Wacky new year!

That about sums up 2006. Wacky.
(warning–long-winded post ahead. sorry about that)

This year has had more ups and downs than an escalator. On the whole, I’d say it was an up year but with some serious, life changing downs. Here’s my version of the year in review, not necessarily in order of importance:

A huge up was also a huge down: I was laid off. At the time it seemed disastrous–my stock options! My retirement funds! (the timing couldn’t have been worse–I was a few weeks shy of vesting and lost a pretty significant chunk o’change)

Instead, the layoff entered the “best things that ever happened to me” zone. I can’t say I’m grateful to my former employers, exactly, but I probably should be. I’ve returned to the world of fast decisions, quality data research, rapid deployments, results that make a BIG difference, and I’m a lot happier. Insidious how bureaucratic nonsense oozes in and becomes your life–but now I know the signs and it ain’t gonna happen again, friends.

If getting laid off is your biggest down, well, you did ten times better than a whole buncha folks in 2006. My best friend lost her husband to a cancer that went from 0 to 60 in a shockingly short time. A favorite colleague’s family is mired in the massive legal tangles required to declare him dead without a body (he was on assignment in the far east and died in the tsunami). Several friends and family members in the military have lost lifelong friends in Iraq. Artist friends in New Orleans are still struggling to recover from Katrina and better channel rage against a government that actually made survival tougher. A couple of friends made the sad decision to end their marriage.

That stuff pretty much trivializes a career change, doesn’t it?

I realized that I’m serious about being a glass artist, even if I don’t plan to make it my day job, and I’ve been able to turn it into a business, build a development plan the same as I would for a product launch and get some impressive kudos for my work.

Mom’s come back strong from Ramsey-Hunt. In early 2006 a virus messed up the nerve centers in her brain, causing temporary facial paralysis, sight problems and profound deafness in one ear. New technology is making it possible for her to simulate hearing in her deaf ear and we’ve all learned a lot about how the brain processes information.

In some ways RH was a blessing in disguise, for it set off a round of brain scans that uncovered an aneurysm in her brain. We have a history of family members who “just dropped dead,” likely from ruptured brain aneurysms. About the only way to find aneurysms before they wreak havoc is to have the same brain scans Mom had. Too bad there wasn’t a better way for the gods to alert us to the problem but I’m thankful they did. I don’t ever want to be that scared again.

Chinni, my beloved Siamese cat, is still with us. He was operated on for cancer in early 2004 and given only a couple of months to live…but recovered completely and is working on a two year survival. Sadly, it looks as though his time is winding down and he probably won’t see 2008, but to have had this much extra time is a blessing.

My infoaddiction got worse, but the distribution methods changed. Judging from my crowded bookshelves, I’ve probably acquired more books, software, MP3s and DVDs in 2006 than in the two preceeding years. I’ve met new authors, had my mind blown by several of them, and discovered Joao Gilberto and bossa nova along with a whole bunch of new tune genres (thank you, iTunes).

But downloads became an expected delivery option in 2006–I *don’t* buy music CDs (why should I when I can get exactly what I want (and no more) through download?) and I’m irritated by having to wait to have software shipped to me. About the only infosource that still comes in the mail are books, and that’s only because I still prefer reading to listening and the few downloaded e-books I’ve tried are a pain to print. Much as I adore my computers, they’re still a little unwieldy for reading in bed.

After a long separation, Macs and Windows are once again cohabitating in my office. (Actually they’re cohabitating in one computer–FreddieMac). I’m amazed at how much the Mac OS has changed in five years, and I’m beginning to segment tasks best done in Windows or Mac, moving from keyboard to keyboard with ease. Once Ezekiel the Linux machine moves down from the upstairs office, all three beasts will be side-by-side, and it’ll be fun to see how my workflows change.

Five years ago it took much greater knowledge (and patience) to move between OSes. The rise of Web services greased that path, which I’m sure is great for Apple and not so great for Microsoft…unless Microsoft does exactly what it is doing vis a vis “Live.” Fascinating project, fabulous opportunities.

My sister’s family broke ground on their dream house and it’s buzzing right along. I’m impressed and dismayed by the amount of work it’s taking (they’re mostly building it themselves) but part of me wants to do the same thing. Maybe some day.

My writing got better. Writing’s like any other activity–the more you practice, the better you get. Unfortunately, unless you’re a best-selling author, writing and corporate advancement don’t mix, so my writing muscles were beginning to atrophy.

Blogging has changed that. I blog regularly, here and elsewhere, pretty much writing whatever comes up. It may not be great (and to be honest I really don’t care whether anyone else reads it) but it’s keeping those muscles lubed and my other writing has become far easier (and better). Blogging’s not the same as a private diary–I’m structuring stories because they’re being published…and that makes all the difference. When I teach writing now, I’m advising people to start a blog–it’s one of the best teaching aids I’ve found.

I’ve reunited with a lot of old friends. Blogging’s having an interesting effect on my social life–people I haven’t encountered in years are suddenly popping up to say “I saw your blog; let’s get together.” They don’t comment directly, but at least once a week someone e-mails…it’s a lot of fun.

Everything broke. Well, not everything, but the month of December, especially, was a gadget replacement jamboree. I lost my pocket camera, my furnace, my phones, my Taurus ring saw, my favorite lamp, my favorite running pliers and glass cutters, my DVD player and other assorted audio-visual equipment, the refrigerator, the stove, a gas fireplace, my satellite dish and four remotes, the usual myriad cell phone headsets and miscellaneous computer equipment…and that’s just part of the list.

Boy, the sunspots must be working overtime. I’m learning not to make friends with anything with a power switch since chances are we won’t be friends for long.

So that’s pretty much the year. Reading this over, I see I haven’t really changed much in 2006; art, family, career, gadgets, friends…what’s been most important for the last two decades stayed put.

Wacky new year.

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Wireless vs. wireless

Turns out FreddieMac doesn’t always play well with my other digital children.

I got Freddie back in October and things had been going pretty well…except in the area of wireless. When I’m not traveling or visiting friends and family, Freddie stays on the desk, where she’s been turning wireless networking into Russian roulette.

My Verizon FIOS connection uses an Actiontec wireless router, and there were times that Freddie refused to talk to it. She never had any problem with Ethernet, but periodically the wireless connection would just die. I’d watch the connection waver, and then go out of existence as far as Freddie was concerned.

It would stay off for up to an hour, and nothing I could do, from rebooting the system to completely erasing all network connections, seemed to work. So I called Apple.

And completely stymied them for about 15 minutes. Janet-the-Apple-tech went through the settings, tested connections, discovered that other wireless computers on my network were working perfectly well. Not once during the call did FreddieMac so much as sniff at the wireless network. Janet sighed, then asked if there was a nearby Apple Store so I could drop Freddie off for a checkup? (drat)

Then, just as she was about to write out a trouble ticket for me, she asked what lay between Freddie and the Actiontec. “Uhm, my cell phone, some speakers, the Windows monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, my cordless headset phone, a lamp, a scanner, backup storage drives, digitizing tablet….”

“Hold it. Did you say cordless phone? Is that what you’re talking on now? Do me a favor– switch phones and turn it off for a sec, OK?” The minute I hung up the cordless phone, Freddie found the network and everything was fine.

I mostly use my mobile and just keep the landline for, I dunno, nostalgia or a backup or something, maybe doing 2-3 calls per day. Thinking back…yeah…Freddie was dropping the network maybe 2-3 times per day. So she’s been doing the digital equivalent of taking her ball and going home whenever she encounters a rival. This means that unless I can figure out how to change frequencies for at least one of these devices, it’s Freddie or the phone.

Hmmmm…anybody want a cordless headset phone?

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Real globalisation hurts

You know that mattress commercial where the guy places a goblet of red wine on one corner of the mattress, jumps up and down on the other corner…and the wine doesn’t spill? Then he does the same with a competitor’s mattress and makes a mess?

Yesterday Taiwan proved that the world is no longer a Tempur-pedic mattress. Disrupt one side, and you get spills all over the place.

(and for the record, I never could figure out how that wine trick proved I was going to get a good night’s sleep on a Tempur-pedic mattress, but never mind)

A 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit Taiwan yesterday, an event that would normally rate a “Too bad. What’s for dinner?” from most of the US. If the disaster was, say, tsunami-sized, we might go so far as to send (or personally donate) humanitarian aid. And we’d feel really, really sad about the whole thing.

But hey–it’s not like it really hurt us, right?

Wrong. The Taiwan quake is hitting the world in the pocketbook because–surprise–globalisation is real. Bloomberg and the BBC report that the Taiwan quake knocked out some significant telecomm cables, and the resulting outages will kill phone and Internet service to a significant chunk of Asia for days if not weeks.

Thanks to globalisation and offshoring, that’s not just an Asian problem anymore. Companies all over the world are being hit hard by this. Call centers are down. Development projects are delayed. Supply chains are disrupted. Sales meetings aren’t happening.

I suspect that this, and a few more disasters like it, are going to make significant inroads into the notions of sovereignty, borders, and that an all-seeing US-based manager can control what’s going on halfway ’round the world. The Internet is erasing all that, and the growing pains–like figuring out what you do when your Malaysian call center can’t take calls–aren’t going to be fun.

I worked for a large, global company for several years, one that prided itself on its globalisation capabilities…and even with all the money they poured into making it work–it mostly didn’t work. You can’t simply transport old F2F business practices into cyberspace and expect success. You can’t offshore critical pieces of the company and expect things to behave the way they did when Joe and his team were down the hall…but that’s what they did.

I’m not preaching isolationism here, quite the contrary–for the US to succeed we must fully and actively partner with the rest of the world. But US businesses need to wake up and smell the globalisation. Our infrastructure depends on taking care of neighbors near and far and treating them as partners, not puppies in need of a bit more training. But all too often, that’s still what I’m seeing.

Hmmm. Will the first truly international government be created to manage the world’s communications infrastructure? And will it draw from the US government…or US business?

Gonna be a fascinating decade.

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Warm, fuzzy feelings

So the HVAC guys were just here for a second day, and the new furnace (a Carrier Infinity 96) is almost installed (almost). It’s bigger, noisier (well, sometimes) than the old one, but here’s the deal: It works.

It’s also smarter than the old furnace (which, after all, was a whole 27 years old). We no longer call its thermostat a thermostat; it’s a controller. The controller talks to the AC and furnace, like a thermostat does, but these days the AC and furnace also talk back to the controller and some of the information they deliver is pretty deep.

The controller adjusts operation according to the humidity, airflow, temperature outside at the AC compressor, all sorts of things. It checks to see if the furnace filter is dirty and tells you to change it if it is. It’s got a manual as long as FreddieMac’s, too.

The controller regulates furnace speed automatically, mostly keeping it on energy-saving low, but in high mode it bears a striking resemblance to a Cessna Citation revving up to take off. (The installers say they’re coming back to fix that, and to enlarge some of the ductwork).

For now, the loudness reminds me that we’re no longer freezing in here. Yippeee.

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Reactivities

There’s a discussion on the WarmGlass board right now about reactivity in glass, always an interesting subject wherever two glass artists with ruined projects meet.

Molten glass will respond to minute changes in temperature (that’s how glassblowing works), to the atmosphere and to the presence of other substances. That’s why melting glass together doesn’t always deliver the same color as stacking the glasses cold. Red plus white may just equal black.

Between them, Uroboros and Bullseye make about 200 or so different colors of 90 COE glass and no, I’m not going to get into a discussion of COE vs. “compatibility.” As near as I can tell, there are also about 140 different colors of powdered and crushed glass. If you know how to combine them, your palette expands enormously.

Bullseye publishes a color reactivity chart for its glass rods that’s quite useful, but it doesn’t really tell you what the color looks like, just that it reacts. Most glass artists, therefore test color reactions before wasting expensive glass and kiln time.

I make mine by crafting divided glass trays out of clear glass and superglue, filling each cell with a carefully measured (by weight) combination of glass powders. I use the fired panels to choose frit tints for my projects.

Usually I’m adding a strongly colored powdered glass to a neutral “base glass,” and so that’s where I generally test. Here’s a good example:

In this panel I’m testing BE Lightning White (I think it’s called “Translucent White” now) with reds, oranges and yellows (starting from the top, BE Medium Amber, Red, Pumpkin Orange, Orange, Marigold Yellow, Red Orange, Tangerine, Tomato, Pimento). The combinations are lovely but two colors–BE Red Orange and BE Red–have reacted with the LW to form dark brown, almost black. That would have been disastrous if I’d expected hot orange.

I’ve done about 100 panels to date, and they’re an immense help when designing pate de verre and casting. To the right you’ll see what happens when you combine BE French Vanilla with different BE greens. Notice that most of the greens are OK, but French Vanilla with BE Light Aventurine or BE Jade Green makes a dark grey that turns to black as you increase the proportion of French vanilla. Uroboros Spearmint has a slightly less

intense (but similar) reaction. On the right (FV with neutrals), notice also that BE Light Bronze is also reacting with the French Vanilla, and there’s a minor reaction going on with Light Peach Cream.

Here’s another example. If you put powdered reds, oranges and golds on BE White (Left, below), the colors stay pretty true. If you put them on BE Dense White (right, below), you get reactions:

At some point I’m going to figure out how to put all these panels in some kind of table on morganica. For now, they make pretty good wall decorations and invaluable guides to customizing my color palette.

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Toyz

I’m staying with Mom and Dad while the contractors restore my hot water and heat (long story) and tonight Mom needed a few more stocking stuffers for my niece Lily. So we headed over to the local Target and hit up the toy aisles.

We encountered every whining, groaning, drooling, bleeding, spitting toy imaginable. I’ve always liked toys that DID stuff, but have generally placed the moister bodily functions outside the realm of entertainment.

Not so today’s toy manufacturers. There were puppies you fill with water, enabling them to drool and slurp for hours. I found dolls that wet (nothing new there but these are a bit more anatomically correct than in the past), monsters that you can “operate on” to remove the guts and gross out your friends, plastic dolls containing rare earth magnets that can kill a child, lemon-scented teddy bears that smell exactly like toilet bowl cleaner and plastic warrior dolls with realistic wounds, blood and pus.

Enchanting.

There were interactive stuffed toys that whine until you pet them and growl until you stop. There were bears that read to you and become your best friends (saving you the trouble, apparently, of learning how to make friends), and ponies in high chairs (huh?).

Mom unearthed a “Generations” stuffed bichon frisee in its own little purple carrier and almost bought it. Then she removed it from the carrier and found that the puppy had tiny stumps instead of legs. Who would give a child a stuffed animal with a birth defect?

Geeeeez.

Then we headed down the “Bratz” aisle. I looked at the dolls once, then again, and then another time just to make sure.

Hookers. They looked like hookers.

My friends Georgina and Lizanne worked the streets for awhile (yet another long story) so I know of what I speak. We’d occasionally meet for breakfast as they were “coming off shift,” still dressed for work. Comparing the two with the Bratz dolls…I’d say the hookers had more class.

I’d be thrilled if these dolls signaled that we’ve become a compassionate society that treats all women equally, honoring their tenacity and determination to survive despite the nasty turns (and sometimes jobs) of life. I would love it if the Bratz dolls were all about how, initially forced into the oldest profession, these girls persevered and became doctors, lawyers, artists, mothers, who remembered their roots and helped their sisters escape similar horrors.

Forgive me if I’m a wee bit skeptical that such is the case. No wonder kids are in such a hurry to grow up–they want the relative innocence of adulthood.

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The wonderful wizard of warm

No, I haven’t suddenly replaced my normal business attire with burkhas. I’ve simply taken advantage of all my lovely old Minnesota garments in glassland because, baby, it’s cold IN here. It’s 29 degrees outside and the furnace has died.

Thursday night the wind blew wild and free (literally-it reached 105mph over on the coast) and in the course of blowing down fifty-’leven powerlines it knocked out power to my house for about 20 minutes. Just as the lights came back on I heard a series of small explosions.

Didn’t think much of them at the time because I was rushing downstairs to reset my kiln controller and continue firing. Then I turned down the heat and went to bed.

It was chilly when I got up the next morning, so I cranked up the heat and set to work. I noticed about 11:30 that I was still sitting on my hands to warm them up for typing, so I checked the thermostat again–the fan was blowing but cold air was coming out.

The repair guy came out and confirmed the sad truth–the power glitch blew the transformers, which killed the relays, which did something to the heat exchanger, which ate the solenoids or something…

“Look, Cynthia,” he said solemnly, “fixing this thing would be like creating a zombie–you might THINK you brought it back to life, but underneath it’s still a corpse. It’s 27 years old. You need a new one.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t have a “new one” on the truck, and they take a couple of weeks to get, so I’m probably without heat until after New Years unless a miracle occurs. From what he tells me, miracles are not impossible but very, very expensive, especially when it’s cold and a lot of people are discovering they need new furnaces.

So…I have an oven, a space heater, two fireplaces and three kilns. That’s a helluva lot more than the pioneers had. And I’m off to see the wizard.

The wonderful wizard of warm.

Update 12/23/06: The wizard of warm arrived last Monday, got me on the schedule for Thursday and the place is at least warm. They can’t finish up the system, add the new thermostat, etc., until Tuesday, but at least it’s no longer 42 degrees in here. Thank heavens.

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OK, now how do you get the clay OUT…?

I’m finally–after taking about three months off to develop some panels in my Watercolors series–getting back to pate de verre and the Emergents. I started these in the summer and they’re never very far from my mind.

I’m doing this series of semi-functionals in both kilnformed and pate de verre to obtain contrasting textures and transparencies. I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of evolutionary stages and what might have happened if the whole bloody world hadn’t been created on a seven-day deadline. What if plants had had more say in their development? What if the human form merged with the plant?

Anyway, I’ve got lots of different pieces in different stages of development, but the one that’s exciting me now is Hostabowl, and that’s what I’m working on next. Hostabowl is a construct of clay, roots, giant hosta leaves and a twist on the old babies-are-found-under-cabbage leaves story.

The resin base (above) is cast and mounted in clay, awaiting the mold pouring that I hope I’ll get to this weekend. I’ve been futzing around with the pate de verre figures arising from the center of the bowl, and think I’ve got the powder formulations and techniques I need.

I’m still leery of working with wax–ever since seeing a pretty nasty wax fire–and more comfortable fabricating in clay. That complicates things unbelievably from a moldmaking perspective, particularly given all the undercuts of the human figure. Wax melts out, you see, where clay doesn’t. That meant that each figure (and they’re all different) needed to become a two-part mold. And that, in turn, means more coldwork to get them cleaned up.

And even with a two-part mold, the cleanup to get all those bits of clay out of the mold was a pain in the neck. If I could figure out a safe and foolproof way to run off and forget a pot of wax on a hot stove, I’d go back to wax in a heartbeat.

On the other hand, the extra coldwork lets me do some additional carving into the cast glass and see how that translates into an embedded protrusion from the final mold.

So…figure molds are complete, I’m going to do some final tests of my powder tints tomorrow to make sure I’ve got the color ramps right within the figures. With any luck I’ll be doing some pate de verre packing by Sunday night. (I hope)

And in between, I’ve got a LOT of Christmas presents to make. –sigh–

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Sistine Chapel on a city sidewalk

Glass artist Barbara Bader forwarded an intriguing e-mail today, about Julian Beever, a sidewalk artist who does some amazing trompe l’oeil work in chalk. They never fail to amaze me; I got to see one of these in person, a long time ago in New York, and they’re MUCH better in person than in the photograph.

Mr. Beever puts a considerable amount of effort into calculating perspectives and developing chalk drawings of everything from dead flies to laptop computers to bathing beauties in swimming pools. He sets them down in major metropolitan areas and, particularly when viewed from about 10 feet away at the right angle, the degree of three-dimensionality (and reality) is amazing.

I think he’s now making a living building these things for companies around the world–or at least this latest grouping shows a Sony Vaio notebook–which is great.

I can’t decide which I like most about these things–the fact that they’re so well done, the really fascinating way they’re created (and that moving away from the viewing angle shows a radically different, often unrecognizable image), or that because they’re done in chalk in busy cities they’re largely ephemera–if the foot traffic and street sweepers don’t finish them off, the weather will.

They’re copyrighted, so I really can’t post one here. But his site is definitely worth a visit, and if you ever get a chance to be in the area when he’s making sidewalk art, stop by.

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