Hill Slug Chronicles: Hot Mess Part Thirty: The Series of Series

Early Spring will represent Hot Mess at the student show

26 April 2022

We pick up right after the midterm critique.

I: The End of Feathering?

I'd say I'm failing less often, but I keep moving the goalposts. In February, three flops was a success. Now, anything less than five without approaching symmetry is a failure. Last semester, if I could pull feathers in both directions all the way around, it was a win. Now, the pulls have to be straight and go all the way from top to bottom. And, really, I'm kinda tired of doing this.

I made myself go at it one more time.

Four flops, asymmetric. Fail.

It's still pretty, though. I had to grind it down to stand it up. Later, a touch of white nail polish on the underside took care of the appearance.

Our Instructor says he doesn't like four-flops. The shape bothers him. So I won't be bringing this one to any critiques. It's for sale here instead. If it doesn't sell, I'll keep it. It's the only red-on-white one I have.

Cerulean Blue is a nifty color, electric on its own, snappy against white. When I made this piece, I got it hotter than usual, getting 8 flops. It was so hot that the bowl turned into a cone. I'm keeping this one.

When this piece happened, it was getting away from me. The yellow was a rod, and when I put the green feathers on it, the piece was hot and twisting. I decided to accentuate the twist instead of correct it. My jack line was uneven too. I decided to go with it and embrace the asymmetry. It's for sale here.

I haven't really been happy with much of my feathering work this semester. I might be getting worse, or choosing unruly colors, or something. I think I'll set feathering aside for a while.

II: Tiny Things and a Green Mood

I thought that one-gather pieces would be quick and easy to make. I thought wrong. They cool off so quickly that I'm constantly running to the glory hole to heat them up again. My failure rate is still high. I can tell a failure while it's happening, and I abort.

They're fun, though. Trying to capture their scale on camera is a challenge. I tried using a blade of grass, but how long is a blade of grass?

There's a beat-up butter knife by the grinding wheel. That works nicely.

On April 5, I rode my bike to work, did a quick thing I had to do, biked home, got a shower, and drove with Jack to CVS to get our second booster.

We were sitting there, waiting out our 15 minutes, when one of the Tuesday afternoon glassblowers texted me in desperation. Her partner had bailed at the last minute, and the other two in the class were beginners who tended to show up late and leave early. I'd been planning to stay home and let the vaccine side effects knock me on my butt. I shrugged and told her I'd be there.

By 1:00 I was starting to feel a little loopy. I had 8 hours of glassblowing ahead of me: this class and my regular one.

My partner for the afternoon reminds me so much of what I was like, the way she wants to try all the things, asks all the method questions, and is still trying to figure out how all this hot glass stuff works. She's my Ghost of Glassblowing Past. We'll call her GGP for now, until I can come up with something better.

Our Instructor was unlocking the classroom door when I got there. GGP's classmate was milling about, waiting for his partner, who was going to be 15 minutes late.

Our Instructor brought out a paperweight to show off. GGP peppered him with questions. I tried to help explain. He said, "Laura will show you."

Okay then.

I decided I was in a green mood.

I hadn't made a paperweight since the end of last semester. I talked GGP and her classmate through what I was doing, mistakes and all. The top was coming out flat. I went with it.

With paperweights, one has to work very hot. A master will create a sphere. I'm not there yet. Mine are more the shape of a soap bubble sitting on a sponge.

GGP gave it a try. She was happy simply to encase color under clear in a shape that was far from round. Maybe she's not so much like me. I'd have been sorely disappointed and chucked the thing into the scrap bucket.

My battle was with Champagne frit. It's a loose color, not gummy exactly, but not compliant. I layered two greens frits over it and pulled at it, making waves. The piece was looking the way I felt: slightly off. I pulled one side of the lip down to make a slouching pitcher. It's for sale here.

The rest of the afternoon went on in pretty much the same vein. GGP's late classmate wandered in over an hour late, and the first classmate left an hour and a half early. I stumbled along with green things, unsure if I was tired from the vaccine or entering a mid-semester slump.

The evening shift arrived. Sleepless took over from GGC. Sleepless cranked out multicolor eggs. I remained in a green mood, pouring out one frit after another, getting everything wrong.

For example, this vase. It's off-center and asymmetrical, for starters. Also, it didn't turn gold like it's supposed to when we hit it with the big torch. It went straight into the box of rejects destined for my friend in Massachusetts. She'd be able to do something funky with it.

I couldn't even pull off a long-neck vase without making it lumpy. We tried to reduce the greens on this one too. It's got its own charm, I suppose. It wasn't what I was going for, but it's for sale here.

GGC and Sleepless helped me make some tiny things.

This is called Silver Green. It's more blue than green, with subtle reduction.

The last thing I did with GGC was this Fluoro Green bowl. Like me, it was tilting. I ground it down a lot to try to even it out.

We torched the crap out of this one to get half of it to turn gold.

At the end of the night, there was a little Watermelon Green frit left, so I made a quick tiny vase. It's the only tiny vase I'm selling at the moment. Not my best work, but it's here if you want it.

All the green tiny things and a butter knife:

The green mood persisted into the next day, which I'd signed up for well in advance. Working with Classmate's Partner, I made two full-size, long-neck vases.

Lest I think I was out of my slump, I also failed twice trying to make floppy bowls. The first one came out sort of artsy. It's for sale here, but it might wind up in my permanent collection.

The second one did flop, I'll give it that, but it folded in on itself. I ended up giving it to Sleepless. It's the second piece with this color combination that I've sloughed off onto Sleepless this semester. I think there's a lesson here. Or a war.

By Thursday, I'd given up on the week. "I'm in a slump," I said. Our Instructor replied, "It happens this time of the term. People want to make beautiful things." GGC looked on.

"Glassblowing is like climbing a rickety stairway," I explained to her. "Once in a while you hit a rotted slat, your foot falls through, and you have to stop to regroup."

Some people had been playing with the square mold. I decided to give it a go, with Sleepless assisting me. When we got it into the annealer, Our Instructor applauded.

The top was a hair too small to fit a tea light in it, so I drilled it out. Tea light? Tea light!

III: Tea Lights!

A 12-pack of LED tea lights on internal timers changes everything.

I sold this piece to a friend and gave her a tea light to go with it. If you buy one of my sale pieces, it might come with a tea light.

IV: A Series of Series, Part One

The assignment for our final is to make a series of three pieces that somehow go together. I was several pieces into a spiral floppy series by the midterm. In glassblowing, if you want three, make six. I had four already. Five and six would be black and white.

That row of bubbles happened early on, when, determined to keep things small, I crammed the glass into an 8 block, creating a little crease. I couldn't reproduce this if I tried.

Again with the grinding problem! Black nail polish to the rescue.

In the bag that holds my black, white, and gray frit is a color from a starter pack. It's called "Silver Clear," and Sleepless and I have no idea what it's supposed to do. Since the black I use tends to reduce to a gold sheen on its own, I decided to lie it on top of Silver Clear, with a layer white underneath to show off whatever would happen.

Nothing happened. It's Silver Clear all the way up the neck. Maybe there's a bit of textured shine there that wouldn't be otherwise. The vase is a little off-center too. I stuck it in a box bound for the student glass sale, where we let things go for $5 a pop to raise money for classroom tools like blocks and pipes.

I made a tiny vase. We hit it with the big torch. Nothing happened. Into the scrap bucket!

V: Student Art Show Audition

Because of Covid, we haven't had a student art show since the spring of 2019. That was my second semester. I'd made a large cat, off-center and torched to a shimmering gold, that Our Instructor picked as one of the dozen pieces he was permitted to submit from our class. It was then I learned that Our Instructor is fond of a certain amount of asymmetry and a lot of shiny.

There's a show again this year. We were instructed to bring at least 3 pieces, all of which had to have been made this term or last.

I went home and stared at my collection, knowing full well that my favorites would not necessarily be his. I had nothing shiny to offer, but I did have a whole lot of slightly-off-kilter threading and feathering.

I plunked them down on a table in the classroom we use for this sort of thing. Our Instructor picked them up and carried them to a photography station he'd set up. He used his cell phone, which distorted the edges of the photo and made everything look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

I went off to grind the bottoms of the black and white spiral bowls. When I came back, Our Instructor had made his choice.

There were forms to fill out. Everyone was hunched over their paperwork. We were all stuck on two things: our school email addresses, and what to call our pieces. I decided to call the thing "Early Spring" and list it for sale at $100. This would make me simultaneously happy and sad if it sold or not.

VI: A Series of Series, Part Two

For me, pulling long-neck vases has taken a lot of practice. Over the past year, I've amassed a collection of clear vases. They're all on a bottle tree in my back yard.

This year, I started a color tree. I have enough colored glass vases to fill the branches, but I wanted to use only transparent colors and vases I didn't care so much about that I would be upset if the entire tree were to go sideways. That narrowed the choices down considerably.

There were three weeks left of class. I knew what my next series would have to be.

Sleepless and I got to work.

Gold Amethyst doesn't look gold. Maybe I'm supposed to throw the torch at it.

Cerulean Blue for the win!

Glass Ninja left some colored chunks in the waste bucket. Classmate's Partner pulled them out and gave me one, a deep cherry red. It lived in my locker for a few weeks. When I finally used it and blew it out, the red proved to be a sort of brownish-orange.

I tried mixing the mysterious Silver Clear with Cherry Red. I wound up with neither silver nor clear nor red.

They all found their way onto the bottle tree. I know I broke my rule by putting the white one from last spring out there. Maybe it'll go, maybe it'll stay. Everything depends on whether or not I can make enough vases to fill the tree before the semester ends. And the fact that I'm down with the mildest case of Covid ever is not helping; I'm housebound and missing class all week. There are three more in the cabinet that I was planning to pick up today, but...

I filled the last three branches with the first tiny vases I made.

VII: Out in the Wild

The urge to purge started early this year. Halfway through the semester, my cabinets were full of floppy bowls that took up so much space I had to nest them inside each other. Never mind the floppy fails that had become plates. By the end of March, there were already too many boxes of glass.

As always, there are four places a piece can go. The highest honor is to wind up in one of the cabinets, or perhaps in my office. The second fate is into a box of pieces that become gifts. If I like a piece well enough to feel good about selling it, I try to sell it. If I like it enough to take home but not to sell or look at, I mail it to my friend in Massachusetts.

I sent her a box. She did not disappoint.

An early feathered vase attempt gone wrong sat on my office shelf until I figured out how to do both. I drilled a hole in the bottom and four holes in the giant lip before I sent the vase along. Who knew all it needed were some beads and spoons?

This semester's first vase attempt is now doing work as the top of a squid-thing. With tassels!

A frog sits on top of a cherry red vase I sent last semester, which sits on top of the off-center green vase I sent a few weeks ago.

She hung a plate by a strand of beads the night a nor'easter came through. Even before the winds began, the plate was, as she said, "spinning madly." By morning, the plate was sitting in the bush below, unharmed. We have a good annealing process, and I make things kinda thick.

I'd drilled a single hole in the plate I sent her. For the two I kept, I drilled two holes and connected them with silver wire. I'm not sure how much I like it. At least they're out of the house.

I connected three so-so vases late at night:

I should wait for a sunny day and take another picture.

I sold an earlier spiral bowl to a bike club friend. He sent me a photo. Behind the bowl is a pink vase I made some time ago, and next to that an ashtray from a local pottery company of some historic importance.

VIII: A Series of Series, Part Three

While I was on the black and white thing, it occurred to me that I'd never tried to make a black and white cat.

Not having made a cat since early November, the first two did not come out well in shape, let alone in color.

The fist one looked better with the black side as the front, which was exactly opposite what I wanted.

The second one came out better, but my partner that night, through no fault of his own, brought the wrong-shaped bit for the tail, messing that up completely.

For these two, I'd put white frit on the core bubble, then layered black onto the clear gather over it. What if, I wondered, I put the black and white together on the core?

Sleepless and I were both working with black that night, and we were both coming out on the losing end.

Black is soft. White is stiff. When I put air into it, the black blew out and the white stayed put. I ought to have seen that coming, but I didn't. I got the whole thing hot and used wet newspaper to cool the black side as I put air into the piece. That straightened it out enough that I decided to proceed.

In the end, I got a mama cat, black and white on the front, gray on the back.

If I could make some passable kittens, I'd have another series.

I went back to the method I'd started with, this time being more judicious about my application of black. I got one kitten finished on Thursday:

On Saturday, I subbed for someone down with Covid (the irony!*) and made another cat. Here it is in the annealer. The tail tip is weird, but kittens are weird anyway.