Hot Mess Part Thirty-Two: "On Your Feet, Soldier!"

 

Experiments

3 November 2022

I: Waiting

The semester is more than halfway over. I'm trying to make things make sense.

Our Instrucgtor has retired. We'd been living in the classroom he'd built, physically and metaphorically. We were used to his hands-off approach when we worked. We were used to being scolded when we overfilled the annealer or left our finished work too long in the hallway cabinet. We were used to his sense of humor and his self-deprecation. We knew that he had a pact with the devil: nobody can keep glass that hot for that long. His classroom demonstrations were works of perfection. The classroom itself was a dust-encrusted museum of demo pieces placed high on the walls above the equipment. We spent our first two semesters learning how things were done. After that, we did things The Way Things Had Always Been Done. 

Then he left. He had to. It's the school's rule. 

I'd spent the summer not really thinking about glass. In the back of my mind, I worried that everything would change in the fall, so bad that I would want to quit. Would I be outed as Not An Artist? Sleepless, accepted to nursing school, wouldn't be returning either. Who would be my partner? Would I at least get Tuesday nights with All The Glass and Thread Sherpa?

In the back yard, glass became part of the scenery, frozen, waiting.

Bowls for sale that nobody wanted to buy found a home holding the excess of tomatoes from my CSA membership.

The bathroom counters were lined with cups and holders I'd churned out. In the kitchen, I drank from a glass I'd made in the spring. Nearly every room in the house held something, one room holding nearly everything, that I'd deemed worth keeping over the past four years. My office window sill was lined with small adventures.

Why did I need more? Why did I want to do this again, and for how long? Why did I want to bring forth more clutter? What was wrong with clutter? What sort of clutter did I want to bring forth come autumn?

II: On Your Feet, Soldier

We start at the end of August with a new instructor. He is Colonel Potter to our Henry Blake. He is an Artist, with an MFA. Regular army. 

The first day is always the day we empty the classroom and hose it down. The Colonel had already been through and rid the place of asbestos-containing frax that we'd been using to buffer our pieces on the breakoff table and in the annealer. He'd tidied up the bookshelf. When we put everything back, the room looks cleaner than it ever has.

Still, the ghost of Our Instructor is everywhere. He built this place. The Colonel is standing in Our Instructor's shadow. We know it and he knows it.

He gathers us outside and has us fill out a survey about our skills and interests. I don't know what to write. "Slow learner." "Color addict." "Maybe sell some stuff." 

He has big ideas. He wants to incorporate resources from the other classrooms -- metal, wood, whatever. He's a sculptor at heart. He likes using molds. He likes cold-working. He's not Our Instructor. He doesn't want to hear Our Instructor's name. He's going to do things differently. He gives us an assignment: Make five identical cups.

Right. I can't make the same thing twice, let alone five times.

I look around at my classmates. By now, my fifth fall semester, I know that impostor syndrome is going to kick in as soon as I have to put my hands on a pipe, and this assignment is not helping with that one bit. 

After he's finished with the obligatory introductory lecture, I introduce myself: "I'm hearing-impaired." Might as well get that out of the way early.

We pick our time slots. I get the Tuesday night I wanted, with All The Glass and Thread Sherpa at the other bench. I'm paired with a beginner. 

One week later, impostor syndrome is raging worse than ever. I'm mildly surprised when my hands seem to remember what to do. My cup turns out large, and thinner than usual. Great. Now I have to make four more just like this one. How do I distinguish it from everyone else's, though? 

I ask my partner for the night to bring me a bit. I give the cup a tail.

On top of this impossible task, we have another: Draw one hundred different cups.

One. Hundred. Different. Cups.

Fantastic. 

I end up leaving my sketch book in my locker and having to dig out a spare blank notebook I bought five years ago before I found the better one that's in my locker.

Speaking of lockers, there aren't enough. There never have been. One gets a locker when a locker is vacated. I waited four years for mine, and I completely filled it with containers of colored glass. The Colonel wants us to share lockers with anyone who wants one. If I have to do that, I'll empty it and start hauling everything in with me again. 

He wants us to buy our own tools, and our own pipes. I'm not pipe-worthy. I can't even make five identical cups. There are plenty of serviceable tools and pipes in the classroom. Why would I spend $200 on a pipe I don't need when I'm already shelling out over $2000 every semester?

I'm feeling edgy when I set out to draw my cups.

Scrolling through the pictures on my phone, I find 25 that I've already made:

I conjure up 25 more by combining shapes and being stupid with handles:

I think of designs I should do someday:

For the rest, I search images online for a handful of impossible projects:

On Tuesday night, I work with the beginner on making cup after cup after cup. I have the calipers out, as instructed. I can get the height and width pretty close, but I can't repeat the shape I made a week ago.

The Colonel wants five by next week. These won't be out of the annealer until Thursday. This means I have tonight and maybe one shot tomorrow to have something to show next Wednesday. 

I email him that I've failed and that I could use more time. He says not to worry about it. 

I line up what I have on the Window Sill of Judgment. Five shitty cups with tails.

That I can't make the same thing twice is nothing new. Back in early 2021, my buddy, Mighty Mike, asked if I could make him three pendant lamps in blue. I made twelve to get those three. This summer, he finished the project and sent me some photos. Now he sends it again to remind me that I can do this.

III: A Commission

Early last summer, my neighbor with the impeccable yard and the plaster saints, called out to me over the fence. With my yard full of glass-laden bottle trees and screened porch lined with giant ornaments, I feared he was going to ask me to tone it down a notch. That's not what happened. "Can you make me four ornaments?" he asked. He wanted one for the birthstones of his parents, his sister, and himself. I said I'd do it but that I wouldn't be able to make them until some time in September. He was fine with that.

On a Wednesday afternoon, I take half a day off to blow glass before class. Knowing I can't make the same thing twice, I set out to make three of each color. All I need is one good clear one, one good green one, one good blue one, and one good turquoise one. 

The cabinet is open on Friday morning, a rare event, so I go in to fetch them before driving to work. I load them into a suitcase. In the evening, I set them out on the grass. Between our yards, Peachy, the six-legged Neoscona crucifera I've been tracking since July, descends from her crape myrtle nest and begins to spin, far too early for her usual habit. It's late in the season. She's going to die soon. She must be hungry or dysregulated. (Later in the night, she takes down her web as I watch. I find her in her tree, away from her usual spot, the next morning. After that, she is gone.)

I keep an eye on Peachy as my neighbor looks over the ornaments. He likes them. He picks four and carries them off. I've forgotten to take pictures of all of them. I survey what's left.

I decide to keep a few as they are and hang onto a couple of others to experiment with. The rest will go back to the classroom to be recycled or become part of All The Glass' smashed collection that lines the walkway next his house.

I'm up to eleven stupid tail cups now. There's only one I like, and I use it.

These are the five I'll bring to class.

I know we're only a few weeks in. I remember how uneasy I was around Our Instructor my first two semesters. I know I need to give the new guy a chance. 

Midsummer, I'd shoved a reject plate into the ground in the back yard. I'd forgotten to get a picture. 

I wander around, taking photos of the ornaments, trying to figure out what it is I want from this class.

What's wrong with clutter if I like what I see? 

Should I try harder to sell this stuff? 

Should I just get rid of more of it?

I do this because it's fun. I can't lose sight of that by going down some assignment rabbit hole. I'm only auditing. None of this matters.

These are the ones I want to sell.

Saint Vitreous started as a place for cast-off ornaments. Saint Polychromatus was for cast-off vases until I realized how close I was to filling every branch; then it became a little project. Saint Cullet holds the beginnings of semesters, where I work in clear until I get my hands back.

IV: Feeling Ruffled

The Colonel is pushing us to think differently. He seems to like cold-working, which is whatever one does with glass after it comes out of the annealer. The most I've done is sand-blasting or drilling holes. He does actual carving. 

He keeps telling us that the course description requires that we buy our own blowpipes and tools. I'm not doing that. There are plenty of both in the classroom. They might be a little beat up, sure, but I'm not ready to equip myself. I can't even make five identical cups. I'm not pipe-worthy. Besides, there's no room in my locker for anything else.

He wants to revive the semi-dormant Glass Club that has existed in name only for as long as I've been here. Sage has been the President forever. She's ready to pass the torch. Nobody wants to take it. 

I'm not the only one feeling a little ruffled. We need to give the Colonel a chance. He needs to meet us where we are.

Truth is, we're all in different places. Some have been at this for decades. Some have a schtick; some are always moving. The young up-and-comers are really talented. I'm somewhere in the lower middle, not new, not experienced enough to get away with ignoring the assignments.

That said, a surprising number of us have brought in our cups. I'm relieved to see that most people got about as close as I did. 

Great. Can I get back to mucking around?

No.

There's another assignment. He shows us a handful of short video clips, in which enterpreneureal bros pitch better ideas for optimized whiskey glasses and coffee cups. Now he wants us to design something based on hot items for sale out in the real world. My interest in this barely registers. But he wants drawings by next week.

Fine. I'll try to make a fucking decanter. 

This requires, Jack reminds me, a vessel that can hold 750 ml but is light enough to lift, and that sufficiently swirls and airs whatever expensive wine he's pouring into it.

Got it. I want to put a thread of color around the neck, just to be different.

"No," Jack says. "You have to be able to see the wine and the sediment."

"It'll be a transparent thread."

"No."

Fine. I'll make a fucking carafe and pour cold brew into it.

There are three problems with this: First, I have no idea how to make a clean, slanted neck; second, I'm not sure I can get to the shape and size I want; and third, I've never seen a single thread change color, not even online.

I can tell that the Colonel isn't thrilled with my plan. To him it's all technique, not innovation. I don't care. I have zero interest in reinventing some mass-produced Pottery Barn gizmo. The color thing, he says, might take me all semester to figure out. He seems encouraging, though. He's probably lumping me in with the toddlers of this group. 

The next Tuesday night, I figure I'll get back into threading. I have to train the beginner on the machine anyhow. We do a clear one first. "Nice optics," All The Glass says from the other bench.

Then I jump in with color. After I feather it, I screw up the punty so badly that it's farther off center than any piece I've done in years. I give up and spin it out. As expected, it goes wild.

(When I grind it down later, I put a hole in the bottom trying to get it to stand up.

Then I take it home, thinking I'll drill out the bottom. Trying to stabilize it in a bucket of dirt, I push too hard and crack it in half. So much for that.)

I try to go back to making a clear vase, trimming the lip to make the top thinner. I make hash of it, and again decide to spin it out, knowing full well it will go haywire. It's an interesting haywire, though, so I keep it.

A little sand-blasting on the outside makes it much better:

Our Instructor hated hat-bowls. The Colonel has declared that he does not make floppy bowls because everybody does. Neither of them will ever have to see this piece.

We try the threader again, and this time I play it safe with a giant ornament. It's the first I've done like this. I like it.

Progress on the carafe? Nope. Two saves and a neato ornament? Yep.

With a few minutes left, I try a long-neck vase again.

That's the shape I've been going for all night, but it's not a carafe.

I slide into an afternoon slot the next day with LT1. I might as well try to figure out what an outside thread would look like on a vase. We experiment with putting two colors together inside in various ways. They seem to run next to each other instead of into each other. It's at this point that I realize that, duh, glass is not paint. The pieces are thick and heavy, but they're all I've got to show for my efforts right now.

And another thing: With class on Wednesdays and my lab on Tuesdays, I have to make a third trip across the river if I want to pick up my glass and live with it on the Window Sill of Judgment before my next lab. It's annoying. We all want class to be moved back to Thursdays.

V: Two-Color Thread

Early one Tuesday evening, when Thread Sherpa is absent and it's just the three of us, I look up to see Our Instructor standing with All The Glass. It is at this moment that I realize how much I like him and how much I miss him. I whine about the Colonel: "He's making us think and he's making us do stuff and we're scared!" Our Instructor laughs at my deliberate overacting. "It's good for you!" It took years for me to reach this comfort level with Our Instructor. I need to give the Colonel a chance.

The assignment has me on edge. When my work schedule permits, I'm jumping into extra afternoon sessions to try to work on the carafe shape.

I get theshape by accident on a Wednesday.

It's too small, but it's the shape I want. I try two more times and get farther and farther away.

There's also the two-color thing to tackle. Working with Classmate's Partner, we put two shades of blue together. It's hard to tell when the glass is hot, but maybe it worked? 

In an increasingly rare opportunity to get to the bench on a class night, Classmate's Partner and I try again.

When I get them home, I can say for sure that one combination did work. 

Proper threading, though, is everything. I still miss often.

VI: The Afternoon With Alchemy

It's a rainy Saturday. I'm not sure what to make of this semester so far.

Jack is away at his Nerd Prom. I get into a text conversation with Alchemy about the class and our classmates, and then about color. I tell him what I'm trying to do. We agree we should work together some rainy Saturday afternoon. There's always an open slot in his session. Alchemy works with Old Man. Glass Ninja works with whoever gets to the signup sheet fastest. The class is full today. I go about my rainy day exercise routine. And I miss the text at 1:30 that says Old Man hasn't shown up. At 2:15 I see it, and I'm over there an hour later. 

Alchemy has ideas: Take that opal blue and mix it with that opaque yellow. "You'll get green," he assures me. We work on tweaking how to stack the colors get them to mix. I toy with putting a dab of clear over the end. We try two ornaments. When they're in the annealer, I can't tell for sure if the colors mixed.

Hanging out with Alchemy is always fun. He's cynical and sarcastic, and he cracks jokes that take me a few beats to figure out. 

On Tuesday, I get to see the green that Alchemy was talking about.

Somehow, the yellow and blue made a streak of red together too.

Dude is a color genius.

VII: All The Glass Is My Partner

All The Glass has a proposition for me. It seems that Thread Sherpa's injury isn't getting much better, and because of that, he can't lift heavy pieces. Everything All The Glass makes is heavy. Would I like to switch with Thread Sherpa and be All The Glass' permanent partner?

Of course I would! 

His style is not at all like mine. I'm about as likely to go up to a size 10 block as he is to go down to one. He lives in optic molds. I avoid them. Where we meet is with threading and feathering. We both do a lot of it.

With a few successful tries at two-color threading under my belt, I explain to ATG what I'm trying to do. He suggests coating the mix entirely in clear glass.

Every color combination I try is different. Cherry Red and Narcissus do not play well together no matter which order I put them in. The red comes off in a big blob, 

or hangs onto the punty while the yellow threads out.

I pair the red with a translucent amethyst, getting myself into a #10 block by accident. It works!

There's no rest when you're partners with ATG. He has me running about when it's his turn. I end the night exhausted. We agree that we work well together. "It was a good night!" he says.

VIII: Another Wasted Afternoon

I'm back to working on an extra Wednesday, trying to get that elusive carafe shape. Everything is too small or the spout is too wonky or the shape is just wrong. Or all three. None of these will last long on the Window Sill of Judgment.

IX: The Annealer Ate My Homework

The Colonel wants to see our progress on Wednesday night. Whatever ATG and I get done tonight, the Colonel won't see tomorrow. 

I'm still not getting the vessel shape I want, but the color thing is coming along nicely.

Thread Sherpa gives me a slice of Gold Topaz to play with.

I whiff on the shape completely and wind up with a blue and purple vessel big enough to be a flower pot. That would be wrong, of course. One can't see the colors through dirt. 

At the end of the night, I try something different. We thread the blue onto the bubble. I melt it in and shape the vessel. When I'm almost ready to put it onto the punty, we thread amethyst around the outside. I manage a little spout too. The thing is too small to be a real carafe, but I really like it anyway.

The next night, I bring in the few two-color pieces I think were a success, and the one accidental carafe.

It's clear, though, that I have missed the point of the assignment entirely.

ATG brings in a lamp he's made from three separate glass pieces. Tall Vase hauls in a tangle of vine branches tied together around a curving metal base with twine, from the middle of which hangs a globe two feet in diameter with a lightbulb inside. The Colonel takes pictures of it. He spends a long time talking it over, stressing the importance of a heavy base, as the contraption threatens to topple over once again.

Glass Ninja has fashioned a Victrola-style speaker, a green, wavy cornucopia with a Bluetooth speaker placed at the base. He's gone through some trouble to get the sound balance just right, he explains. "Next time--" the Colonel starts. "There won't be a next time," Glass Ninja interjects. "This is a one-off."

Classmate's Partner is working on a multi-layered pitcher handle that is requiring a good amount of trial and error. The Colonel seems less enthusiastic about this. He barely has anything to say about Low Key's clever use of flame to reduce just the tops of her two-colored cups. The Kid's bowls? Whatever. 

My turn. 

"The annealer ate my homework," I announce. "My best stuff was yesterday." I show him what I have. We get into a short discussion about color mixing. "It's not paint," I admit. "It's not paint," he replies. He says that making slanted tops is easy and that he'll have to remember to show me. 

He moves onto the New Grace, who has made a kaleidoscope out of a tube of clear glass sand-blasted to block the light except at the rounded end. She's inserted five little mirrors glued together in a pentagon, and sealed the bottom with washers she's painted gold. It's a thing of beauty in its outward simplicity. The Cololnel loves it for all the cold-working and research she's put into it. "Congratulations," he says. "You're the new President of the Glass Club!"

It's so obvious now what the Colonel wanted us to do. It's so obvious that I did not do it.

When I pick up Tuesday's work, I'm certain about one thing: I don't care. I like how these turned out.

I want glass to be glass. I don't want it mixing with metal and wood. That's too much noise for my mildly synesthetic brain. I want my glass to sing by itself. 

It occurs to me a few days later that I'd already done the assignment over the summer: I'd tried to make hummingbird feeders. There was room for improvement on those, for sure. Fine. Next time, if we get this assignment again, I'll wrap some wire around the feeder or some shit, and maybe give the glass a creative shape.

Meanwhile, I have lots of rods to slice into bits and wrap around clear glass.

Something's not right, though. I start having nightmares. I'm letting something control me that has no authority to control me. This was supposed to be fun. I need to reset.