Shards of tempered glass (the Shards series)

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Everything old is new again?

OK, is it my imagination or is a bunch of the stuff in New Glass Review not, well, new?

New Glass Review is–for glassists–the eagerly awaited late spring catalog of trends and innovations in glass art. It’s put out by the Corning Museum of Glass (my favorite museum, bar none, and one of the best resources for technical, artistic and historical information on glass around)

Every fall hundreds of glass artists (for the 2006 edition, 2,445 entries from 895 artists) submit photos of their best work along with a $15 entry fee. A jury reviews the submissions, picks the 100 pieces they most consider to be “new glass” for the year, and they build this really nice publication around it. (And no, I’ve never submitted anything to the jury–my work’s not where it needs to be for that yet)

In each edition I see marvelous things, get to know some great artists I’d not considered before…and every year the jury pretty much follows my rule of thirds: A third of the work I love, a third doesn’t move me one way or another, and a third isn’t to my taste. Pretty much the standard for me viewing anybody else’s art collection.

It was no different this year, and there are some really glorious works in there. In particular, Jiri Harcuba’s “George Orwell” is one of those pieces I could get lost in for hours. Ted Sawyer has a striking powder abstract, Claudia Whitten has a really fun glass-as-ceramic vessel, I’m really struck by Tanaka’s take on the famous Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City and Taguchi’s mirror installation is definitely on my list.

Lots of good stuff. But overall, well, this collection seems to also follow a second rule of thirds, at least for me: only about a third of the work actually appeared to be new. A second third seemed to be variations on existing glass fashion and the last third seemed pretty close to what better-known artists were already doing.

Maybe the photos camouflage the “newness” of these works, so I’m just missing the boat. But these works seem to be strongly reminiscent of Moje and Vallien and Kuhn and Hafner and Brock and Lipofsky and Nishi and Morris and Borella and Rea and Libensky/Brychtova and Levinson and Chiles, etc., etc., etc.

So I dunno. I’d think that the “New” in the title meant “new artists,” except that this year features folks like Dan Dailey, who certainly isn’t an emerging artist. So…have we used up all the new ideas for creating works in glass? Did nobody submit anything really new and this was the best of a not-really-new lot?

Somehow I can’t believe that. So maybe should this publication be retitled “Best of 2006?” Just a thought…

Shooting bumblebees

The rhododendron, iris, azalea, lavender, clematis and roses are out in my garden right now (and the trillium, tulips, daffodils, cherry blossoms and such have pretty much ended). The green dogwood tree is coming on strong. Place kinda looks like a Monet painting, except in focus.

What this basically means is that the bees are staging mass riots and flash mobs in my backyard and the bumblebees, especially, are out in force and feeling territorial. They kept buzzing the camera while I was taking pictures of the iris until I finally paid attention to them.

I used to have this thing about bees. My mother insists it started when, as a toddler, I saw my not inconsiderably sized grandma encounter a honeybee in the front yard clover and sprint a quarter-mile in about 10 seconds, screaming like an air-raid siren. I logically concluded that anything capable of moving that much that fast and loud had to be pretty vicious and should be avoided at all costs. In fact, in a glass class I was once asked to depict someone who’d had a significant influence on my youth, and this is what I drew:

Long story about how I got over my bee phobia, but the upshot is that while I find bees’ whole hive mentality thing fascinating (sorta like extreme right-wingers, heh-heh), I haven’t really looked at them.

But last week in the yard I did, and what struck me were all the furry, furry colors. Did you know that bee fur is, variously, black, brown, gold, orange, yellow and red? (Or that bees even have fur?) Wow.

Anyway, decided to take some pictures of my colorful guests, dragged the tripod over to the biggest rhodie and hunted out a bee. Pointed the camera, focused…

…and the bee left. Followed him (or her, I guess) to another blossom, refocused, got ready to shoot…

…and she dove into the next flower. Wised up, focused on a single flower and waited for the bee to come to me…

…and she moved. Patiently I set up, focused and waited. THERE SHE IS! SHOOT! SHOOT! SHOOT!

…all I got was the blurry tail-end of a bee. Dammit.

After a couple of hours of bee-chasing, I finally stopped flitting from flower to flower like…a bee…and really did focus on one small rhododendron cluster. And whaddaya know, I got my shot:

Sure, it’s the pointy end of the bee when I’d much rather get the critter looking straight into the camera. But I captured the rich tones–and the FUR–and I’m happy that I finally got this shot and now know how to get more.

Still, I draw the line at yellowjackets.

Name that stuff…

OK, anybody wanna tell me what this is?

Be the first to name it, and you win! (Exactly what you win, I dunno. My undying respect, maybe….)

Cheers!

Cicadas: The loudest bugs in the world

OK, so maybe they’re not the loudest, but if they’re not I’d hate to hear whoever is.

The cicadas are coming to the midwest again this summer, as they do every 17 years. If you’ve ever experienced a cicada hatching, you’ve witnessed one of the loudest free-for-all orgies on the planet, and it’s about to happen again.

When last they visited, Mom and I decided to drive east across the midwest to visit relatives. (Gosh, Mom, has it been THAT long….?) As we headed through Tennessee and Kentucky, in a fully insulated car with the air conditioner on and lots to talk about, we kept getting interrupted by a roaring noise outside the car.

At first, we thought it was road noise, but it never varied the way overgrown trucks and motorcycles do. When we pulled off at a rest stop and got out, we realized we’d been driving through miles and miles of mating cicadas.

The roar (and the smell) was overwhelming and unrelenting–nowhere you could go to get away from it. The critters themselves were fascinating, and easy to study; wait a couple of minutes and they’d start using your hair as a singles bar.

Ultimately, though, the noise got to us and we left. We brushed the cicadas from our clothes, our hair, slammed the car doors shut, turned on the radio loud, and crunched our way out of the swarm. When the sound died it was one of the more blessed silences I’ve heard. On the trip back I think the swarm was over (or at least I’ve mercifully shut it out of my memory if it wasn’t).

Scientists say the simultaneous hatching is a survival mechanism; these bugs don’t have much in the way of protective gear–no teeth, poison, camouflage, etc.–and so they survive by coming out in force. Somewhat akin to a demonstrator saying “the police can’t arrest ALL of us,” the cicadas apparently believe that if they hatch all at once, by the millions, predators will eat to the point of exhaustion and collapse. This leaves the fortunate latebloomers to propagate for the next 17-year bash.

Definitely one time where it pays to come in last, I guess. Anyway, have fun, midwest!

Corning Museum discusses Lino Tagliapietra and Toots Zynsky

Tina Oldknow interviewed Lino Tagliapietra for the Corning Museum’s podcast series, “Meet the artist.” They really, really, really need to work on their production values, but if you can get over the lousy sound quality it’s an interesting show.

She says Lino is the “most significant Italian influence” in glass art. Interesting characterization. Don’t know that I’d argue, but it seems too limiting to restrict him to “Italian influence.”

I love the idea of a glass podcast, but glass is such a visual medium that I really think vcasting is more appropriate. In particular, Tagliapietra is not a native English speaker and he’s much easier to understand when you can also see him speak. 47 minutes of deciphering ItaloEnglish with compromised sound quality will tax all but his biggest fans. Perhaps they should take a cue from Bullseye, which released a video on Steve Klein that’s certainly more effective in getting the point across.

This is the second in Corning’s “Meet the Artist” series and the only one I can find on iTunes. If you visit the Corning Museum website and do a search, you’ll find the first in the series, Toots Zynsky. If Tagliapietra is my favorite blown glass artist, Zynsky’s my favorite kilnformed glass artist, so this is a treat worth the 25MB MP3 download.

Again, though, this would have been better as a vcast. Corning thoughtfully provides a page of Zynsky images and a page of Tagliapietra images to “view along,” but it’s not the same.

Next up: Marvin Lipofsky, whose strong beliefs and opinions ought to make this an interesting podcast.

Corning’s also promising to release a podcast series on its glass collection this month. I sincerely hope they’ve gotten the vcast stuff down by then.

BTW, Bullseye is beginning to get the whole video thing nicely. They did an early video, Bullseye Connections, that I greatly enjoyed but am told was more a labor of love than profit, so I was sorry when they didn’t release “Connections II.”

Hopefully, with the Klein video, a capture of an Oregon Public Broadcasting piece on wonderful artist Catharine Newell, and now a really intelligently done clip with Tom Jacobs demonstrating the glass sketch, they’ll make releasing new clips a regular thing. Not sure who over at Bullseye is doing it, but I’d love to see Corning (and the Glass Museum up in Tacoma) follow his/her example.

Kinetic glass with Mr. Dunham

I caught a podcast from “Firelady” on iTunes that featured noted flameworker Bandhu Scott Dunham, discussing his kinetic glass sculptures. Curious, I hit up his site, Salusa Glassworks, and looked around. Very neat stuff.

Dunham’s probably best known for his definitive books on flameworking, but that’s kinda like saying Dale Chihuly’s best known for his book on glass art in Venice. Dunham does some beautiful work and his latest stuff has a simplicity that I really enjoy.

His kinetic sculptures, though, are my favorites. Dunham’s combined the scientific glassblowing world with engineering and art, and come up with steam engines, compressed air engines and “marble machines” that are genuinely cool. Definitely worth a look.

Hey, Verizon: Can you hear me NOW?

Every once in awhile a goofy message pops up on my phone. A few days ago, the phone rang once, my phone read “Call Intercepted” and that was it.

So I called Verizon for a translation, and started on one of those incredibly annoying customer service debacles. Well, actually, it wasn’t Verizon’s fault…or maybe it was…or maybe it wasn’t…

Anyway, in the course of explaining that I have a premium feature on my phones called “Call Intercept” (along with 6 other features I’d never heard of or used), the representative said I could save a lot of money if I rethought my phone plan, took off the stuff I wasn’t using and didn’t insist on being able to call Canada for free. Then he asked if I’d ever thought of using DirecTV service, because Verizon was running a special on it…”Tell me more,” I said.

That was serious mistake #1.

The rep told me that if I combined Internet, landline and wireless into a single package, I’d save a ton of money through package discounts..and if I signed up for DirecTV through Verizon I’d save even more…enough so that my Internet and TV services were essentially free and they’d throw in a digital video recorder. Greedy soul that I am, I said “sure.”

That was serious mistake #2.

I’m the fortunate inheritor of a bunch of old TVs, which I’ve deployed throughout the house. With my current setup, four TVs run from the downstairs satellite box using UHF remotes, and the other three upstairs run from the second satellite box. Instead of doing the couch potato prisoner thing glued to a single TV, I can move from room to room and never miss anything on TV. (And that doesn’t even count the wireless setup I have for viewing TV in my basement studio and garage…) Great timesaver, that, and so I asked if DirecTV could give me the same setup. Sure, said the rep, but it would cost me an extra $69. “No problem.”

That was serious mistake #3.

Installer came at 7:55 Wednesday morning bringing six (6) separate satellite receivers to install, higher monthly charges and an entirely different setup than I’d asked for…with a several hundred dollars upfront charge to boot. It took 90 minutes of phone time to clear up the confusion, by which time the installer had gone. We canceled the first order, placed a new one, and I cleared my calendar today (Friday) to wait for the installers.

Serious mistake #4.

A pair of installers showed up this time. They took one look at my setup, said “Ma’am, all we were told to install was two receivers. We don’t know nothin’ about this mirroring stuff but that’s because the company gets the order wrong 9 times out of 10. We’ll need at least $300 up front, probably a lot more, before we can start your installation.”

I declined, and they left. Then I called DirecTV to cancel the order, bringing my total of serious mistakes to 5.

Apparently DirecTV’s voice response system is having issues. It put me through voicemail hell nine times–with the system hanging up on me each time. Then I remembered that many voice response systems are now equipped to gauge stress in the customer’s voice and quickly bring in a human. So I put as much strident anger into my voice as possible on call #10 (truthfully, it wasn’t hard) and sure enough, a human picked up…and told me they couldn’t cancel the order, Verizon would have to do it.

Called Verizon. The rep was sympathetic, really hated to hear that I’d had trouble…and couldn’t cancel the order and refund my $69. He gave me a different DirecTV number to try. 15 attempts (same silly voicemail system) later I tried the old DirecTV number, asked to be transferred to a human, and got a very nice lady who suggested that the order was “probably” canceled.

I hope believing that isn’t serious mistake #6.

Anyway, Verizon said, “don’t worry, we’re waiting for permission to offer FiOS TV service in your neighborhood soon. It’s much, much better than DirecTV…”

I hope so. For the time being, though, my TVs are staying where they are. I mostly watch DVDs anyway, so…

Quilt of glass

Quick note: Remember Windwoman, the 8×8 glass tile I did for a virtual exhibit? That exhibit, GlassQuilt, is now open, thanks to hard (and great) work from glass artist Toni Johnson.

There’s some really nice stuff in there, and the diversity is interesting. One thing that surprised me: Most of the 32 artists chose to represent all four themes (earth, fire, wind and water) in a single tile. Very few of us picked just one and stuck with it.

Anyway, it’s worth a look. Visit if you get a chance. Just as a refresher, here’s a quick shot of my entry (I chose the theme “Air”):

More mayflowers

If you’re tired of looking at vanity shots, skip this post. Got up bright and early yesterday, the sun was doing interesting morning things, and my irises are OUT! (well, they’re beginning to be out, anyway) So…more flower pictures.

One of the dark purple iris has picked up some wild white markings somewhere (or at least I don’t remember having one like this last year). I know that in tulips, the wild tiger stripes and leopard spots are caused by a virus, so I hope there’s not something attacking my iris and giving me one last glorious show before the end.

Anyway, here ’tis. (happy sigh) These are from my Nikon digital, sharpened and color-balanced in Photoshop but otherwise not much done to ‘em. The colors really are that intense.

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