the hot shop
25 December 2023
I: Prelude
I spent the summer thinking about other things. Last semester had ended so weirdly that, for the first time since I started this hot mess, I wasn't sure I wanted to continue when August rolled around. I could see it in my work: the random twists and squiggles glued to an off-kilter plate were so unlike anything I'd made up to that point. I'd run out of ideas. When the first class of the fall semester began on the Thursday before Labor Day, I still didn't have any.
When we arrived, we found that The Colonel was a changed man. He was calm and friendly.
The crumbling glory hole door had been patched. The air pumps and hoses for spit-free inflation remained. I'd already decided I'd use my own blow hose instead. The pumps wouldn't be around forever.
We cleaned the hot shop, as we always do, then adjourned to a classroom in the back of the building to choose our time slots. He had us pick folded paper out of a glass cup. The papers were numbered 1 through 18. Mine was 14. I was screwed. I raised my hand.
"If there's someone we want to work with, can we add them when our number comes up?"
He said we could. This worked out, because my partner, All The Glass, had drawn number 4. We got our Tuesday night, along with Extra and a beginner to be named later.
top two shelves: for sale
bottom shelf: spring 2023
top shelf: fall 2022 and spring 2022 cat family
second shelf: I swear I'll never feather again
third shelf: in which I learn long-neck vases
fourth shelf: bowl fails, tall vases, a carafe, apples, and miscellany
fifth shelf: floppy bowls
bottom shelf: floppy bowls with inner spirals
The first Thursday, I worked with Extra. "I'm gonna screw this up," I said, as I attempted a simple cup.
"You've been doing this forever!"
I attached the punty. When I hit the pipe to knock the piece off, the cup shattered on the floor.
When we started our labs the following Tuesday, we were in a heat wave. All The Glass arrived at the classroom first and found it closed, fans off, even though there had been a morning session. He managed to get the temperature down to 100 by the time I arrived.
With the assignment to make five things of identical size, using color, I tried lip wraps, which I'd only attempted once, in my second semester. The cups were thick. The wraps were thick and uneven. There was sweat pouring into my eyes as I worked. I made five that day. Tony had me moving constantly as he attempted to make a couple of daggers. When 9:00 rolled around, the temperature was all the way down to 97 degrees.
In four hours, I drank 100 ounces, and I was still thirsty on my drive home.
the only one I kept from this batch
The next week was the same thing, three degrees warmer but less humid outside. I did a little better.
I tried making flowers. The first ones were so bad I threw them out. The next were better, but dangerous: the frit didn't melt enough on the petals, turning the flowers into weapons.
all but one of these met a bad end (more on this later)
The stems were too short too.
I started messing around with color combinations.
II: Next
The Colonel gave us our second assignment: Trompe L'Oeil, "trick the eye." He wanted us to make something out of glass that isn't normally glass.
"I already did the assignment," All The Glass said triumphantly. "I made a knife!"
"I made apples last semester," I complained. What next? A pear? The more I thought about how to do that, the less I wanted to try. If All The Glass made a knife, maybe I should make a fork or a spoon. Meh.
Somehow I landed on a geode. It would let me mess around with layers of color, which is at the core of nearly everything I try to do.
I set about making a plan, drawing it on a piece of paper at work and texting it to All The Glass.
We went back and forth by text for two more iterations.
I sent the fourth version to the Colonel. He approved.
More flowers happened during the planning phase.
I'm not sure what happened to these. They either cracked,
broke, or are in a vase at work somewhere.
I used some leftover thread scraps to practice drawing. It turned out to be the thinnest cup I ever made.
While the doodles aren't anything to look at, they provide just the right amount of grip. I took the cup home to use as my regular drinking glass.
I jumped into a rainy Saturday afternoon to work with Alchemy on mixing color. I hauled in two boxes of rods from my locker. Alchemy chose five and sorted them into two piles. "Choose one from column A and one from column B," he said.
So I did, laying a third color on top of both. That was fun!
Thick, though.
Again, this time thinner and a little out of control:
"What would happen if I mixed these two?" I asked, showing him some frit. "Try it," he said. So I did.
I continued mixing and layering the following Tuesday:
My flowers, meanwhile, were getting worse. Many didn't make it out of the classroom. Some that did ended up in the trash later.
The Colonel demonstrated his trompe l'oeil, a candle on a candlestick.
My first geode was not at all what I'd imagined when I sliced the bottom off to reveal the layers inside. I used nail polish rather than go through all the steps of sanding it down to a shine. Yeesh. At least now I knew what colors not to use.
I made another geode. These were taking me an hour, and there was no way to tell how well they'd worked until they came out of the annealer two days later. This meant that I was only making one per week.
The Colonel's candlestick came out well.
I continued mixing colors.
I wasn't sure which way to cut the second geode.
The frit I'd poured in mostly spilled out. If I cut the bottom off, there'd be no frit in the rest of it. I chose to cut it down the middle.
Last week, the Colonel had reminded us, "No food in the hot shop."
Today, he joined in a glory hole wiener roast.
While those shenanigans were going on, I was trying to polish the geode. I gave up about halfway. Extra helpfully backlit one of them for a picture.
At home, I gave these the nail polish treatment and decided I'd've been better off cutting it the other way after all. At least the opening was bigger. I needed to pick different colors and open it more on the next one.
III: And Then Everything Went To Hell
I was at work on Monday, October 9, when All The Glass texted me to call him.
He was in the hot shop, jumping into an open session, when he heard the news from the Foundry Guy. "They're cancelling class in the spring."
Rumor had it that our glassblowing class was running a $7000 deficit. For the semester? For the year? Who said this? Is it in writing? He had no answers. "They're meeting on Saturday." Who's meeting? "They're taking it off the calendar."
I had just ordered some new frit, too. Dang.
Of course, I checked the course listings for the spring. It was still too early for out-of-state auditors like me to register, but the beginner and advanced classes were there, and I was able to add the class to my course plan.
Despite my sarcastic demeanor, and always to my surprise, I tend to be optimistic about these things. With nothing but rumor to go on, I wasn't about to jump to conclusions or fill in the blanks. The reality of the moment was that the course was still listed.
On Tuesday, I tried to stay focused on our trompe l'oeil assignment. I was on my third geode at that point.
When we met as a class on Thursday, the Colonel told us that nobody had given him any warning either. The way he saw it, he was out of a job, and he was pissed.
We still didn't have the cancellation reason in writing. There was a deficit, we'd heard. It was the propane bill, we'd heard. Glassblowing is the most expensive class to run, and the administration wanted to offer the classes only in the fall, we'd heard.
"They want to kill glassblowing."
"Seven thousand dollars."
We huddled outside. In a matter of minutes, we old-timers agreed to chip in enough to make up for that deficit. We already had $2000 in the coffer from glass sales. Maybe we could save the spring class if all they needed was seven thousand dollars.
"We need to talk to the Dean."
"We need to raise money to buy an electric furnace."
"They only respond to email."
I said, "I'll write a letter on behalf of the class."
All the frit I'd poured into the third geode when it was hot
had come right back out when it was cold.
I used some of the new frit for a random threaded vase.
Garbage flowers for the reject bucket
I poured in a layer of UV-curing adhesive and
followed it up with a layer of the frit I'd just bought.
It could use another round of polishing.
I filled in for an absent Pumpkin Master that Saturday morning. Tall Vase helped me as I painstakingly wrote "sic transit gloria vitri" with a glass stringer. By the time I got to "vitri," the "sic transit" had fallen off and I had to write it again. My left hand hurt from holding the MAPP gas torch. My right hand hurt from holding the stringer in place.
Foundry Guy wandered in. I told him what I'd just finished. "Try ars gratia artis," he said. "Art for art's sake. It's shorter." I hastily wrote it in my notebook. We had a long talk about what we knew and didn't know about the cancellation, and what our strategy should be.
We didn't know anything, really, beyond class being canceled. The department wouldn't give Foundry Guy a breakdown of the propane bill so that he could see how much we were using and how much his bronze pours were costing. We didn't even have the $7000 deficit amount nailed down. The number came from somewhere, but where?
Rumors and innuendo rushed into the fact vacuum. Some classmates were convinced that the Dean was trying to kill glassblowing. All The Glass crunched what numbers he had (tuition plus fees plus salary plus $7000) to get a grip on how much our classes were costing the college, and determined that a so-far-unannounced and undefined workshop could not possibly be financially sound. Others hinted that the real reason for this mess was that the department wanted the Colonel gone, and offering an instructor-free spring workshop was the way they were doing it. News came trickling in from the ceramics tech that her supply line was being squeezed. The Dean was temporary. The College President was stepping down. The school was being audited by the state. The situation was dire all the way out.
I polished the geode some more.
That night I drafted a letter to the Dean. I sent it around to everyone in the class, plus the Colonel and Foundry Guy. It went back and forth a few times, and on Sunday evening I sent it.
Dear Dean [Interim Anyway]:
We learned this week that, because of a budget shortfall, the future of the glassblowing program at [Our Esteemed Institution] is uncertain. We are writing to express our concern and to request a meeting with you so that we might propose several solutions that would keep Glassblowing I and II on the Spring 2024 schedule.
[Our Esteemed Institution] is unique in that it offers students the opportunity to experience the art of glassblowing. To sideline the classes would be to hinder a program that draws not only from [Esteemed Insitituion's home base], but from surrounding counties and from [adjacent state] as well.
Glassblowing II has gone beyond being just another class that students take in order to fulfill a requirement. Advanced students have helped recruit beginners and have forged a tight-knit community. The glassblowing program has produced notable, gallery-represented, professional artists such as [a whole bunch of people I mostly never heard of because I'm not tapped into the art world].
We understand that running a propane furnace is expensive, and that keeping it on has created a budgetary shortfall. We are prepared to provide the funds needed to ensure that Glassblowing I and II remain on the Spring 2024 schedule while long-term solutions can be planned.
We understand that time is short and that decisions about the spring semester will have to be made very soon. To that end, we would appreciate the opportunity to work with you to keep the program running without placing an undue burden on the departmental budget.
Please feel free to contact me on behalf of the current Glassblowing II students. I can be reached at [my Esteemed Institution email address plus my cell number]. We are eager to meet with you.
[Signed, everyone in the class]
On Monday, glassblowing disappeared from the online course planner.
On Tuesday, I got a long-winded response that said, in short: your $7K won't save next semester, I don't want to meet with you, we're setting up a workshop for the spring, and go talk to the Esteemed Institution's fundraising folks about long-term fundraising.
Hmph. At least the Dean answered. And maybe there would be something for us in the spring.
Perhaps it was pointless now, but I set about making one final geode.
I had to glue frit into this one too.
The only place the frit stuck when the glass
was hot was at the opening.
Chunks of the glory hole door were falling off again. It was hard not to think of it as symbolic.
GGP wrote to the Dean. She received the same response that I had, verbatim.
Thursday night was critique night. I'd brought the geodes for display. In the past, we'd have shown our other work too, like the color mixing I was trying on vases, and my attempts at flowers. But the Colonel was strict about showing no more than five pieces. I photographed the other stuff and hid it away.
Before we got into the show-and-tell, we talked about the going-to-hell.
"There will be no class in the spring," the Colonel said. "That's final." A few classmates tried to protest this, but there was nothing to protest. "I don't like it any more than you," he said. "I'm out of a job."
I filled the class in on the Dean's response. I pulled out my activist chops and told everyone not to give up and not to get discouraged. We decided I'd send a letter to the Foundation, proposing we work with them to funnel our donations and to raise money to turn our aging classroom into a state-of-the-art, energy-efficient hot shop. The letter wouldn't be much work; I would only have to modify the one I'd sent to the Dean.
We set the unpleasantness aside and started the review. People really got into this assignment. The Cololel was happy to see how far we'd taken it.
Pumpkin Master made a complete breakfast of waffles, sausage, syrup, and butter. He even made the plate.
Tall Vase served up candy for dessert:
GGP made sunny-side-up eggs with the only white powder she had, which turned out to be Glow Green powder. We turned off the lights.
One of the newer advanced students made pickles:
I displayed geodes 2, 3, and 4:
All the Glass had his daggers, which, for some reason, I forgot to photograph. Low Key made little tennis balls. The Kid had been working on doorknobs. Rose made pastries, with spackle for icing. New Grace made giant strawberries.
My semester's work was starting to fill a shelf.
In all the years I'd been glassblowing, I'd never blew glass in my dreams. Now I was glassblowing in my dreams, only things were going wrong far worse than they usually do. I picked up a punty rod instead of a pipe and couldn't get a bubble. The furnace door was clogged with gunk, leaving the tiniest of openings. In teaching another student, my vessel went wonky and I had to fight my way out of it. (Okay, that last one is what happens in real life too.)
When I arrived early one Tuesday, I found the room locked, the lights off, the pipe warmer off, and the glory hole off. I wondered for a moment whether or not I was dreaming again. On another occasion, perhaps the same day, a chunk of hot glass fell from the inside roof of the furnace into the pot (why was there glass up there?), missing my piece by inches. No worries, I thought. I already dreamed this.
Two days later, we found out why the hole had been turned off: earlier in the day, it had belched a fireball across the room. That it didn't do the same for me when I'd started it up that afternoon was sheer luck, because it nearly singed the Colonel the next day.
With all the uncertainty, I decided on two things: jump into as many extra slots as possible; and live in the moment.
I nabbed a Saturday afternoon with Glass Ninja so that he could teach me how to do overlays (where we smoosh a rod of color over a clear core). I cut the first geode into four pieces and used one of them for overlay practice.
Boy, was that an ugly color combination!
My second overlay went better, but the neck was hella off-center.
Tired and out of time, I stayed simple for the third one.
On Sunday evening, I sent a letter to the Foundation on behalf of the class.
Classmate's Partner had taken this semester off. He'd been planning to come back in the spring. He stopped by the classroom on Tuesday as I was finishing a repeat of the off-center vase I'd made on Saturday.
I filled him in while Extra and I worked together. All The Glass was absent. All In was at the other bench with a beginner.
Classmate's Partner watched me flub a thread mix vase. I was trying to combine red and black. Black is notoriously runny. The shape went wonky and I ended up blowing a hole in one side. I dumped it into the waste bucket. I tried again after he left, this time keeping it to a simple, giant ornament. As I was putting the hook on, we heard a crack. We put it in the annealer anyway. I made one more small ornament in the last few minutes of class.
Nothing a little glue can't fix?
vase repeat
sold to a bike club friend
I was hoping that the Colonel would let us all do our own thing on Thursday night instead of sitting through another demo, but sit through we did as we watched him pull cane. He did give us an assignment, almost as an afterthought, before the demo began. "Pattern," he mumbled. He didn't figure any of us cared at this point.
Nothing a little glue can't fix.
A year ago, in the midst of my spider-making bout, I coated a giant ornament in black frit and then glow powder on top of the black. I drew spiders on the surface with hot glue, then sand-blasted the glow powder away, revealing four glow-in-the-dark arachnids on a black background. I'd made two of these giant blank ornaments, leaving the second one to hang as a whitish-gray sphere in a window. Now I took it down and wrote in hot glue, "ars gratia artis."
I took a few minutes at the sand-blaster the following Tuesday.
The coating of glow powder was so thin that the letters fluoresced for barely enough time to take a picture.
Meanwhile, I hadn't received a response from the Foundation. I decided to call. The receptionist was very polite about telling me that yes, they'd received the letter, and that they hadn't formulated a response. "You should talk to the grants office," she told me, and gave me a phone number that turned out to be wrong.
I found the correct number and connected with the grants office, which consisted of one person, interim, of course. She was overly enthusiastic about helping us when I explained the situation. "I'm super motivated," she said, explaining, "I wanted to take that class in the spring!"
She asked to meet with the class to go over what our grant options were. She'd help us put and application together. "One thing, though," she said. "Any proposal has to get the Dean's permission." After some back-and-forth with the Colonel, we agreed that she'd arrive 15 minutes before class the following Thursday.
On Tuesday, I decided to make dots for the pattern assignment. I had a to-do list now, and dots were on that list.
I was still mixing threads on long-neck vases. There's something satisfying about creating this shape. There's pulling and swinging and just enough lack of control to make the endeavor fun.
Also on the list, a "tree of life" ornament. That's an ornament with a trunk and branches inside, essentially a witch's ball with a set pattern. Although tiny, my first attempt almost succeeded. Flying in the face of the Colonel's "the first is the worst" principle, all my subsequent attempts failed.
I took home two gigantic thread leftovers and shoved them into the ground next to one from last semester.
I wandered around the yard, taking pictures of the morning sun hitting the saints.
Saint Vitreous
Spiders On Drugs
Saint Orbitus
First Light
All Cash Everything
Saint Cullet
Saint Polychromatous
Saint Polychromatous
Saint Polychromatous
Saint Polychromatous
Saint Polychromatous
Saint Polychromatous
Shadows of Ornaments for Sale
Maybe all this is enough? Inside, the shelves are packed, two levels held open for the future. I could spread things out, give them room to show themselves. This hobby can't go on forever. There's no room for it to go on forever. There's only so much I can give away. Nobody's buying the stuff I have up on Etsy. Even if I decide to get rid of one old piece for every new one that comes in, that old piece has to go somewhere. Each piece is a story. What stories do I discard?
We still had a month left, and a crit coming up.
I made another dots vessel. It got away from me a little towards the end. I embraced the anarchy.
I was getting near finished with the random thread thing.
There were more tree of life failures than I could count. Some never made it off the pipe. Others got tossed when they came out of the annealer. I went back to making tiny witch's balls instead. There, the inner threads can be random.
I think this one got tossed.
The grants coordinator canceled our meeting hours before it was set to happen, saying she was going home sick.
I snagged a Saturday morning. New Grace was on vacation. I worked with LT2. I had one last idea for a random thread vessel. I laid out the frit. Then I picked it up in the wrong order. Oh well. We used the big torch to reduce the surface. It shined up nicely and became one of my favorite vases.
I did another thread vase with green aventurine. It was too dark to show the opaline thread I put on top.
All morning, folks from the other shops had been coming in to take random pieces to the display case in the hallway. We handed off a bunch of work from years before that had been gathering dust on shelves and corners in the classroom. We gave them Art Thing too. I was glad to see that gone. "I hate that piece," LT2 said.
There was some sort of event going on in the building next door, "Art in Bloom," having something to do with the floral design program I guess. There had been a loose suggestion that we could exhibit some of our work, but in the chaos, we never found out the details. That didn't help our cause at all. We needed to be visible, not forgotten.
Then a small crowd filtered in and sat in the folding chairs we'd set out. I'd just started making a small vessel for an idea I had. I'd never blown glass in front of an audience before. Except in that dream a few weeks ago. I kept it small, because that's how I am when I'm nervous.
LT2 made a big fish for the crowd. It was far more impressive than my dinky little cup. I don't even remember what was going on at the other bench, probably something big and flashy from Tall Vase or Pumpkin Master.
On Monday I retrieved my work from Saturday so that I could hot glue a word onto the little white vase.
On Tuesday, as I was walking to my car on my way from work to class, I called the grants coordinator. She hadn't responded to my suggestion that she come to this Thursday's class instead.
"I'm so glad you called," she said. "I didn't know how to say this in an email."
Uh oh.
She wanted to keep our conversation confidential. "The class knows everything I know," I told her. I wasn't going to hide anything. All she could say was that she'd spoken to her superior and had been told that she was not to work with us on any attempts to find funding to repair or upgrade the classroom. She didn't say why.
I felt completely gaslit. The Dean had said, "Talk to the Foundation." The Foundation had said, "Talk to the grants coordinator." The grants coordinator had said, "I'm not allowed to talk to you."
My classmates who were convinced of a grand conspiracy were going to say I told you so. I wasn't ready to give up, but I wasn't sure what to do next.
All In, meanwhile, had a spreadsheet of equipment and costs. "It's what I do when I get bored," he said. He had been mulling over an idea to open a maker space somewhere near his house, which is conveniently near me, too, since he lives about three miles away. He'd even started to look for property. That's a lot for a second-semester glassblower.
For a cool quarter million, we could build a state-of-the art classroom. For far less than that, we could simply fix the furnace and glory hole doors.
When I got to class, All The Glass wasn't the least bit surprised at the current fuckery. He had thoroughly bought into the notion that this was going to be the last we'd blow glass here ever. "Where did you get your information?" I asked. "I can't tell you," he said. "Then I can't belive you," I replied.
All The Glass was using up his supply of fused glass he'd made years ago, and of the copper wire he wove into molds and hearts.
I'd asked him if he had any little wire molds left, and he'd brought in two little ones. I chose a frit color, "Moody Blue," that mystefied me and Sleepless years ago. Whenever I'd worked with it, my pieces came out yellow, and only looked blue in certain light or with my phone's flash. I figured I'd try again. I had nothing to lose and I might as well use the stuff up.
Making these was easy. I must have put enough frit on, because they did look blue, mostly.
I took a few minutes to run to the sand blaster with my little white vase. The window into the box was so filthy that I could barely see what I was doing. When I took the vase out, I decided I needed to go back in. That would have to wait, though, because All The Glass was up and he needed my help.
I wanted to make the thread vase again, only this time put the colors on in the right order. We did that, and hit it with the torch at the end. It came out all shimmery.
When I had time again, I went back to the sand blaster. I'd gone over it thoroughy, removing any trace of white I could see, except where the glue protected the lettering underneath. I gave it one last inspection, and then it slipped out of my gloved hand, shattering on the floor of the sand blaster.
I retrieved the pieces, the night tech looking on. I told her what the word on the vase meant. She thought it was fitting. "I'll glue it back together," I said.
There was time enough left for me to roll a lime green rod over the bed of nails and make a giant ornament.
one of my biggest, but not roundest
When I got home, I glued the shattered vase back together with UV-curing adhesive. I used up most of a 10 ml bottle trying to get everything to stick back together. I had to wipe the surface down with acetone to remove what had seeped through the cracks. I rescued it, save for what looked like a bullet hole.
In the morning, it was still in one piece. The sunlight illuminated the cracks eminating from the hole. It seemed somehow symbolic that a vase emblazoned with the Mi'kmaq word for "
the story ends" should be in pieces.
That's supposed to be glass on a blowpipe.
This witch's ball was such a mess that
I cut the hook off and set it upside-down,
where it looks like an alien or a
Van Der Graaf generator
wire mold with LED tea light
dots as flower pot (bad idea: no drain hole;
there's a Christmas cactus in a little pot within this
pot now, living in my office)
I jumped into a Wednesday afternoon session to make two more blanks for another go at kespeadooksit. I didn't coat the outside as heavily this time so that I could avoid the risk of too much time in the sand blaster.
Pumpkin Master asked me to fill in for his partner, Tall Vase, on Saturday morning. Picking up some scrap threads, I tried making a drop vase, something I hadn't done since my first year. I had much better control this time, but I still didn't much like it.
LT2, inspired by my geodes, had tried pouring bits of thread into the bottom of a cup, heating the whole thing again, and picking it up on a collar. Riffing on his riffing on me, I took a reject lip wrap cup from the first week, filled it with bits and pieces, and placed it in the little color box. I'd wanted to put it in the big oven, where the temperature would come up more gradually, but it was already on. When I went to retrieve the cup out of the little box, it had exploded, sending its contents all over, just missing the two pieces of rod Pumpkin Master had put in there.
As I'm fond of saying when things don't go to plan, "I went to a state school," and there was more than enough going on right now to remind me of grad school for the second time in as many semesters.
I warmed a gather in the glory hole, then mopped up as much of the shattered cup and contents as I could with it.
We turned it into a somewhat wonky bowl.
There were still some scraps lying around in there after I'd finished, so when my next turn came, I mopped up again and made a drop vase. Quite by accident, the shape was one I'd been chasing for years.
After class, I used the sand blaster again. Because of the thinner coat of white frit, the lettering wasn't as sharp. I needed to cover the letters in glue again and go back in.
I repeated the blasting on Tuesday. The vases were cleaner, but the lettering wasn't nearly as good as the first time. So much for "the first is the worst," again.
While I'd had the glue out, I took the ugly vase from the first geode and wrote out a Kurt Vonnegut quote: "We are here on Earth to fart around." It didn't come out well because it wasn't one color over another.
It was Thanksgiving break. Our Tuesday class would be the last until the following Monday.
On Wednesday, New Grace found the spring glassblowing workshop listed online. It was under the aegis of Continuing Education, not 3D Arts. It was pretty well hidden.
There would be five 4-hour sessions with four students each, for a shortened semester of 12 weeks. The shop would be open Saturdays and Sundays for two sessions each, and Monday evening for one session. There would be no instructor. The price was slightly more than half of what I usually paid as an out-of-state student. For all the locals, it was $400 more.
On Thanksgiving evening, I was the first to register.
LT2, New Grace, and Tall Vase snagged three of the four Saturday morning slots.
And it sat like that. A lot of my classmates balked at the price. These were the same people who were willing to write big checks to keep the class going! All In said he was right out; he could get his own glory hole somewhere else for less money.
There was talk of taking classes at the only other community college to offer such things. The advanced class was on a weekday morning, the beginner class at rush hour in the evening. The school was over an hour away from work. I applied anyway in the morning and received a student ID number in the afternoon. How badly did I want this? Not enough to spend three hours in a car for a four-hour class that would end at 9:30 at night. But I wanted to keep my options open.
There were now 7 registrants for the workshop. Classmate's Partner was coming back. Rose would be joining me on Monday nights. Someone we couldn't figure out had picked Saturday afternoon.
While all this was going on, I was playing with the scraps-in-a-cup idea. I called it "Junk in the Trunk." All The Glass showed me how to use the big oven.
Another thing on my list was a summer vase. I had winter, a few springs, a thunderstorm, and fall. What did summer look like to me? Hot sun and green trees.
I forgot to make a jack line! Rookie mistake! That messed up my plans for a long neck. I'd improved my rescue skills. I got a wonky pitcher out of it instead. It was just as well. The green leaves merged with the blue sky over the yellow sun; the color scheme didn't work at all.
This was a reject I could sand-blast the Vonnegut quote onto.
I tried the summer vase again with more success, using only yellow and green, but when it came out of the annealer, I noticed a crack on the inside bottom.
I'd have to try again, again.
The quote worked better this time. It fit in with the off-kilter shape.
I needed something to water all the plants with at work anyway. Having this one, I discarded the first one in the scrap bucket.
While I had the yellow and green frit out, I played with making vases.
I sacrificed another reject lip wrap cup from the second week of class to make another Junk in the Trunk. This time, everything was hotter, and the junk melted.
I also made two lip wrap cups that turned out much better than the ones from the first two weeks.
Time was running out. I'd hoped that the Colonel would give the remaining Thursday class times over to us, as Our Instrutor used to do.
No such luck, but for good reason.
The previous weekend, it turned out, the nighttime security guard had come in to check the furnace and found that it had dropped from its preset 2100 degrees to 1500. It was 2:00 a.m., but he called the Colonel anyway. In the middle of a party (!), the Colonel talked the guard through the steps to restart the furnace. Had the cullet been left to cool in the crucible, the crucible would have cracked, and that would have been the end of our semester.
So, the Colonel set about making a gift for the guard, who was an avid fan of bowling.
I sat off to the side, next to LT2. We spent some time talking about next semester's workshop. He was already registered for Saturday mornings. "I'm thinking of signing up for the afternoon too," he said. "Blow all day. I'm already in the groove when the morning class ends." If he were to do that, we'd be at 9 people. "All The Glass will sign up," LT2 said. "He said he would if he's the last person."
"He's not gonna do it," I said. "He's dead set against it. He thinks they're gonna cancel."
"He'll sign up." LT2 had been working on him.
I asked Low Key too. She expressed a vague interest. "I'll do Saturday afernoon if I know who that other person is." All we knew was that person wasn't one of us, and that there would be no way to find out. Unless and until we did, I couldn't count on Low Key to come through. As a retiree, she had all the time in the world to spend an hour and half in her car each way to the other community college.
We had a little extra time after the bowling ball was finished. I made two quick cups, not caring much about thickness or form, so that I could use them for more Junk in the Trunks. I went in on Saturday to retrieve and fill them.
I'd spent Wednesday afternoon churning out ornaments. Thread Sherpa once said it takes him about a dozen to get into the rhythm. I'd made only 10, one of which cracked in the annealer or in the cabinet.
Sitting on the slab by the grinding wheel was the fart around vase I'd discarded. Confused, I told Rose, "I threw this away."
"I know," she said. "I'm going to smash it up and use it for my final project. It's all scraps from the bucket. It's called Shattered Dreams."
"This is a quarter of my first geode," I told her, picking it up. "I can give you a piece of the geode if you want to smash that instead. It might be easier."
"You should keep this," she said.
"I guess," I mumbled, and put the little vase in the bag with the ornaments. I knew where it would go:
out in the yard, on Saint Miscellaneous, where pieces I was on the fence about discarding would live out the rest of their lives. I added one of the ornaments, whose hook was such a mess that I knocked it off with a file and stuck the sphere on the end of one of the dozen branches.
Then it was the final Tuesday. All The Glass and I both arrived an hour early. He set about making as many angels from a mold that he could. We turned the big oven on to heat my last two Junk in the Trunk cups.
While they were warming up to 1050 degrees, I took one last swing at the summer vase. This time it worked.
All the Glass kept asking me to take pictures of him while he worked. "The final" bowl or vase, or whatever, he'd say. It was depressing. I wanted to be in the moment. He wasn't helping. If he would register for the spring workshop, it wouldn't be final anything.
For the Junk in the Trunks, I didn't get them as hot as the last two, so that the glass inside wouldn't melt. They looked fun from the top.
But I didn't like the side view. The original cup's mouth didn't melt into the new glass. If we'd had more time, perhaps I'd have cut the bottoms off and sanded them down.
I hadn't played with the square mold since the end of last semester. Now I had less than an hour to try.
I'd been watching Low Key do it, which helped. She never bothered to open the top, though. "I just knock them off the pipe and cut them later." That way, she kept the whole piece square. I wanted to open the top, which I'd been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, last semester.
First I made a clear one, but I'd dropped the pipe into the mold off-center. I did my best to open the top in the middle. I rescued it somewhat. From three sides it looked wonky. From one side it looked okay.
I tried again, this time with color. It was late. We were minutes away from the end of class. The top got away from me. I embraced the anarchy, pulling on the edges and swinging it. The result would either be beautiful or trash. I had trouble knocking it off the punty, too. "Great way to end the semester," I said.
Turns out I like it. The bottom starts out square, and then it melts into round and then chaos. Sort of a metaphor for this semester, now that I think about it.
Then it was time for us to clean out our lockers. I'd bought a cheap, plastic poster holder with a shoulder strap and drilled two holes in the lid for my pipes. I brought in a suitcase and filled it with all the frit and rods I had shoved into my locker.
Next to me, All The Glass emptied his. "You forgot something," he said, gesturing at the top compartment, over my head. I reached in to feel a plastic bag. I pulled it out.
"Spider legs!" I dropped them into the suitcase.
We left our locks on the doors, as a sign of hope, and, perhaps, defiance.
As strong as I am, I had trouble lifting the suitcase into my car. It was so heavy that I had to carry it up the stairs one step at a time. If I were to blow glass again somewhere, I'd have to plan my colors ahead of time. There would be no practical way to bring them all with me.
I had the registration page open on my phone. I was checking it multiple times a day, reading the list of empty slots, hoping to see them count down. 3 taken out of 4, 1 of 4, 1 of 4, 0 of 4, and 2 of 4.
All The Glass had been watching it too. He adamantly refused to register. "It's not going to run without 20 people," he insisted. His math showed that there would be no way for the class to run without a financial loss with any fewer than full enrollment.
Internally, his model worked. But we didn't know how much money the Continuing Education department was starting with. We didn't have the propane bills to know how much money would be saved by not having the furnace door opening and closing all week and the glory hole off most of the time, or how much less cullet would need to be shoveled into the furnace at the end of the day. We didn't know the Colonel's salary.
I decided to ask the folks at Continuing Education what the minimum actually was, and whether or not we could sign up for multiple sessions. I called from work in the afternoon.
While I was on the phone, the vase full of flowers that I'd been fiddling with in the morning toppled to the floor. The vase survived. All but one flower didn't.
I got an answer. They needed ten people.
"Get it in writing," All The Glass said.
"Y'know," I suggested, "You can ask them too."
"I won't believe them. The numbers don't work."
So I asked for it in writing. My contact said they'd double-check first, then let me know. The answer came back as 10 again.
"I don't believe it," All The Glass said again. I told him I was finished with this topic.
I sent an email to the class, telling them I'd spoken with someone at ConEd:
She told me that there needs to be 10 people registered in order for the spring workshop to happen. Right now we're at 7.
I know it's more money than you're used to paying, but think of it this way: you get to work with people you know; it's close to home; you can use the color boxes, sander, molds, that bed of nails thingie, and other equipment in the building at no extra charge; you won't be charged for a larger glory hole; and, if you were one of the people who promised a big donation to keep the class running for the spring, consider this your donation with the added benefit of blowing glass.
It's also okay to register for two separate sessions if you want to blow glass for more than 4 hours/week.
If you're on the fence, now is the time to make the decision. We only need three more people to make this happen. Think of the seven of us who have already committed. Don't let us down!
That said, I decided to keep quiet on Thursday, our last night of class before next week's critique. Once again, I was hoping the Colonel would let us work.
Nope. He wanted to make another Philly Phanatic, this time with feet. He got as far as the pinstripe jersey when something went wrong. He started over again.
I helped by bringing him a bit or two and minding the glory hole doors. But mostly I sat on the sidelines. To me, it looked as if the Colonel was out of fucks to give and wanted to use as much studio time for himself as he could. While he'd praised me for my efforts and said he understood where I was coming from, he wasn't on board with the workshop idea. "I mean, class without an instructor?" he said. That wouldn't help him at all.
At 8:40, he let three of us have twenty minutes to make something. Two of the new advanced students worked at one bench. Thinking about the shattered flowers and the nagging feeling I might never blow glass again, I pulled out my tools and blow hose to try one more time to make a tree of life ornament. The first died on the pipe. The Colonel suggested I use more glass. "When I've seen these, they're always bigger," he said. "More glass to work against" when making the indentations. I made a bigger one. It had a trunk, from top to bottom, but the branches blew out. With five minutes left, I made a flower to replace the ones that had shattered in my office.
The Colonel started shoveling cullet into the furnace. It would be on for two more days. Some cullet spilled on the floor. "Mind if I grab some of this for something?" I asked. I'd almost forgotten I'd wanted some. "Sure," he said.
And that was it. Maybe for a month and a half, maybe for nine months, maybe forever.
At home, one of the lip wraps and the square mold glass had a perfect hand feel and became part of the routine for water and cold brew.
I unpacked all the scrap threads, sorted through them, pulled out the longest ones, and shoved them into Sic Transit Gloria Vitri, whose base I filled with cullet.
I hauled the ornaments into work, adding the giant ones that had been for sale on Etsy forever. One of the postdocs wanted three of the giant ones. The small ornaments were on sale for charity. She bought one of those too.
By December 22, I'd sold out of the small ornaments, raising $130, plus the
$100 match I'd promised, for the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen
and the Boys and Girls Club of Mercer County.
Our final critique was December 14. Someone had invited the Dean and the Provost. The Colonel had put an end to that. He'd said he didn't want the evening to become a shouting match. He wanted us to focus on each other's work. He was probably right. Instead, Foundry Guy and another Important Person from the department would be there.
During the day, I checked the registrations again. Somebody had joined the Sunday morning session. That put us at 8.
There was an abundance of food set up on a table in the hallway. In the back classroom, we laid out our work. The Colonel had put white paper on the front tables and asked us to set up there. Only three of us heard him.
While we were sitting around waiting for things to start, Sage, who was next to me, said, "I listened to you."
"Huh?"
"I signed up for Sunday morning."
"That was you! You're going to be working with Classmate's Partner!"
I'd never seen her smile that wide before.
We finally settled into the crit. All In went first and then left. Extra went second, showing the beautiful clear vases she'd made all semester, plus the snowman All The Glass had helped her with last week.
Then it was my turn.
"I've been going through some stuff," I said, and explained all the sad writing piece by piece: Sic Transit Gloria Vitri, Ars Gratia Artis (Foundary Guy smiling in the back of the room), Kespeadooksit, and We Are Here on Earth to Fart Around.
The Colonel was enamored with the Vonnegut quote. He took pictures.
I also showed the first Junk in the Trunk. "I think it's the start of something," the Colonel said. The start of something? When?
I explained all my failures to make a tree of life. The Colonel empathized. "The people who make those," he said, "probably have dozens of witch's balls at home."
"Yeah," I said, "I have a bunch too."
"They're really popular right now. They're supposed to ward off hexes." Witch's balls as hex removers became a running joke for the rest of the night. Scraps were also a thing. There were mine, and Rose's Shattered Dreams, and Tall Vase's incorporation of the first go at the Phanatic's jersey. All The Glass displayed a photo of his front walkway, a collection of years of scrap bucket chunks spread like a vitreous flowerbed.
As we finished, the subject of the future of our class came up, albeit briefly. "We need two more people," I said, holding up my fingers.
"There's a bunch of pieces in the hot shop that I don't want," the Colonel said. "You guys can go in there and take whatever you want. Except the Phanatic." There was a rush for the door. I didn't want to take anything more home.
I stayed behind to talk with LT2, Tall Vase, and New Grace, the people who were signed up for Saturday morning. "I want this to happen," LT2 said. He'd make his decision about buying a Saturday afternoon slot soon. Pumpkin Master joined our gaggle. "I'm signing up," he said.
"That's nine!"
"I'm thinking about Sunday morning to make this work," I said, "But here's the problem. I'm training for a big bike trip. I need my weekends. When I'm here, this is everything. When I'm on my bike, my bike is everything." So it would be down to me or LT2 or both, with less than a month to figure it out. One more person. We needed one more person.
After I packed up, I wandered into the hot shop. Nothing remained of the Colonel's work except
the Phanatic and a bowl full of blue and red scraps.
It was quiet. I looked around. The furnace was off, and so were the vent fans. I was the only one in the room. I turned to go, and as I reached the door, a wave of sadness slipped through me.
