Dark Violet bit ready for the tail. With so much glass I'm having trouble keeping the head centered while I pull the ears; I have to pull one at a time, reheating in between. It goes far off-center. The best I can do is to let it fall back into a kittenish lean. Glass Ninja brings the tail bit.
Then we hit it with the big propane torch. LT2 watches as Glass Ninja holds the flame and I turn the cat on the pipe. "I wonder if my mother's cats would like that," he muses. The glass turns from a muddy red-brown to a brilliant gold and we put it away.
Glass Ninja makes another giant egg.
I set up a white core bubble and Glass Ninja guides me through drawing with rods again. I'm a little better this time than I was last time. I get a cup out of it.
LT2 says, "You probably have enough stuff in the oven for Thursday. You don't need to bring anything."
"Nah," I tell him. "I have better stuff at home. I'm bringing a ton." Better safe than sorry.
Saturday's cats are out of the oven.
I like how the Reactive Mix frit reduced. The Iris Gold on the tail still looks muddy brown.
The blue rod, broad-shouldered kitty is going into the reject pile. Why does every blue give me so much trouble?
*
17 April 2019: Cat Rescue?
I'm halfway to work on my bike, thinking about how Tall Vase alters his pieces by grinding them down or cutting sections away. For him, glass out of the annealer is still raw material.
I have an idea. I'm going to sand-blast the eyes off of the purple cat, the one that looks better from behind. I'm going to put little stickers where the eyes and nose ought to be, and add big, round stickers at random everywhere else. If all goes to plan I should have a sanded-down cat with shiny, purple spots.
When I get home I get the stickers on and pack the cat away.
*
18 April 2019: Audition
Dragging my rolling backpack behind me with one hand and carrying a bag that holds a box of glass objects in the other, I bumble my way into the studio. Low Key is there with a student from the beginner class I haven't met yet.
I jumped into this open slot at the last minute when I saw that Alchemy was going to be here. I want to try flopping a bowl today, and doodling on a rod, and wrapping a cup. If I can get two more doodle cups finished, I'll have a set of three for the final. I have a handful of wrapped cups already, although the more I make the more I can choose from at the end of the term.
While our rods are warming up I try to make a floppy bowl from a color I haven't used in a while. It's called Aqua Metallic; I have yet to make it look like the online catalog picture, which advertises it as a greenish-blue transparent. So far all I've achieved is a muddy blueish-green.
This time the color seems to be behaving properly as I coat the second gather. Unfortunately I blow the sides too thin, and they begin to collapse before the mouth is ready to be spun out. I've added a lip wrap for my first time; it didn't go on very evenly. What I wind up with is an asymmetric mess that more resembles a crushed can than a bowl. We put it away anyway because art.
Alchemy takes his turn, putting together a combination of colored frits and rods in an order that I don't quite follow. He a tub of one of his secret colors out. It's already a third empty.
The frits start to react with each other as he works the glass. As we're working Our Instructor comes through the studio as he sometimes does. In addition to teaching the two classes, he has a full-time position in the administration, so he's always on campus. I always feel weird when he sees me in an unassigned slot. I know he doesn't want any one of us to hog up all the lab vacancies.
As he walks past I tell him that working with Alchemy is like getting a chemistry lesson. I don't mention that I suck at chemistry.
In the end, Alchemy has a vase.
I take another stab at a floppy bowl with an even worse lip wrap. The wrap goes on thick and uneven. I manage to straighten it out a little. When it comes time to spin out the bowl I miss again and it doesn't flop.
Never mind. I'll do something simple next.
Meanwhile, though, it's Alchemy's turn and he sits at the bench thinking. I take the opportunity to fetch Monday's work, which LT2 has just taken out of the oven. They can all use some grinding down, especially the gold one. I do that while Alchemy thinks.
He's still thinking. "You go," he says. So I make an orange cup with a cherry red wrap.
Alchemy has an idea, and while he sets up I carry Monday's lot to the sagging blue picnic table.
I finally have an even cup with thin walls.
I think I got my cat groove back too.
This one is the worst of the lot. I can't get a picture that doesn't reflect my phone either.
It's hot in here. I'm sticking to my clothes.
Alchemy has a multi-layered piece going. We transfer it to a punty. It falls to the floor in front of the glory hole. He curses. "Half an hour wasted," he grumbles.
I do him one better: I spend half an hour setting up a beige rod and then doodling on it with threads, only to bring myself a too-cold punty and have the half-shaped ball of glass drop into the block bucket. I fish it out, still in one piece, and place it in the scrap bucket.
I don't curse. I don't even mind. I'll try again next time.
Right now we need to clean up. In less than an hour we'll need to set our work out for Our Instructor to choose for the student art show.
I wash up and eat my dinner out at the sagging blue picnic table. Sage and Glass Ninja join me. I tell them about the piece I just lost. "Into the bucket?!?" Glass Ninja asks, feigning astonishment. I'm going to have to start moving it away when I work. Low Key arrives and takes a seat.
We chat until Our Instructor appears. He has scraps of paper in his hands, each with a number. I'm guessing these will go next to the pieces he chooses for the show.
Monday's cats are still on the table inside. I step over to gather them up. Our Instructor looks down at the Golden Kitty, smiles, and points to it as he walks past.
I set all my stuff out on a table in the classroom down the hall, then scurry back to fetch the cat I want to sand blast. The room is still locked, so I go back to the classroom, to where I've set out my work.
Golden Kitty has been moved away from the group, to the front, and under her is a slip of paper with the number 3. She has been chosen for the show. I'm relieved, happy, and also a little confused. Of all the things he could have picked, this one is arguably the worst. Had it not come out of the annealer just today I'd have left it at home.
"I knew he'd pick that cat the minute you made it," LT2 says.
"Why?" I ask.
"It's shiny," he says. Now his comment on Monday about my having enough for the show already in the annealer makes sense.
I put the sticker-covered cat in the sand blaster. It doesn't go as well as I'd hoped. The spots look okay. The new face is fine. But the blue glass I'd drawn on for eyes refuses to go away. Oh well. It was worth a try. I'm gonna toss it.
"I messed up though," I tell her, and show her the eyes on the back of the cat's head. It doesn't matter to her. She likes it anyway.
"Yours," I tell her, and set it down on the table next to her way-cool goblets.
There are forms to be filled out online and printed. We pack away what we brought and hang out in the classroom, looking at each others' work.
Our Instructor goes away and comes back bearing a box of scrap rods. "Because I love all of you, you can each take some of my glass," he says, and we descend like vultures. I pull out a rod of green aventurine. I know this has the reputation of being a difficult color, but hey, it sparkles.
(stolen from the Internet)
When he sees which one I've picked, I tell him that I'll use it the next time I work with Alchemy. "Remember what you said about the chemistry lesson?" he says. "On its own this color is going to look muddy."
"That's why I'm gonna wait until I work with him again," I reply.
In front of us is a vase Alchemy made with aventurine green. It doesn't look muddy at all. Encased in what appears to be clear glass and speckled with blue that has turned red at the edges, the aventurine sparkles.
Alchemy explains, "I coated it in light blue." So it's not clear glass after all. "You can try yellow," he offers. I have a transparent yellow. "Try it both ways," he suggests.
Some people have gone back to the studio to start blowing. I've done enough for one day; I'm going to go home.
"You're not staying?" Low Key asks. "I thought you want to get every last minute?"
"Yeah. I'm beat."
Then Classmate's Partner asks if I'm sticking around. He's thinking about it. I like working with him, so I tell him, "I will if you will."
So I cut a small piece from the aventurine rod and put it in the warmer.
Next to the wet sander is the piece Tall Vase made last Saturday. He's cut the sides and bottom off, leaving a clear, curved brick with side holes that reveal a pane of dichroic glass inside. "To you, what comes out of the annealer is just raw material," I suggest. He agrees, and shows me what he might do next.
"I like that you put our project in the ground outside," I tell him.
He smiles. "It would be fun to walk around and put glass in random places," he says. "I always carry glass with me when I go to the beach so I can take pictures."
Alchemy comes back in and asks if I'm staying. Now I am. I think I'm going to be assisting Classmate's Partner, but he's already assisting Tiny's Daughter while Tall Vase and Glass Ninja work at the second bench. "I'll help you," Alchemy says.
Glass Ninja makes a round, flattened vase with a cane across it. Tall Vase flops a perfect bowl.
A bunch of us hang out and watch Tiny's Daughter make a giant something around a piece of dichroic scrap. By the time she's finished it's closing in on 8:45. There's no time for Classmate's Partner to make anything.
"I'll pull an aventurine thread," I tell him, because there's time for that. Our Instructor supervises while Tall Vase and I pull the thread. The glass melts quickly and easily, which is good, I guess. Tall Vase thinks I should encase it in clear glass to help with the pulling, but it's too late for that.
The glass is surprisingly brittle. We don't get far into the thread before it breaks. I heat up the rest while Our Instructor gives Tall Vase some pointers. We try again and get a little further before it snaps. The third time's the charm; Tall Vase walks backwards into the hallway before the thread cools. I've got a nice pile of pieces to take home. Some of them snap before I can get them safely wrapped up. I ask Our Instructor if there's any special way to work with this glass if I'm going to draw with it. He tells me what to do and it makes sense.
A group of us leaves at once. The rubber coating on one of the wheels of my rolling backpack gives way. "That's what I get for buying so much glass," I shrug. That, or it melted in the heat of the studio. One can never be sure.
4/20/19: Random Stuff
It's a rainy Saturday morning. No bike guilt today as I drive to the studio. Today's plan is to share purple glass with Sleepless, who wants to make a purple goblet for a friend.
While our rods are warming up I make a Hyacinth cup wrapped with fuchsia. The purple looks darker than I'd hoped. We'll have to wait and see.
Sleepless uses the fuchsia powder and puts a little purple on top of it. When she pulls the stem, the purple speckles stretch down from the bottom of the goblet. These days every one of her goblets stands on its own.
Grace, at the other bench, is taking a break from making horses and is making a vase instead. After Tall Vase takes his turn, she's back to horses again.
I pick up a rod to doodle on. It's one from the starter pack that I'd put in a bag labeled "ick." It's called Flamingo, and I'm pretty sure I won't like it. But this is just practice, so, whatever. I'm very slow at setting up a collar for the pick-up, but I'm getting faster at it. I'm getting better at melting the rod into the collar and at getting a core bubble in. I use random threads to make random squiggles. Adhering to Our Instructor's directions, the aventurine thread goes on easily enough. All this takes more than half an hour. I don't want to take up any more of Sleepless' lab time, so I keep the clear gather small and make a quick bowl out of it. I probably could have blown it out thinner; it wouldn't have taken that much longer. The color is an ugly, yellowish pink now. Maybe it'll look better after it cools.
There's enough time for Sleepless to make one more goblet, this one from a rod called Blue Oyster Cult, not to be confused with the Iron Maiden rod. Glass Ninja comes over to watch and ask about the color. "Probably looks better when you're on acid," he says.
With 10 minutes left I zip through a kitten made of another Reactive Mix, one with blue in it. We put on a Hyacinth tail. I run past 1:00 but Alchemy, whose time is next, is busy at the wet sander and doesn't mind my taking a few extra minutes.
"There's an aventurine rod in the warmer," I tell him. "If you wanna use it go right ahead."
"Adventure Team!" he says. "Sure." He fishes through his box and pulls out a transparent yellow rod to coat it.
"By the way," I tell him as he warms a gather in the furnace, "The piece I dropped on Thursday is still in one piece." I fish it out of the waste bucket to show him, then put it back.
The oven temperature is still too high at 2:30. I'm hungry. Alchemy finishes his vase. I say my goodbyes and head home.
*
22 April 2019: Missing?
The first thing I do after finding a spot next to the table for my giant rolling case of frit is head for the cabinet to retrieve Thursday's glass. Saturday's is probably still in the annealer.
There should be two misshapen bowl-things and a wrapped cup. I find one bowl and that's it. Confused, I return to the studio, where the other bowl is sitting on the table. I'm ready to throw them away but Tiny stops me. She likes the color combination and thinks they'd be perfect for potpourri.
Or chocolate eggs left over from the ride I led yesterday.
But where's the orange cup with the red wrap, the only thing I did on Thursday that worked? I check the cabinet again, and then once more. I wonder if it broke. Maybe it's in the waste bucket. Nope. In the hallway trash can? Nope.
Grumbling, because that piece would have been the third piece for my final project, I set out the orange and red frits so that I can make the cup again. This isn't how I wanted to spend my time today.
Glass Ninja is waiting for his rods to warm up, so I go first and we make the cup.
LT2 comes in and I ask him if he's seen it. "I remember taking it out," he says, and adds that he saw My Classmate with it in his hand earlier today. "He couldn't remember if he made it or not," LT2 says. "He probably took it home."
Tiny has his phone number and texts him. He replies right away that yes, he has it, he thought it was his, and he'll return it tomorrow.
"How do you forget what you make?" I ask the room. Is he that good that he can whip off a cup and forget about it? Geez! I write notes about everything I make. "If you can't remember making it, you probably didn't," I add, and get back to helping Glass Ninja with his next piece.
When it's my turn again I want to try flopping a bowl. The orange and yellow frits are still out from my cup. I'd made a mess on the marver where the frits had spilled from their holders, so I scoop up the scraps and mix them in another holder. I add a little more of each to get enough to coat a core bubble. With Glass Ninja helping me, and with the glass being transparent, I should be able to get it right this time.
Spinning out a bowl happens very quickly. One minute you're at the glory hole with a mouth that's one third open, and the next things start to go wonky out there. You were spinning slowly; now you have to speed up to keep the thing from collapsing in on itself.
"Angle it down a little," Glass Ninja says. "That'll keep it from falling in."
The front end is soup now, but I stay in the glory hole.
"Now!" he says, and I pull the piece out and start to spin the rod as fast as I can, Glass Ninja commanding "Spin spin spin!" The glass is now flat, like a plate.
"Drop!"
I drop the rod to vertical.
"Flop!" I swing and turn gently, watching the edges collapse inward.
One, two, three, four, five! I got five flops out of it! Finally!
"Put it away," I tell him and we get it into the oven.
Saturday's work is now cool enough to come out of the second annealer. The Hyacinth color is darker than I'd hoped it would be, but the cup is good enough to be part of the final project.
The Reactive Mix kitten is definitely coming to work with me. He'll fit perfectly on the tiny window sill.
Here the Hyacinth is more transparent on the tail.
Flamingo? Barf. I'm not sure if spending more time to open this cup up would have helped. The aventurine is sparkly though.
While I help Glass Ninja with his next piece I catch a glimpse of the evening sky outside of the studio.
The last thing I want to try is to make something from the thin slice of aventurine rod that's been sitting in the warmer. It's a soft color. Getting it onto the collar and getting a bubble into it aren't as difficult as I thought they would be. I coat it in transparent yellow frit. Everything is going well enough until I blow it out too thin and the sides start to collapse before I've finished opening it up.
"We're losing hull integrity, Captain!" I tell Glass Ninja and LT2 as I return to the bench to try to shape it again. Glass Ninja brings the paddle and pushes hard enough that it stops me in my tracks as I'm using the jacks. Now it's a right mess. I take it back to the glory hole. All hope is lost at this point.
When in doubt, spin it out.
The glass folds itself into a clam. I shrug and put it away. At least it sparkles.
*
23 April 2019: Tiny Things on a Window Sill
It's cloudy today so I use a flash.
Taking a step back, I can see that the corner is getting crowded.
(And yes, that's a lot of lighting on my handle bars. I have to ride home in the dark sometimes.)
That blue vase could use some internal sand-blasting to help with the contrast. I wrap the outside in autoclave tape (which is masking tape that can handle steam and pressure) and take it home with me.
*
26 April 2019: Before the Show
A lot of people are in class tonight, some of them queued up at the wet sander to put some finishing touches on their pieces that will be in next week's student art show. Sage graciously took Golden Kitty over for me. I have time to retrieve Monday's work.
There, in the cabinet, is the missing cup, next to its replacement. The floppy bowl looks legit. The clam looks I don't know what.
I didn't put a lip wrap on the bowl, but the way the light plays with the colors, it sure looks as if I did.
This is the cup that had gone missing. Alchemy has a heavy hand; the bottom of the wrap is thick.
Glass Ninja brought me the bit for Monday's wrap; it's thinner.
What on earth am I going to do with this?
I show it to Our Instructor because, as he told me it would, the side coated in glass sparkles and the uncoated side is muddy.
About the shape, he takes it in stride. "I have one like this," he says. "There's more of a curve on the lip so I tied a ribbon around it and hung it up." That's an idea. With an air plant, I guess.
I'm not on the top of the sign-up list for blowing tonight, so I take the tape-wrapped threaded vase to the sand-blaster. It's an ominous looking machine with a motor that makes quite the racket when it's turned on. The first time I saw it, the machine looked eerily familiar, like the glove boxes I used to grow anaerobic bacterial cultures back in grad school.
I'd put a rod in the warmer but I don't think there will be time to use it. When my turn comes I'm ready to pass on it, but Tiny says she'll work with me and we'll do something quick. "I don't want to rush, though," I tell her. "I'll keep it small."
The color is Night Blue, and it's opaque. Again I blow the walls too thin and have to do a lot of re-shaping to get it to approximate a cup again. When we break it off to put it away I see a piece of color on the punty, which is a sign that the bottom was too thin, the punty too melded to the bottom, and my strike too hard. I mostly don't care if it doesn't work. I don't like the color.
*
24 April 2019: That Helped a Little
Here's the vase before sand-blasting:
Here it is after:
There's something about it I still don't like. I ought to have opened it up and chosen highly-contrasting colors. I guess I'll put this in the reject pile too. On Monday I'll ask Glass Ninja to guide me through the threader again.
Meanwhile, I know I have a pack of adhesive hooks somewhere.
There we go. A hanging clam. I already know who will get this one when the semester is over.
*
28 April 2019: Reject Resurrection
28 April 2019: Reject Resurrection
If I'm going to commit to the student art sale next week then I need to decide if there's anything here worth selling. I'm going to donate anything I earn to charity.
Deep inside a buried box are the clear glass basic shapes from the first weeks of the semester. I was going to bring them in to melt them down, but now I have another idea. I cover them with tape and stickers. On Monday night I'll sand-blast them.
*
29 April 2019: Setting Up for Next Semester
29 April 2019: Setting Up for Next Semester
When we come back at the end of the summer I know I'll want to improve on floppy bowls and threading. Tonight I'm going to try one of each, and maybe make another cat.
No matter how early I get to the studio, Glass Ninja will already be there, setting up and maybe even blowing. Tonight I'm fifteen minutes early and he and Prodigy are already pulling a thread. Tiny is at the wet sander, ready to assist Prodigy.
Glass Ninja has a big project planned that he'll do in two parts, with my turn in between. For the first half he's going to make a small bowl and let it sit in one of the rod-warming ovens. This, inverted, will be the base for a long, clear stem to which we will attach leaves. He'll put the stem on the base and park the whole thing in the annealer. Later he'll make a large, floppy bowl and set it on top.
While Glass Ninja is working on the base and stem, Prodigy has a giant piece going. I'm used to this by now, but Tiny is awestruck. She's already seen what Glass Ninja is doing over at the glory hole. She sidles up to me and, gesturing towards Prodigy, murmurs, "And he's a beginner?"
"Welcome to Monday night."
"I feel so inadequate."
"Hmm. Seems to me that someone recently told me not to say stuff like that!"
"I know, but."
"Welcome to Monday night."
The base and stem go so smoothly that I suggest he keep going. LT2 arrives at 6:00, just in time to bring the last bit for the bowl attachment as I finish reducing the inside with the big torch. Glass Ninja brings the bowl to the annealer and places it on the stem, holding it in place as long as he can before we have to close the door. Twice more we open it so that he can set the bowl properly as the sealing glass cools. Bravo!
It's my turn to play. Glass Ninja brings me a Fucshia lip wrap for a Hyacinth bowl. The flopping doesn't go as well as it did last week, but I still have another floppy bowl to bring to the final critique.
"You seem so relaxed," Tiny says.
"I haven't had any coffee today."
Glass Ninja makes a simple vase, which is to say, simple for him.
I give threading a shot, with an Enamel White core bubble and Gold Ruby Extra threading. I botch the feathering. This is only my second time trying this, so I'm not too upset that the pattern is out of control. I shape it into a thin-walled cup. I'm having a hard time shaping thinner glass, but I'm glad I'm getting better at making thinner pieces.
I go again and make an orange cat with a cherry red tail, then scuttle off to the sand blaster.
One of the spheres shatters from the pressure. Oh well. The other one survives.
I think these have been rescued well enough. I put the sphere on the kitchen window sill and bring the bowls upstairs to join the collection for the sale.
*
30 April 2019: That's a Load of Crap
30 April 2019: That's a Load of Crap
I'm so insecure about selling any of this that I take a picture and post it to Facebook, asking, seriously, if any of this is worth trying to sell. I know that the only people who answer will say "yes." The question is, will anyone answer.
A handful do, so I decide to try. Depending on how much I like a piece, I price it from $5 to $20. All proceeds will go to Ride for McBride.
*
2 May 2019: A Long and Productive Day
2 May 2019: A Long and Productive Day
I leave work early again to spend time as Low Key's partner. At the other bench, Go Big is working with the same beginner I met a few weeks ago. Low Key is working with incorporating small pieces of dichroic glass. I'm going to make cats all day.
Four cats later it's summer in the studio again.
I take a break to photograph Monday's work.
The threading is a mess, but this cup really wants someone to lick it.
Not quite as floppy as my previous attempt, but I'm getting there:
Cats like to go in bowls.
In a month I'll be in Maine. I gather glass, block it, and roll the bottom in Purple Passion frit mix, which looks a little like the granite rocks on the coast. I spread some green frit on the marver and roll the center of the gather in it. Evergreens. There's overlap and once I've melted the frit in I can't tell how it's going to turn out. I make a cup and call it a day. I still have some plates to sand-blast, and there's one cup I've prepped too.
First, though, I want to go next door to look at everyone's glass in the art show. It's past 5:00 now, and the show is closed for the day. But the main doors are open.
"I saw your kitty," Classmate's Partner says. "It's under glass."
"Not everything is under glass," Low Key says. "I guess they don't want people stealing gold."
I step inside. There it is.
The exhibitors are still setting up in the front gallery. The glass doors are closed. From where I'm standing I can see a few of our class' pieces. I'll come back on Saturday for a closer look.
Sleepless comes into the studio and pulls a piece of glass from a bag. "I made you a jellyfish."
It's two inches tall and perfectly cute.
When we finally get a chance at the bench, after the superstars have gone, I roll clear glass over scrap rods and make a quick cup. Then Sleepless makes a jellyfish. "I'll help you make one tomorrow," she says.
From the other side of the room, Low Key calls me. "Next Saturday morning is open. You want it?"
"Yeah!" That's the last day for real. The evening of May 11 is when the furnace will be turned off for the summer.
*
4 May 2019: Color, Color, Color
"I want to try threading today. I've only done it twice."
"With that thing?" Alchemy frowns at the threader. "The piece ruiner?"
"Um, yeah. I shouldn't?"
"No, no, it's fine."
I cut a piece of beige rod and set out Aqua Metallic frit.
Aside from that I don't have a plan. Then I remember the aventurine. Alchemy sees me retrieve the two inches I have left. "Here," he says. "Use this." He's got most of a rod.
"Lime Green Aventurine," he says. I pour out some Brilliant Yellow frit to go over it. "Cut me a slice too," he says.
To pay him back I quietly leave him a bag with two rod scraps in it. I've labeled the bag "ick." Inside is a piece of Flamingo, which I tried and it was as bad as I'd feared. The other piece is Sahara and I'm not going near it; it's barf-brown. I'm sure Alchemy will find a way to make both of these pretty.
Sleepless is at the other bench, working with Tall Vase. She suggests I make something quick while we're waiting for the rods to come up to 950 degrees. I make a dopey little cup from clear glass rolled in thread fragments.
Alchemy is setting out his colors. He's got the family-sized tub of secret color again, and he has a bag of orange chunks that look more like melted rock candy than frit. He hands me a piece. In the studio light -- LED and sunlight -- it's orange. In the fluorescently-lit hallway the chunk is pale green. I hand it to Sleepless to blow her mind.
He also lays out what looks like pearly white frit. I know better than to think it's actually pearly white. "What's this?"
"Anti-color!"
I wait for an explanation.
"It does different things with different colors."
When the rods get up to temperature Alchemy goes first with one of the aventurine slices. He lays the anti-color frit directly on top of it and covers the whole thing in clear glass. Right away we can see the color changing. Red spots ringed with blue are coming up under the clear glass.
"So cool!"
"You can try some if you want."
"Yeah!"
But first I have an idea for my slice of aventurine. I've drawn a picture of the Maine coast: granite (Purple Passion mix), trees (aventurine) and water (skip that for now). We decide that I'm going to pick up the aventurine rod, coat it in clear glass, then coat only the bottom of the bubble in the frit mix. This goes far better than I'd expected, considering the clam-shaped mess I ended up with last time. I run into a little trouble towards the end, when, for the first time, I try pulling out the thick lip and cutting it to make it thinner. I can't quite get the residual wrinkles out. After we put it away, Alchemy explains some basic geometry to me: If I push on the glass in one place, it's going to bulge out somewhere else. In other words, I'd never have gotten those wrinkles out without cutting that part of the top off completely.
Meanwhile, Sleepless has made a bowl and a perfectly-formed goblet. She's getting good at goblets now. Tall Vase has made a couple of long, free-form vase-looking things; what they'll look like after he's edited in post is anyone's guess.
Alchemy goes again, this time coating a gray rod with the Neo Lavender and the orange chunks. He swirls them together with the tools at the bench, and as he gets closer to completion the swirls start to come up as the glass cools. He blows this one out thin, which is uncharacteristic for him.
Glass Ninja comes in and starts to set up.
Alchemy and I take a break by walking next door to the student art exhibit. I take pictures of every piece of classmates' glass I can find. "I'm going to out you all."
No, I'm not.
Back in the studio, Sleepless spins out a perfect purple bowl.
It's getting on towards 1:00. I'm not going to have a chance to play with the anti-color unless Alchemy's afternoon partner doesn't show up. He does, so I step back.
Our Instructor is here. Sage and The Kid arrive. Sage feeds the afternoon shift.
"I'm tired," Alchemy says. "You can go for me and use the color." That's fine with Alchemy's partner, who, like the other beginners this semester, blows glass like a pro. Alchemy and I help him through a big bowl (he likes making cereal bowls, he's told me).
Now it's close to 2:00 and I'm hungry. All I have with me are the two bottles of electrolyte water, which I've mostly finished, and the mug of coffee, which I haven't finished and probably shouldn't. But I do because it's all I've got. This next piece is going to be interesting, if I can get through it without dropping it our passing out.
To make sure nothing bad happens, I keep it small, as I'm wont to do when I'm tired or experimenting.
We've decided to see what happens when I use a transparent reducing blue frit (Aqua Metallic) with the anti-color. I put quite a lot of the anti-color on, and I don't cover it in clear glass. This gives the outside a little texture, which I like. As the glass cools, tiny red spots begin to appear.
Sage and Our Instructor have taken their usual seats, feet away from the bench where I'm working. I tell the beginner, "I know she's got a running commentary in her head of everything I'm doing wrong."
At the back table, Alchemy joins me as I start to pack up. "Lemme write down what this color is," I tell him as I take the jar to copy the label into my notebook.
"Keep it," he says.
"Really? You sure?" There's not a lot left. I don't want to take his whole supply.
"I have more. Take it." As for the name of the color and its source, he's sworn me to secrecy.
"Thanks for all your help," I tell him. "And thanks for letting me play with your color."
"Kept you away from that stupid threader, too," he says.
Yeah, I'll tackle that on Monday. And jellyfish, because Sleepless will be filling the empty slot.
*
5 May: Open House
"It's raining so we're not gonna get a lot of people," LT1 tells me as I heave my suitcase onto the table next to where she has her work on display.
I scurry over to the cabinet to fetch Thursday's cats and yesterday's cups. They all need grinding down, which I do as quickly as I can because there's going to be a glassblowing demo in here and I can't be grinding my glass when that's going on.
One of the cats has a broken ear. Sage points me to epoxy and I fix it. Knock an ear off, knock $10 off the price. All the other cats will be $20. Except the kitten. I'm keeping that one for myself.
I like how the scrap thread cup turned out. I'll keep this one too.
I lay everything out on the table but I'm not expecting to sell anything. It's going to be difficult to compete, not with my classmates, but with the two tables of donated rejects from students past, each piece selling for $15 down to $1. There are works over there that I still don't know how to make, selling for maybe $5.
Then I get a text from Plain Jim. He's on his way.
He arrives in time for the middle of the demo. Our Instructor is making a giant plate whose design requires three parts. I notice, with a tinge of jealousy, which of my classmates have been selected to be assistants for the demo.
Jim doesn't have time to stay for the whole thing, so I take him around the classroom to see the pieces Tall Vase and Glass Ninja have set out. Out of a sense of duty, and because he's been a regular Ride for McBride contributor since day one, Jim buys a cup I made last semester, one I made using a mold. It was the first time I'd worked with Glass Ninja. The cup is, by far, the thinnest piece I've ever made, but it's uneven, which is why it's here and not in my cupboard at home.
No sooner has Jim left than I get a text from Sean and Dale, whom I haven't seen since New Year's Eve. They're on their way. Dale, always a faithful patron, and also one of the contributors to Ride for McBride before it was an official scholarship, begins raking aside pieces she wants to buy. She makes a fair dent in the inventory.
Alchemy wanders in. He reaches for one of the plump cats I made when I was coming out of my slump.
We go back to the demo. Now Glass Ninja is making a bowl with feet. We watch until he puts it away. As the crowd filters out, The Kid comes over to where we're sitting. I've been answering questions. He chimes in.
At the end of the day, as I'm beginning to pack up, Sage comes over and picks the sad-eyed cat. I put two plates into the student sale box for the next sale in December.
Back home I take pictures of all of the pieces that are left. I'm going to upload them to a separate blog post and offer them for sale for Ride for McBride. My goal is to raise $500 toward the $2000 scholarship. I'll chip in $200 on top of that. After the pictures are finished I pack everything carefully away again.
*
6 May 2019: Jellyfish and That Stupid Threader
My rolling backpack is making hella noise as I drag it down the slope towards the studio, meeting Sleepless at the bottom. The one wheel that still has its rubber coating isn't even moving now.
Saturday's work is out of the oven already.
This late in the game I shouldn't be making wobbly cups, but the one I rolled in scrap rods is off-kilter. The attempted coastline scene looks more like cherry blossoms in front of a privet hedge.
As for the bowl I made with the anti-color, wow. I laid the stuff on pretty thick in spots.
As I'm grinding the punty remains, Sleepless places another jellyfish on the table. "This one's for you," she says. "It's the Autumn Mix you wanted."
"Wow! Thanks!" I carry it outside for a portrait.
Tonight I'm going to work with Sleepless. She's going to show me how to make my own jellyfish. Meanwhile, Glass Ninja is going to try again for the three-part piece he made last week. He has a different strategy this time so that he doesn't have to put the final piece on while covered in heat-protective gear and his face in the oven. LT2 is going to help him with the final steps. Prodigy will be his assistant.
I watch Sleepless make a jellyfish. I try one, using aventurine and Iris Blue for tentacles and Chameleon for the body. Sleepless makes another perfect goblet. I make another jellyfish, adding some white to the tentacle lineup.
Over at the other bench, Glass Ninja has made the base (a small bowl) and the top (a large floppy bowl), with Prodigy working in between. While our partners are working at the furnace and glory hole, we stand in the back, shooting the breeze.
I should pause at this point to reflect on how much of an outsider I felt I was at the beginning of this semester, and how integrated into the scene I feel right now. I'm not one of the superstars; it's not likely I ever will be. That's okay. I'm not doing this to make a career of it. I still don't know what my endgame is. Maybe I'll try to sell my work for real someday. Maybe I'll just keep giving it away. Neither LT2 nor Glass Ninja, for all their technical brilliance and artistry, are trying to get their work into galleries. Maybe I'll make one big project in a night instead of trying to get to three small ones. Maybe I'll get stuck in a rut the way I am with my jewelry. Maybe I'll be one of the old-timers someday. Maybe I'll stop in a year.
I watch intently as Sleepless puts the finishing touches on her vase. Now I know how to get the shape of the one that's sitting outside in the mulch.
She finishes a few minutes before Glass Ninja puts the stem in between the base and the bowl and gets it into the annealer intact.
"Can you help me make a cat?" Prodigy asks. I want to say "No. That's my thing." Instead, I hesitate, "Um, okay."
"I've seen you do it," he says, and he runs through the steps.
"I'll help you with the tail."
But right now, Glass Ninja is going to help me with the threader.
This time I'm using a beige rod from the starter pack as my base color and Dark Violet for the thread. While I work the bubble, he gets the thread ready. I'm still slow and unsure at the feathering step, which is a difficult step because it requires just the right heat and touch to pull through the hot threads without bending the underlying glass too much. The process takes me several trips to the furnace to re-heat and level off the bubble. When I blow it out I go for a round shape. I don't want to invade Tiny's Daugher's long vase territory. I don't know if the violet will reduce in the annealer the way it did last time.
As I heat and shape the bubble, Prodigy works on his cat. He hasn't put a jack line in for the head yet, but he's already pulled the ears. The cat looks like the ones for sale down at Wheaton: no head, just a body and ears. LT2 and Glass Ninja are near enough to me for me to ask, quietly, "Is it okay that I'm mad he's making a cat? It took me a semester to figure it out."
"You're worried he'll do it better than you?" Glass Ninja smiles.
"Yeah. And then I won't be able to make cats anymore."
At least I'm advanced enough now not to let these thoughts interfere with the piece I'm turning in the glory hole.
When I look over again he's blown out the body into a large, thin bubble. Been there, done that. It worked for me once, and only once.
When I grumble again, LT2 says, "It's glass," which leaves me puzzled, but he's right. "You should be flattered that you inspired him," he says. Harrumph.
More turning, more shaping, a little pressure on the lip and it's not quite round anymore. I hear a clatter in the waste bucket. Prodigy is knocking a distorted bubble off of his pipe. "Don't laugh too loud," LT2 chides. I shake my head. "Been there, done that." We put the threaded piece away.
Prodigy already has another gather going. "Another cat?" I ask him. "No, I'm gonna make a goblet like the one before."
"I figured out the cat thing on my own," I tell him. "It's better to start small with clear." For some reason this surprises him. "My first few were clear. Then I made some with no bubble in the head, and some with bubbles in the head, and sometimes I pinched off the bubble completely, and I had one whose head popped off when we broke it off the pipe." I don't even get into the ear thing, or why I finally went against eyes and noses.
Prodigy has a neat way of making the foot out of the top of the bubble. I help him flatten it out. He hasn't made the connection between what he's doing now and how I make a cat. To me it's obvious. I'm about to tell him but we get involved in centering the foot instead. I step away when Glass Ninja and LT2 step in to tell him that there's not much more he can do. Even though I've offered to help, Prodigy asks Glass Ninja to hold the pipe while he puts a wrap on it. Whatever. I know what I can do, even if Prodigy doesn't. He has no idea how many wrapped cups I have at home.
For once I'm not the last to finish. In the courtyard, in the dark, I pull off the remaining shred of rubber from the one wheel that's still round. The other has been ground flat on one side. This pack is toast. One more class, that's all I need it for.
At home I get a better look under better light at the pieces I made on Saturday. Alchemy's aventurine, called Lime Green Aventurine, is paler than the rod I have. It looks more like creamed spinach than pine trees.
It looks like the algae that's exposed on the rocks at Acadia's Thunder Hole at low tide.
Well, okay then. It's not exactly the scene I was trying to evoke, but hey, it's Acadia National Park, so, whatever.
Sleepless' jellyfish go on the beading table among a handful of animate beads and a piece of glass Our Intructor cut off the end of a demo last semester.
Under the bright lights on my beading table, the Mystery Bowl colors pop.
This is a keeper.
This isn't.
*
7 May 2019: I Have a Cunning Plan
The latest work window sill lineup has Side-Eye Kitty glowing in the late afternoon sun.
*
4 May 2019: Color, Color, Color
"I want to try threading today. I've only done it twice."
"With that thing?" Alchemy frowns at the threader. "The piece ruiner?"
"Um, yeah. I shouldn't?"
"No, no, it's fine."
I cut a piece of beige rod and set out Aqua Metallic frit.
Aside from that I don't have a plan. Then I remember the aventurine. Alchemy sees me retrieve the two inches I have left. "Here," he says. "Use this." He's got most of a rod.
"Lime Green Aventurine," he says. I pour out some Brilliant Yellow frit to go over it. "Cut me a slice too," he says.
To pay him back I quietly leave him a bag with two rod scraps in it. I've labeled the bag "ick." Inside is a piece of Flamingo, which I tried and it was as bad as I'd feared. The other piece is Sahara and I'm not going near it; it's barf-brown. I'm sure Alchemy will find a way to make both of these pretty.
Sleepless is at the other bench, working with Tall Vase. She suggests I make something quick while we're waiting for the rods to come up to 950 degrees. I make a dopey little cup from clear glass rolled in thread fragments.
Alchemy is setting out his colors. He's got the family-sized tub of secret color again, and he has a bag of orange chunks that look more like melted rock candy than frit. He hands me a piece. In the studio light -- LED and sunlight -- it's orange. In the fluorescently-lit hallway the chunk is pale green. I hand it to Sleepless to blow her mind.
He also lays out what looks like pearly white frit. I know better than to think it's actually pearly white. "What's this?"
"Anti-color!"
I wait for an explanation.
"It does different things with different colors."
When the rods get up to temperature Alchemy goes first with one of the aventurine slices. He lays the anti-color frit directly on top of it and covers the whole thing in clear glass. Right away we can see the color changing. Red spots ringed with blue are coming up under the clear glass.
"So cool!"
"You can try some if you want."
"Yeah!"
But first I have an idea for my slice of aventurine. I've drawn a picture of the Maine coast: granite (Purple Passion mix), trees (aventurine) and water (skip that for now). We decide that I'm going to pick up the aventurine rod, coat it in clear glass, then coat only the bottom of the bubble in the frit mix. This goes far better than I'd expected, considering the clam-shaped mess I ended up with last time. I run into a little trouble towards the end, when, for the first time, I try pulling out the thick lip and cutting it to make it thinner. I can't quite get the residual wrinkles out. After we put it away, Alchemy explains some basic geometry to me: If I push on the glass in one place, it's going to bulge out somewhere else. In other words, I'd never have gotten those wrinkles out without cutting that part of the top off completely.
Meanwhile, Sleepless has made a bowl and a perfectly-formed goblet. She's getting good at goblets now. Tall Vase has made a couple of long, free-form vase-looking things; what they'll look like after he's edited in post is anyone's guess.
Alchemy goes again, this time coating a gray rod with the Neo Lavender and the orange chunks. He swirls them together with the tools at the bench, and as he gets closer to completion the swirls start to come up as the glass cools. He blows this one out thin, which is uncharacteristic for him.
Glass Ninja comes in and starts to set up.
Alchemy and I take a break by walking next door to the student art exhibit. I take pictures of every piece of classmates' glass I can find. "I'm going to out you all."
No, I'm not.
Two others are in the gallery somewhere too, but I don't find them.
It's getting on towards 1:00. I'm not going to have a chance to play with the anti-color unless Alchemy's afternoon partner doesn't show up. He does, so I step back.
Our Instructor is here. Sage and The Kid arrive. Sage feeds the afternoon shift.
"I'm tired," Alchemy says. "You can go for me and use the color." That's fine with Alchemy's partner, who, like the other beginners this semester, blows glass like a pro. Alchemy and I help him through a big bowl (he likes making cereal bowls, he's told me).
Now it's close to 2:00 and I'm hungry. All I have with me are the two bottles of electrolyte water, which I've mostly finished, and the mug of coffee, which I haven't finished and probably shouldn't. But I do because it's all I've got. This next piece is going to be interesting, if I can get through it without dropping it our passing out.
To make sure nothing bad happens, I keep it small, as I'm wont to do when I'm tired or experimenting.
We've decided to see what happens when I use a transparent reducing blue frit (Aqua Metallic) with the anti-color. I put quite a lot of the anti-color on, and I don't cover it in clear glass. This gives the outside a little texture, which I like. As the glass cools, tiny red spots begin to appear.
Sage and Our Instructor have taken their usual seats, feet away from the bench where I'm working. I tell the beginner, "I know she's got a running commentary in her head of everything I'm doing wrong."
I put the cup away without spending too much time looking at its details.
As I leave the bench and walk towards the back of the room to pack up, I pass Sage and Our Instructor. "After two semesters," I tell them, "I've learned that glassblowing is every bit as addictive as biking, but without the calorie credit."
At the back table, Alchemy joins me as I start to pack up. "Lemme write down what this color is," I tell him as I take the jar to copy the label into my notebook.
"Keep it," he says.
"Really? You sure?" There's not a lot left. I don't want to take his whole supply.
"I have more. Take it." As for the name of the color and its source, he's sworn me to secrecy.
"Thanks for all your help," I tell him. "And thanks for letting me play with your color."
"Kept you away from that stupid threader, too," he says.
Yeah, I'll tackle that on Monday. And jellyfish, because Sleepless will be filling the empty slot.
*
5 May: Open House
"It's raining so we're not gonna get a lot of people," LT1 tells me as I heave my suitcase onto the table next to where she has her work on display.
I scurry over to the cabinet to fetch Thursday's cats and yesterday's cups. They all need grinding down, which I do as quickly as I can because there's going to be a glassblowing demo in here and I can't be grinding my glass when that's going on.
One of the cats has a broken ear. Sage points me to epoxy and I fix it. Knock an ear off, knock $10 off the price. All the other cats will be $20. Except the kitten. I'm keeping that one for myself.
I like how the scrap thread cup turned out. I'll keep this one too.
I lay everything out on the table but I'm not expecting to sell anything. It's going to be difficult to compete, not with my classmates, but with the two tables of donated rejects from students past, each piece selling for $15 down to $1. There are works over there that I still don't know how to make, selling for maybe $5.
Then I get a text from Plain Jim. He's on his way.
He arrives in time for the middle of the demo. Our Instructor is making a giant plate whose design requires three parts. I notice, with a tinge of jealousy, which of my classmates have been selected to be assistants for the demo.
Jim doesn't have time to stay for the whole thing, so I take him around the classroom to see the pieces Tall Vase and Glass Ninja have set out. Out of a sense of duty, and because he's been a regular Ride for McBride contributor since day one, Jim buys a cup I made last semester, one I made using a mold. It was the first time I'd worked with Glass Ninja. The cup is, by far, the thinnest piece I've ever made, but it's uneven, which is why it's here and not in my cupboard at home.
No sooner has Jim left than I get a text from Sean and Dale, whom I haven't seen since New Year's Eve. They're on their way. Dale, always a faithful patron, and also one of the contributors to Ride for McBride before it was an official scholarship, begins raking aside pieces she wants to buy. She makes a fair dent in the inventory.
Alchemy wanders in. He reaches for one of the plump cats I made when I was coming out of my slump.
We go back to the demo. Now Glass Ninja is making a bowl with feet. We watch until he puts it away. As the crowd filters out, The Kid comes over to where we're sitting. I've been answering questions. He chimes in.
At the end of the day, as I'm beginning to pack up, Sage comes over and picks the sad-eyed cat. I put two plates into the student sale box for the next sale in December.
Back home I take pictures of all of the pieces that are left. I'm going to upload them to a separate blog post and offer them for sale for Ride for McBride. My goal is to raise $500 toward the $2000 scholarship. I'll chip in $200 on top of that. After the pictures are finished I pack everything carefully away again.
6 May 2019: Jellyfish and That Stupid Threader
My rolling backpack is making hella noise as I drag it down the slope towards the studio, meeting Sleepless at the bottom. The one wheel that still has its rubber coating isn't even moving now.
Saturday's work is out of the oven already.
This late in the game I shouldn't be making wobbly cups, but the one I rolled in scrap rods is off-kilter. The attempted coastline scene looks more like cherry blossoms in front of a privet hedge.
As for the bowl I made with the anti-color, wow. I laid the stuff on pretty thick in spots.
As I'm grinding the punty remains, Sleepless places another jellyfish on the table. "This one's for you," she says. "It's the Autumn Mix you wanted."
"Wow! Thanks!" I carry it outside for a portrait.
Tonight I'm going to work with Sleepless. She's going to show me how to make my own jellyfish. Meanwhile, Glass Ninja is going to try again for the three-part piece he made last week. He has a different strategy this time so that he doesn't have to put the final piece on while covered in heat-protective gear and his face in the oven. LT2 is going to help him with the final steps. Prodigy will be his assistant.
I watch Sleepless make a jellyfish. I try one, using aventurine and Iris Blue for tentacles and Chameleon for the body. Sleepless makes another perfect goblet. I make another jellyfish, adding some white to the tentacle lineup.
Over at the other bench, Glass Ninja has made the base (a small bowl) and the top (a large floppy bowl), with Prodigy working in between. While our partners are working at the furnace and glory hole, we stand in the back, shooting the breeze.
I should pause at this point to reflect on how much of an outsider I felt I was at the beginning of this semester, and how integrated into the scene I feel right now. I'm not one of the superstars; it's not likely I ever will be. That's okay. I'm not doing this to make a career of it. I still don't know what my endgame is. Maybe I'll try to sell my work for real someday. Maybe I'll just keep giving it away. Neither LT2 nor Glass Ninja, for all their technical brilliance and artistry, are trying to get their work into galleries. Maybe I'll make one big project in a night instead of trying to get to three small ones. Maybe I'll get stuck in a rut the way I am with my jewelry. Maybe I'll be one of the old-timers someday. Maybe I'll stop in a year.
I watch intently as Sleepless puts the finishing touches on her vase. Now I know how to get the shape of the one that's sitting outside in the mulch.
She finishes a few minutes before Glass Ninja puts the stem in between the base and the bowl and gets it into the annealer intact.
"Can you help me make a cat?" Prodigy asks. I want to say "No. That's my thing." Instead, I hesitate, "Um, okay."
"I've seen you do it," he says, and he runs through the steps.
"I'll help you with the tail."
But right now, Glass Ninja is going to help me with the threader.
This time I'm using a beige rod from the starter pack as my base color and Dark Violet for the thread. While I work the bubble, he gets the thread ready. I'm still slow and unsure at the feathering step, which is a difficult step because it requires just the right heat and touch to pull through the hot threads without bending the underlying glass too much. The process takes me several trips to the furnace to re-heat and level off the bubble. When I blow it out I go for a round shape. I don't want to invade Tiny's Daugher's long vase territory. I don't know if the violet will reduce in the annealer the way it did last time.
As I heat and shape the bubble, Prodigy works on his cat. He hasn't put a jack line in for the head yet, but he's already pulled the ears. The cat looks like the ones for sale down at Wheaton: no head, just a body and ears. LT2 and Glass Ninja are near enough to me for me to ask, quietly, "Is it okay that I'm mad he's making a cat? It took me a semester to figure it out."
"You're worried he'll do it better than you?" Glass Ninja smiles.
"Yeah. And then I won't be able to make cats anymore."
At least I'm advanced enough now not to let these thoughts interfere with the piece I'm turning in the glory hole.
When I look over again he's blown out the body into a large, thin bubble. Been there, done that. It worked for me once, and only once.
When I grumble again, LT2 says, "It's glass," which leaves me puzzled, but he's right. "You should be flattered that you inspired him," he says. Harrumph.
More turning, more shaping, a little pressure on the lip and it's not quite round anymore. I hear a clatter in the waste bucket. Prodigy is knocking a distorted bubble off of his pipe. "Don't laugh too loud," LT2 chides. I shake my head. "Been there, done that." We put the threaded piece away.
Prodigy already has another gather going. "Another cat?" I ask him. "No, I'm gonna make a goblet like the one before."
"I figured out the cat thing on my own," I tell him. "It's better to start small with clear." For some reason this surprises him. "My first few were clear. Then I made some with no bubble in the head, and some with bubbles in the head, and sometimes I pinched off the bubble completely, and I had one whose head popped off when we broke it off the pipe." I don't even get into the ear thing, or why I finally went against eyes and noses.
Prodigy has a neat way of making the foot out of the top of the bubble. I help him flatten it out. He hasn't made the connection between what he's doing now and how I make a cat. To me it's obvious. I'm about to tell him but we get involved in centering the foot instead. I step away when Glass Ninja and LT2 step in to tell him that there's not much more he can do. Even though I've offered to help, Prodigy asks Glass Ninja to hold the pipe while he puts a wrap on it. Whatever. I know what I can do, even if Prodigy doesn't. He has no idea how many wrapped cups I have at home.
For once I'm not the last to finish. In the courtyard, in the dark, I pull off the remaining shred of rubber from the one wheel that's still round. The other has been ground flat on one side. This pack is toast. One more class, that's all I need it for.
At home I get a better look under better light at the pieces I made on Saturday. Alchemy's aventurine, called Lime Green Aventurine, is paler than the rod I have. It looks more like creamed spinach than pine trees.
It looks like the algae that's exposed on the rocks at Acadia's Thunder Hole at low tide.
Well, okay then. It's not exactly the scene I was trying to evoke, but hey, it's Acadia National Park, so, whatever.
Sleepless' jellyfish go on the beading table among a handful of animate beads and a piece of glass Our Intructor cut off the end of a demo last semester.
Under the bright lights on my beading table, the Mystery Bowl colors pop.
This is a keeper.
This isn't.
*
7 May 2019: I Have a Cunning Plan
The latest work window sill lineup has Side-Eye Kitty glowing in the late afternoon sun.
I have an idea for my last glassblowing session of the semester on Saturday. It's complicated. I don't know if I have the skill set. It might take me an hour. If it works it'll be the only thing I need to make until class starts up again in late August.
Meanwhile, I need to get to the hardware store to buy a rolling tool box designed to hold up to 80 pounds. I've found one that doesn't cost much and should hold everything. I buy it on the way to the gym. I'm still thinking about glass. I see a set of workout bars leaning against a wall and I wonder what blowpipes are doing here. Between sets of chest-presses I catch myself contemplating punties.
*
9 May 2019: Critique Night
Before I set up I need to grab Monday's work from the cabinet.
The two jellyfish came out okay. I ought to have made them longer and less round.
I'm more relaxed this time. I've done what I've done and I don't have to compare myself to anyone, not even My Classmate. Sleepless and Grace are at the same table with me, just like last semester. Grace's horses are even better than they were two months ago. Now they're on their hind legs, balanced by long tails, with color inside their torsos. Sleepless has lined her goblets up in chronological order. She even made one from a jellyfish when Glass Ninja was her partner.
"You need a jelly," I tell her, and hand her the first of my two jellyfish.
Our Instructor hollers for our attention and the critique begins. Almost everyone has a piece that I would gladly take off their hands if there were room in my house to put any of it.
Each classmate explains what they have, what they want to do, and how close they are to getting there. Some have landed where they wanted to land. Some are still working towards a goal. Some are just making stuff. And a lot of people have been using Copper Ruby Light. I've used it to. The stuff looks different every damn time, and in all of our trials, only LT2 has managed to make it look anything like the deep red-brown we think it's supposed to be.
My Classmate has been baffled by one of his colors, too. "It's called Ferrari Red," he says, "But it came out orange." He has a bowl made from a mold. It's deep orange. "I wasn't even sure it was mine," he says. Low Key looks over at me and quietly says, "Maybe it's yours." I grin back at her. "You're evil."
When it gets around to our table (we're last), I go first, trying to describe everything as quickly as I can.
I confess that the collapsed doodle cup, the green one, is one of my favorites, then show the white one that worked. The class murmurs approval.
I focus on the floppy bowls, showing the three failures ("They're not failures!" Tiny's Daughter corrects) first, then the one that worked ("Heyyy!" the class says).
Last is my creamed spinach version of the Maine coastline. "What I want to do next," I explain, "I might be getting out over my skis with this, but I want to pick up a blue rod, then aventurine for the trees, then the pink frit, and then a blue wrap for water."
"I learned a ton this semester." I thank Sleepless, Alchemy, and Glass Ninja for "letting me play in their corners." I end with, "I'm not sure where I'm going next."
Our Instructor says, "I think you have a plan," nodding towards the spinach.
Yeah, I'll try it on Saturday. I have just enough rod left to do it. And when I inevitably fail I'll have a starting point for next semester.
Class ends earlier than usual, which gives me time to figure out what the hell to do with everything I've made this semester.
First, all the crap that was on the kitchen window sill goes into a giveaway box. This is the new home for all the wrapped cups.
Moxie inspects.
The green doodle flop goes on top. I hope people will want to touch it. It's fun to play with.
Someday, if I get good enough, all of these will be released to the world, or, at the very least, become gifts. For now they live here until something better kicks them out.
Upstairs I rearrange the window sill, moving some pieces into a giveaway box and adding a group of pieces that will serve as starting points for next semester.
I pack the jellyfish to go to work with me. My office window is alive.
The bike guilt is strong today. The sun is out. The air is cool. There's not much wind. Tomorrow it's going to rain all day. To make matters worse, the leader of the ride I should have been on sends me the now ritual middle finger photo before 9:00 a.m.
Stepping into the studio stops all that. Tiny and Tiny's Daughter are at the sanding wheel, finishing off their pieces. Tiny's Daughter has hers out on the sagging blue picnic table. In the sun, the colors pop.
I cut pieces of light blue and aventurine rods, and lay out the frit I'll need for my next attempt at invoking the Maine coastline.
While our rods are warming up I test some of my colors with Alchemy's mystery anti-color. Keeping it simple, I roll a gather in my color, melt it in, put a dash of anti-color on top, melt that in, twist it, coat it in clear glass, and cut off the resulting blob of encased color.
This is Sleepless' last lab. She might not be coming back next semester. I want to make sure I don't take up too much time. The piece I plan to make will probably take an hour.
She has some colors she wants to use up, so she makes another goblet from one of them.
I check the clock when my turn begins. It's 10:15. I have to make a collar for the rods and pick up two in succession. It's going to take me a while. Sleepless goes out for coffee.
For the first time, I get the collar right on my first try. On Monday night, Glass Ninja showed me how he does it. His method works for me. Everyone seems to have their own way. I get the two rods on without dropping the second one. I hadn't expected this to go well either. So now I have the blue sky above the green trees. I have to pull the green up over the blue in little points to make the trees. This goes better than I thought it would too.
I gather glass over the whole thing, shape it, get air into it, and this is where my first mistake happens. There's too much air and the glass is too cold for me to properly pick up the pink frit mix I want to use to represent rocks. I have to get the bubble very hot, and in the process of picking up the frit only on the bottom of the bubble, I distort the entire piece. I have to re-shape it in the block. In doing this I knock it a little off-center.
We proceed anyway, putting more air into it and shaping it. I ask for a sculpture punty, which is a small gather of clear glass affixed to the bottom to reinforce it and to keep color from chipping away when the real punty is broken off. Maybe I put it on too early or too cold, but the bottom of the piece ends up bigger than I'd planned as I heat the piece again.
I almost forget the wrap for the water. Sleepless reminds me and we put it on.
When it's time for the punty it's clear that the piece is off-center. I try to correct it with the punty position. The break-off is clean enough. The top is thin.
I'm in a good mood about this. Even though it's far from perfect, I'm thinking about how I never would have thought, even at the beginning of this semester, that I would have the guts to try something like this. I feel as if I'm synthesizing everything I've learned and everything I've watched everyone else do.
Then the sides, down by the bottom, start to go wonky. On one side the glass bulges; on the other it curves inwards. I try to correct it by heating the whole thing and using newspaper to reshape it. That doesn't work. I try using the jacks, which helps a little. After a second go-round I call it quits. The whole thing looks tide-tossed. Maybe that'll work. We'll have to see.
It's 11:15.
Sleepless thinks the problem is the centering. That, and I have two different colors on there, each reacting differently to temperature changes. The wrap, deliberately asymmetric, didn't help keep things on-center either.
And then there's the problem with the trees. Instead of pointing straight up, they've become green waves. It's a nifty pattern, but it's not at all what I want right now.
It's 11:15. That piece took an hour.
Now it's time for Sleepless to make a glass from a scrap of rod. She's not sure what color it is. Some kind of green, maybe.
I do another color test blob for something less than ten minutes.
Glass Ninja and Our Instructor have arrived. They're eating lunch out at the sagging blue picnic table with Sage and Alchemy's partner. I'll have to pick their brains later. Right now I'm helping Sleepless with another goblet, shades of pink this time.
I get my last color test in as Alchemy arrives.
We clean up. Sleepless finally gets time on the sander. She has her goblets lined up. I go outside for advice, showing Glass Ninja drawings of what I wanted and what I got.
Both he and Our Instructor tell me that I need to change direction when I'm turning the piece in the glory hole. "Turning is twisting," Our Instructor says. It can happen in the blocks, too. "People tend to push harder in one direction." Guilty, probably.
As for the unevenness, Glass Ninja suggests I practice some one-gather-one-reheat pieces, which are challenging to straighten out.
Still, I'm not upset. I just tried something I never thought I'd be able to do. I have all summer to think about how to do it again.
I've watched my classmates as their ideas have evolved. I've watched Grace make horses. Early on most of them wound up in the clear glass scrap bucket; today she's got them rearing up on their hind legs, their bodies in shades of green and brown. I've watched Tiny figure out how to make animal prints by drawing with glass threads. I've watched Tiny's Daughter get better and better at feathering. None of them got it right the first time. It's a process. I don't know how long it will take me to get where I want to go, but it's not the destination that matters. It's the journey. Cue the cheesy music over closing credits.
I pack my things and say goodbye.
"Make more jellyfish!" she commands as we give each other a hug.
I drag my stuff outside, where I wind up talking to Sage for so long that Alchemy and Sleepless both come out to say goodbye again. Jack is traveling for work. I'm in no hurry to get home.
The sky is cloudy by the time I do get home. There's a yard that needs tending, and I really want to get a bike ride in before the rain starts.
I'm trying not to think about glass as I mow the lawn and dump bucket after bucket of weeds onto the compost pile. I'm trying not to think about glass when I go back inside and see the wrapped cups on the window sill, their colors like a beacon in the darkened room.
I'm trying not to think about glass as I ride through the Sourland foothills. I'm trying not to think about glass as I get caught in a few small rain showers. I'm trying not to think of glass as I think about how maybe I should put the frit directly onto the aventurine bubble, how maybe my mistake was to heat the whole piece instead of just the opening, about how maybe I should put the project aside and work on the fundamentals of shape and rod combinations before I put the whole thing together, about how that wave pattern would look really cool in red on white, about how I'll need to buy more aventurine and blue for the fall, about how I really need to stop thinking about glass and focus on getting my biking legs back.
*
May 2019: Epilogue
Two of the three color reaction tests have come
out interesting enough for me and Alchemy to mess with in the fall. Too bad I
didn't take the time to let them cool down so that I could work some
symmetry into them before I put them away. I try for some close-ups and send
them along to Alchemy.
Yes, it did. There are gray waves next to the green ones. I send a picture to Alchemy.
The two jellyfish came out okay. I ought to have made them longer and less round.
Compared to Tiny's Daugher's threaded vases, my third threading attempt is shit. That's okay though. This is only my third one.
As usual, I've brought way too much stuff.
I'm more relaxed this time. I've done what I've done and I don't have to compare myself to anyone, not even My Classmate. Sleepless and Grace are at the same table with me, just like last semester. Grace's horses are even better than they were two months ago. Now they're on their hind legs, balanced by long tails, with color inside their torsos. Sleepless has lined her goblets up in chronological order. She even made one from a jellyfish when Glass Ninja was her partner.
"You need a jelly," I tell her, and hand her the first of my two jellyfish.
Our Instructor hollers for our attention and the critique begins. Almost everyone has a piece that I would gladly take off their hands if there were room in my house to put any of it.
Each classmate explains what they have, what they want to do, and how close they are to getting there. Some have landed where they wanted to land. Some are still working towards a goal. Some are just making stuff. And a lot of people have been using Copper Ruby Light. I've used it to. The stuff looks different every damn time, and in all of our trials, only LT2 has managed to make it look anything like the deep red-brown we think it's supposed to be.
My Classmate has been baffled by one of his colors, too. "It's called Ferrari Red," he says, "But it came out orange." He has a bowl made from a mold. It's deep orange. "I wasn't even sure it was mine," he says. Low Key looks over at me and quietly says, "Maybe it's yours." I grin back at her. "You're evil."
When it gets around to our table (we're last), I go first, trying to describe everything as quickly as I can.
I confess that the collapsed doodle cup, the green one, is one of my favorites, then show the white one that worked. The class murmurs approval.
I focus on the floppy bowls, showing the three failures ("They're not failures!" Tiny's Daughter corrects) first, then the one that worked ("Heyyy!" the class says).
Last is my creamed spinach version of the Maine coastline. "What I want to do next," I explain, "I might be getting out over my skis with this, but I want to pick up a blue rod, then aventurine for the trees, then the pink frit, and then a blue wrap for water."
"I learned a ton this semester." I thank Sleepless, Alchemy, and Glass Ninja for "letting me play in their corners." I end with, "I'm not sure where I'm going next."
Our Instructor says, "I think you have a plan," nodding towards the spinach.
Yeah, I'll try it on Saturday. I have just enough rod left to do it. And when I inevitably fail I'll have a starting point for next semester.
Class ends earlier than usual, which gives me time to figure out what the hell to do with everything I've made this semester.
First, all the crap that was on the kitchen window sill goes into a giveaway box. This is the new home for all the wrapped cups.
Moxie inspects.
I plop down in front of the glass case and move out the very first pieces I made, because I didn't really make them. I had my hands on the pipe, sure, but so did the workers at Luke Adams Studio in Boston. In their place go the bowls and the cats.
The green doodle flop goes on top. I hope people will want to touch it. It's fun to play with.
Upstairs I rearrange the window sill, moving some pieces into a giveaway box and adding a group of pieces that will serve as starting points for next semester.
Four window sill denizens move into a kitchen cabinet, displacing a handful of coffee mugs I forgot we even had. I have Tiny to thank for this idea. (And yeah, that's a pair of French presses up top. I have three. What of it?)
I pack the jellyfish to go to work with me. My office window is alive.
*
11 May 2019: Fail Better
The bike guilt is strong today. The sun is out. The air is cool. There's not much wind. Tomorrow it's going to rain all day. To make matters worse, the leader of the ride I should have been on sends me the now ritual middle finger photo before 9:00 a.m.
Stepping into the studio stops all that. Tiny and Tiny's Daughter are at the sanding wheel, finishing off their pieces. Tiny's Daughter has hers out on the sagging blue picnic table. In the sun, the colors pop.
I cut pieces of light blue and aventurine rods, and lay out the frit I'll need for my next attempt at invoking the Maine coastline.
While our rods are warming up I test some of my colors with Alchemy's mystery anti-color. Keeping it simple, I roll a gather in my color, melt it in, put a dash of anti-color on top, melt that in, twist it, coat it in clear glass, and cut off the resulting blob of encased color.
This is Sleepless' last lab. She might not be coming back next semester. I want to make sure I don't take up too much time. The piece I plan to make will probably take an hour.
She has some colors she wants to use up, so she makes another goblet from one of them.
I check the clock when my turn begins. It's 10:15. I have to make a collar for the rods and pick up two in succession. It's going to take me a while. Sleepless goes out for coffee.
For the first time, I get the collar right on my first try. On Monday night, Glass Ninja showed me how he does it. His method works for me. Everyone seems to have their own way. I get the two rods on without dropping the second one. I hadn't expected this to go well either. So now I have the blue sky above the green trees. I have to pull the green up over the blue in little points to make the trees. This goes better than I thought it would too.
I gather glass over the whole thing, shape it, get air into it, and this is where my first mistake happens. There's too much air and the glass is too cold for me to properly pick up the pink frit mix I want to use to represent rocks. I have to get the bubble very hot, and in the process of picking up the frit only on the bottom of the bubble, I distort the entire piece. I have to re-shape it in the block. In doing this I knock it a little off-center.
We proceed anyway, putting more air into it and shaping it. I ask for a sculpture punty, which is a small gather of clear glass affixed to the bottom to reinforce it and to keep color from chipping away when the real punty is broken off. Maybe I put it on too early or too cold, but the bottom of the piece ends up bigger than I'd planned as I heat the piece again.
I almost forget the wrap for the water. Sleepless reminds me and we put it on.
When it's time for the punty it's clear that the piece is off-center. I try to correct it with the punty position. The break-off is clean enough. The top is thin.
I'm in a good mood about this. Even though it's far from perfect, I'm thinking about how I never would have thought, even at the beginning of this semester, that I would have the guts to try something like this. I feel as if I'm synthesizing everything I've learned and everything I've watched everyone else do.
Then the sides, down by the bottom, start to go wonky. On one side the glass bulges; on the other it curves inwards. I try to correct it by heating the whole thing and using newspaper to reshape it. That doesn't work. I try using the jacks, which helps a little. After a second go-round I call it quits. The whole thing looks tide-tossed. Maybe that'll work. We'll have to see.
It's 11:15.
Sleepless thinks the problem is the centering. That, and I have two different colors on there, each reacting differently to temperature changes. The wrap, deliberately asymmetric, didn't help keep things on-center either.
And then there's the problem with the trees. Instead of pointing straight up, they've become green waves. It's a nifty pattern, but it's not at all what I want right now.
It's 11:15. That piece took an hour.
Now it's time for Sleepless to make a glass from a scrap of rod. She's not sure what color it is. Some kind of green, maybe.
I do another color test blob for something less than ten minutes.
Glass Ninja and Our Instructor have arrived. They're eating lunch out at the sagging blue picnic table with Sage and Alchemy's partner. I'll have to pick their brains later. Right now I'm helping Sleepless with another goblet, shades of pink this time.
I get my last color test in as Alchemy arrives.
We clean up. Sleepless finally gets time on the sander. She has her goblets lined up. I go outside for advice, showing Glass Ninja drawings of what I wanted and what I got.
Both he and Our Instructor tell me that I need to change direction when I'm turning the piece in the glory hole. "Turning is twisting," Our Instructor says. It can happen in the blocks, too. "People tend to push harder in one direction." Guilty, probably.
As for the unevenness, Glass Ninja suggests I practice some one-gather-one-reheat pieces, which are challenging to straighten out.
Still, I'm not upset. I just tried something I never thought I'd be able to do. I have all summer to think about how to do it again.
I've watched my classmates as their ideas have evolved. I've watched Grace make horses. Early on most of them wound up in the clear glass scrap bucket; today she's got them rearing up on their hind legs, their bodies in shades of green and brown. I've watched Tiny figure out how to make animal prints by drawing with glass threads. I've watched Tiny's Daughter get better and better at feathering. None of them got it right the first time. It's a process. I don't know how long it will take me to get where I want to go, but it's not the destination that matters. It's the journey. Cue the cheesy music over closing credits.
I pack my things and say goodbye.
"Make more jellyfish!" she commands as we give each other a hug.
I drag my stuff outside, where I wind up talking to Sage for so long that Alchemy and Sleepless both come out to say goodbye again. Jack is traveling for work. I'm in no hurry to get home.
The sky is cloudy by the time I do get home. There's a yard that needs tending, and I really want to get a bike ride in before the rain starts.
I'm trying not to think about glass as I mow the lawn and dump bucket after bucket of weeds onto the compost pile. I'm trying not to think about glass when I go back inside and see the wrapped cups on the window sill, their colors like a beacon in the darkened room.
I'm trying not to think about glass as I ride through the Sourland foothills. I'm trying not to think about glass as I get caught in a few small rain showers. I'm trying not to think of glass as I think about how maybe I should put the frit directly onto the aventurine bubble, how maybe my mistake was to heat the whole piece instead of just the opening, about how maybe I should put the project aside and work on the fundamentals of shape and rod combinations before I put the whole thing together, about how that wave pattern would look really cool in red on white, about how I'll need to buy more aventurine and blue for the fall, about how I really need to stop thinking about glass and focus on getting my biking legs back.
*
May 2019: Epilogue
Rain runs in rivers down the
blacktop hill between the parking lot and the studio. The metal door is wide
open and I can hear the furnace fans. LT1 sits alone at the bench closest to
the glory hole, pulling color from her pipe and wrapping it randomly on top of
itself.
"Paperweights," she says.
"We're emptying the furnace tonight." I want her to ask me if I
want to make some. She doesn't. "You're stuff's in the annealer. You can
open it."
Speaking of asymmetry, Maine #3 is
all about bulges.
So many things I need to correct
when I do this again.
First, I need to get a handle on
aventurine. This is the second time I've used it and the second time it's gone
soft on me. Aventurine, I'm told, is a "difficult color." No shit.
Blues aren't easy either, and here I've gone and stacked it with aventurine.
Learning how colors behave alone and together is a big part of glassblowing.
Second, more blue, less green. Don't
pull the green up so high. The blue rod was twice the length of the green one
when I started.
Third, layer the pink frit straight
onto the aventurine, and lay on more of it. Then gather clear over the entire
thing and get air into it.
Fourth, bring the final wrap up
higher and put more on so that it really looks like water.
Fifth, go for a rounder shape
instead of a straight vessel.
At home I put the two Maine vessels
next to each other on the window sill. I still don't know if I like either of
them.
Wait. What's that shadow? Did the
aventurine react with the light blue?
Yes, it did. There are gray waves next to the green ones. I send a picture to Alchemy.
Well, at least I blew it thin. And
the blue looks semi-translucent. And kind of grayish inside. Hmm.
Stop.
Enough.
There are four months
between now and when the furnace is full of glass again. I need to get back to
the rest of my life.
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