5 November 2021
Prelude
"There's glass," he says, "And then there's everything else."
I: Leftovers
After the pieces I want to keep are placed just so in a cabinet, I'm left with boxes of work that will become gifts or be returned to the classroom to be smashed to bits that perhaps someone else will incorporate into their work.
This spring, though, my good friend Jodi said she could use my rejects as sculpture. Her back yard is expansive, with a garden and a pond, and a wild lawn sloping up towards woods. Everywhere are whimsical glass flowers made from antique plates and cups from an abandoned house in the neighborhood. I showed her what I had and she had ideas in return.
On our way to Maine at the end of may, after we were all vaccinated and before Delta happened, we stopped at her house. We hadn't seen each other in over 20 years. Her teenage daughter was cleaning her room while we were there, and she came out with a pack of googly eyes.
"Got any glue?" I asked Jodi. Of course she had glue.
Well.
I gave her some not-round ornaments and two cups that I'd used for drilling practice. This is what she did with them at the end of October:
They're bells made with broken broom handles, and the real thing apparently fetches $50 in stores.
What I didn't take to Maine were pieces I'd put up for sale that didn't sell. I placed them willy-nilly on a bottle tree in my back yard, where they stayed all summer. Now they're in a box, about to be shipped off to Jodi, a new crop of rejects accumulating inside the house.
II: First Days of Class
Sleepless is taking the semester off. I'm in a lab with All The Glass, Glass Ninja, and EDM, a beginner. I chose this slot because I want to improve on my threading and feathering skills. Glass Ninja and All the Glass are good at it.
On our first day, we always clean the classroom, dragging the equipment to the courtyard, hosing the room down, and dragging everything back again.
As I'm sweeping, I come across a pile of dried cherry blossoms from last spring.
When we're finished, we sit outside and Our Instructor tells us things we need to know. There's some question about how Thursday nights will be run. I liked the online signup we had when things were locked down. Others don't. Our Instructor likes the social aspect of everyone milling about. I don't because it's chaotically noisy. We're all masked, and this semester, security is cracking down on visible faces. Once is a warning, twice expulsion. We're keeping the compressed air and pedals, too, which makes me very happy.
Above us, thunder clouds are gathering. When the first flash of lightning appears, we're dismissed.
Friends send me photos of pieces I've given them. They look so much better when flowers are hiding the tilt.
Before the semester really kicks in, I spend time looking at what I've made, trying to figure out what I want to do next, or do better. Do I want to make more giant ornaments? More cats?
Instead of our first lab, though, we get a tornado. Campus closes, and Our Instructor promises to keep the furnace on an extra week in December.
I'm going to be in Maine for ten days, so I take a makeup class as my first lab. It's on a Monday night, where Extra is working with two beginners, and there's always a place open. Extra took the Covid year off, but she doesn't appear to have forgotten how to do anything. I envy her ability to make large, thin vessels with fluted openings.
It's hot. Never try anything big when the thermometer reads 100 degrees.
I've forgotten how to make vases.
Oh boy, have I ever forgotten.
Gah.
I give up and ask EDM to help me with a cat instead.
I can do a curved cup though. That's something.
After the sun sets, the classroom temperature dips all the way to 93 degrees.
The next day is hot too, but not quite as beastly. I try a vase, then flub a second, spinning it out into a wavy hat-bowl. EDM likes that it looks like a hat. All the Glass says, "We don't like hats." It's a classroom thing. Out in the wild, hats are fine. In here, they mean you screwed up.
When I get back from Maine, I take more extra classes, filling the open Monday evening slot every other week. I'm still trying to get my vase mojo back. Taking a lesson from Extra, who never uses color, I stick with clear glass until I figure out what I'm doing.
Long story, but I decided that one of my friends needs a tomato. I set about making tomatoes, which are flattened ornaments with goofy tops.
Eventually, the lure of threading wins, so I thread over clear glass to start.
There's so much I need to learn. How to I shape the bit for the thread so that it pulls evenly? How do I approach the core? When do I start pulling back? How do I keep the thread even from the bottom to the top of the piece?
I watch Glass Ninja bring threads for All The Glass. Each of his pieces these days has four threads, so there's plenty of opportunity to watch.
My first ornament goes straight to the re-melt bucket. I can make better hooks than this!
All the Glass says that I need a pair of barbeque gloves, cheap on Amazon. After nearly burning my hand pulling threads, I sit in the courtyard with my phone an order a pair.
The vases are coming along.
The color I used for the tomatoes, Cherry Red, cracked in the annealer. Each one cracked! I can't give them away because they might explode.
I put them in the floppy hat bowl, behind glass, where the shrapnel won't fly far:
Only the vermillion one survived, and I forgot to flatten the bottom of this one. It's a cherry tomato, I guess.
Vermillion seems to be the way to go. Our Instructor has ideas for me to improve the top. We try it a couple of times, but it takes more effort than it's worth his way. After these two, I stop.
III: Bad Day Turned Good
This particular Tuesday starts off badly. EDM is late, and I've started working by myself. After I fail on two ornaments, I give myself a talking to. Calm down. Make something basic.
So I make a little cup. Whenever I'm flustered, my pieces are small and heavy. At least it got into the annealer.
Try an ornament again.
Try a giant one.
Try threading. All The Glass will turn the pipe. I pick a color I don't like: "multi dark," which is a fleshy pink-purple. I gave away half the rod, but I still have enough left for a few more threads.
Glass Ninja looks over. "My core bubble is too big," I tell him. He says, "Don't blow it out much."
So I don't. I do the thing I do when I'm nervous about losing whatever it is I'm working on, I barely open it up, and put it away before anything bad happens.
EDM, meanwhile, gets her piece too hot, and it melts off onto the floor, leaving a twisting trail of clear thread on her pipe. We go with it. "You'll never be able to do that again," I tell her. Some of our best work is mistakes.
We're supposed to be doing class projects today. Glass Ninja says we can all help him make a pumpkin. I decline. I want to make something EDM can take home.
She's slowly getting the hang of gathering and blocking. I suggest we make something by taking turns. I have a trick up my sleeve. For the last step, I wrap the vessel in clear glass threads, mimicking the accidental one she'd made earlier.
So, in the end, a bad day has gone good.
IV: Focus
Threading is difficult.
Sometimes the thread doesn't go on right -- maybe the pipe jumps or the thread breaks. If the thread isn't even, it's not worth pulling them, so I let the piece tell me what it wants to be.
Another thing people do is put the jack line in below where the ends of the pulls are, so that everything looks even. I didn't do that here.
I like the color I don't like better when it's still hot and sort of bronze. When it cools it gets fleshy again. I'm taking it out of the cabinet when Our Instructor passes by. "The threading didn't work," I tell him, "so I just went with it."
"Well," he says, "Someone will love it." Talk about damning with faint praise!
I do like how the swirly bits look, though.
I know better than to thread on a Thursday night, with Our Instructor watching. I dig out the transparent yellow frit and try a vase in color. When the yellow is hot, it looks orange, which is the color of hot glass. This wreaks havoc on my ability to tell how hot my piece is.
I swing by on a Saturday to collect the week's worth of work.
This particular lot of yellow is contaminated with random flecks of purple that are invisible in the frit.
Two more cracked tomatoes for the wavy hat bowl:
It's a haul to go over to the classroom on a Saturday afternoon, but the advantage is that there's plenty of daylight for photos, no rush to get back to the furnace, and Alchemy is there.
He takes a break at the new picnic table, a fake cement number with a neutral color that's good for pictures. Unlike the wooden table, though, there's nowhere to balance ornaments. I have to use the grass.
When the next week starts, I'm back to threading. This time, I make a different mistake. The core glass I'm threading onto is too hot, and when I go to pull the threads, the piece melts and distorts, sending my pulls diagonal and sideways.
I like how it looks. It's one of those mistakes I'll never be able to repeat.
It's definitely my favorite mistake:
I've used up the fleshy pink, too. I move to "Royal Purple," which changes color with the heat.
It doesn't look much different when it's ready:
Extra asks me to take pictures of her making a vase. She works so hot that the wax on the jacks catches fire. I pay close attention to the angle of the jacks. If I want to open a vase, this is how I'll need to do it.
More threading with Royal Purple, this time on a champagne background.
The champagne one reminds me of the Burger King's crown, for some reason, and I'm not sure I like it:
I should try some vases too. Whatever it is that Extra is doing, I've missed.
The day that Extra comes to class with a screaming headache, she powers through, helping me thread. But the pipe jumps on the pulleys, breaking the thread and sending it backwards to cover half the piece. She's apologetic, and I'm totally cool with it. I even get the shape I'd been after all this time.
Glass Ninja helps me with the next one, coaching me on how to make the bottom bigger and thinner. I'm sure that if he'd been hovering when I started, he'd have helped me make the neck thinner too.
On a Thursday night, I stay away from threading and work on vases. I'm sometimes having trouble centering the neck.
At other times, I get it right. The tops are still too thick, though.
At home, I assemble the pieces I'll be taking to crit next week.
I have one more chance to thread before crit. This time, I try pulling in both directions. I make quite a hash of it, poor EDM having to watch me try to figure it out. I try pulling at the bench, but the threads cool off too much in transit, even if EDM hands me the tool I need as soon as I approach.
I decide to use a mushier color, dense black, for the threads. It goes a little better, maybe? "There's gotta be a better way to do this," I grumble.
V: Critique Night
Back in the before times, everybody showed up for critique night. All The Glass would bring pizza and other people would bring snacks and drinks. It was a lengthy affair, each of us taking five minutes to say, "My stuff sucks, yours is great."
Tonight's is sparsely attended by previous standards. The pizza is out on the picnic table. We eat first, do show-and-tell second.
When my turn rolls around, I start by saying, "Right now it's as if somebody took a picture with a too-slow shutter speed, and everything is blurry. It's like I'm in the middle of something."
VI: Focus
When I work in clear, I'm never as happy as when I work in color, and I think it shows.
One Monday night, Extra is away, and All The Glass is there in her place. Let's thread! I'm pulling the threads at the glory hole now, which is much better than trying it at the bench.
The goal is straight, even pulls. Fail.
The next night, too.
I should just stop here. It's not going to get any better than this. If I pull twice in each direction I can stay in control. Any more than that is a mess. I hadn't been planning to use two colors, but I'm getting sick of threading, and I had two slivers of color in the warmer. Now I want to try two colors again!
The salad bowl I've been using for decades finally broke. Why buy a replacement when you can make one?
At the end of the night, it's time for cats. EDM really, really, really wants to use color. I "spill" a bit of frit on the marver. She rolls it into her gather and I coach her for an ornament. I make the hook.
This Thursday is giant orbs for the yard. I flub the symmetry, but it doesn't matter. I'll just grind them down. They're gonna be stuffed into the dirt anyway.
One Thursday I pick up a rod for the first time this semester. "Are you going to get another gather?" Glass Ninja asks.
"Nah. When I don't know what I'm doing I keep things small."
Too small to spin out, as it happens. I get a wavy little thing.
Its' a soap dish now.
And the salad bowl is serving me well:
I've already been in class three times this week, but when Our Instructor said, "We need someone for Saturday morning," my hand shot up. The forecast was for rain all day, so why not.
My partner is Tall Vase. The other two, Grace and a beginner, are absent. We have the classroom to ourselves.
I try two-color, bidirectional threading again. Tall Vase helps me shape the bit. He gives me sound advice on marvering, too.
I try to make an ornament with the thread scraps, but it comes out too heavy for the real world:
Just a little more heat and a little more air, and it could have been something.
As it happens, there's no rain at all. In the afternoon, I remove all the glass from the short bottle tree. I'll send most of it, if not all of it, to Jodi.
This semester's quasi-rejects go onto the tall bottle tree.
I need to stop threading. This will be my last one, I swear.
And then the neck is too thick, and when I cut it, the top goes off-center and I don't like how it looks at all.
I turn it in the annealer. It does have one good side.
I need to do this again, today, and go out on a good note. "How do you feel about this one," EDM asks.
"Better."
As I was falling asleep last night, I had the idea to use iris gold, a color that turns shiny gold under heat. I ask All The Glass to hit it with the big torch. It doesn't work. Our Instructor gives me some advice on Thursday, so I might try again.
On Thursday, I take a good look at the off-center vase. It has one good side, two OK sides, and a bad side. Watch that top slide on off to the left:
This one is better. Will I stop threading for a while?
I should make some more ornaments.
So, on Thursday, I make two large ones. I do something during the setup I ought not to have done, and the first one blows out funky. The second one is smaller, but round.
I end the night with a cat.
At 8:30 p.m., it's been 8 hours since my Covid booster. I'm 3 times Moderna. Why mess with the best? I'm feeling a bit floppy and, when I step outside with Extra, cold.
We talk in the parking lot for nearly half an hour. That's fine, because I really don't feel much like moving. When I get home, the full body ache sets in. I'm so exhausted that I dream I'm trying to ride my bike but can't muster the strength to get the pedals moving. When the alarm goes off, I'm dizzy, nauseated, and feverish. I Zoom into work for half a day, then, when that peters out, I spend the rest catching up on blogs, not moving, waiting for the fever to break.
VII: What's Next?
There are six weeks left in this semester. Against my better judgment, I'll probably thread some more, and work on vases. I also want to do fast, silly stuff, like ornaments and paperweights.
I've already registered for next semester. I asked All The Glass and Glass Ninja if they'd mind my being in their section again. They're both cool with it. Thread Master, who, before Covid, was All The Glass' partner for years, is probably coming back. That would mean the three of them and me. Who will sit at the kiddie table with me? I'm sure I'll learn a lot, if they leave any glass in the furnace for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment