Whew…another Castuary bites the dust
February 22, 2008
Kilnful of molds came out of the kiln yesterday morning and I’m a happy camper who can check off one more promise to herself: I’m getting serious about this glass stuff.
Part of being serious is, I guess, learning when it’s OK to compromise and when it’s not. Shout (detail above) also came out of the kiln but only 85% good, so it’s not OK to compromise and I’m recasting them.
(BTW…take a look at the finish on those pieces, just two hours out of the kiln with just enough coldwork to knock off the edges, no more. Sweet.)
Casting into the doldrums
February 21, 2008
Stuck in Castuary again, anticipating what’s coming out of the kiln after a looooooooooooong firing. Drat. I need stronger nerves.
I think what appeals the most to me about glass casting is getting away from thinking of glass as a shapeable 2D object…and the fact that every casting is, ultimately, an engineering puzzle.
- How do I build a model that takes advantage of glass’ physical properties (transparency, translucency, surface variability, etc.) without being caught by its limitations…and still tell the story I’m after?
- What method should I use to create a mother mold or resin model for archival purposes (i.e., in case I screw up and need to rebuild something)?
- How do I construct an investment that takes advantage of gravity to help the glass flow into the right places, without trapping air, wax, clay or whatever else I don’t want?
- How thick should I make the walls so that they hold the glass securely without overinsulating or causing hot and cold spots?
- Which investment(s) should I use?
- What schedule will get the glass juicy enough to flow smoothly into all those tiny details without boiling? Am I taking a fragile investment up too fast? Am I staying in the danger zones too long?
- Most of all, how do I develop enough patience to get through another Castuary?
Mooning
February 20, 2008
I’m cooking dinner and my mobile rings; it’s Dad. “Go outside right now and look east. You’ll see an almost perfect lunar eclipse. Bye.”
So I shut down the stove, head outside, and realize that I’ve lived in this house more than six years and still don’t know where east is. Patiently, I scan the skyline (which in my neighborhood is largely concealed by trees). No moon. Has it eclipsed already?
Backyard, nothing. Front yard, nothing. Side yard, nothing. Other side yard, nothing. Drat. I’m heading back into the house when I glimpse a reflection in the glassroom window: A bright golden light emerging from behind my neighbor’s pine tree.
Bingo.
Yuki Japanese Restaurant
February 15, 2008
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Area: West-side downtown, 23rd street
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Price to fill up two people: About $40
I’m not sure anything is going to top Sushi Takahashi for price, but in terms of taste, this little Japanese restaurant on 23rd between Lovejoy and Johnson definitely meets it. They served some of the best toro (fatty tuna) sashimi I’ve had in a long time, but where they really shine is in sushi rolls.
I think these guys must stay up nights figuring out what else to stuff in a roll, and they had some really nice combinations. Robyn and I ate our way through a tray of sushi rolls, sashimi and misc. for about $36 for the two of us, with green tea. We were stuffed, and probably shouldn’t have started with appetizers–Robyn had steamed edamame pods, which were tasty, and I had the traditional cucumber salad, which should have been marinated longer.
Tip: The tiger sushi roll is very good.
In moving color
February 12, 2008
Check this out: heat-sensitive glass tile. I may be the last person in the world to hear about it. Mom sent over a newsclipping and I investigated a bit.
The tile changes color according to temperature, so if it’s in your shower you’ll supposedly get a continuously changing rainbow while you scrub. The site’s kinda info-poor and they don’t really say how it works. I’d suspect some kind of heat-sensitive crystal, which also makes me wonder how long it’s going to last. (And what happens in 10 years when color-changing tiles become as dated as shag carpet? Can you turn it off and pretend it’s just plain tile?)
What they DO say, though, is that this stuff ain’t cheap. You can buy samples of the different tile styles, $33 apiece for a 4×4 tile (or nearly $300/SF). They also require you to agree to we-don’t-trust-you payment terms before they’ll mention the price.
I suppose if I ever get rich, I might give it a shot.
Color reactions of glass (list)
February 9, 2008
Another quick one, mostly so I can always find it.
I’ve talked frequently about “reactivity” of glass, i.e., the tendency of one glass to change color and other properties when combined with, or in close proximity to, another glass. In compatible glasses the concern is more about color change than anything else…and the color changes can be something of a shock.
Early on, I put a lot of work into a glasspic I called “snow maiden,” mostly made out of BE French Vanilla. I sifted BE Salmon Pink powder all over her face to add a healthy blush. On firing she became “Tahitian maiden,” and taught me the lovely dark reaction you get when you combine FV and Salmon Pink.
Since then I’ve done a LOT of color tests. (in the picture above you see a lovely reaction between Medium Amber and Salmon Pink)
I mostly try sifting frits over one another, as above, or combining them in deeper cubes to test colors for casting. I tend to slip a couple into firings when there’s space in the kiln (and I have time–measuring out minute quantities of frit gets to be a pain), so I wind up with lots of tiles and cubes that are invaluable references for my work. At some point I’m going to catalog them, get them up on my walls and do something about making a visual tool on my website…but that’s in the future.
There are several resources available to help you figure out color reactions before they happen. Probably the most definitive is Bullseye’s own, which they revamped in the last few months. They’ve built charts broadly defining the characteristics of their glasses, one for transparents, one for opals. There’s good firing data in there, as well as notes on chemical composition and potential for reaction.
Lauri Levanto, a Finnish glass artist, has charted the Bullseye info into cross-referenced tables in both English and Suomish. If you’re willing to be a bit adventurous, check here first and you’ll see a lot more links to very useful things like a glass glossery and such. Not all of it is English, but I can usually puzzle out what isn’t in because it’s very logically (for me, anyway) organized.
Torchworkers/beadmakers uses these reactions quite a bit, and most of the online discussions I’ve found about this involve beadmaking. I’m still looking for additional information on reactivities, with Bullseye or just about any other glass used in art. If someone has additional links, lemme know and I’ll post them here.
Thanks!
–cynthia
Mystery date
February 9, 2008
Quick one. Remember the issues I had getting my new Linksys wireless router to work?
Briefly, the wired part of the router worked fine. Wireless? Forget it. Freddie Mac, my MacBook Pro, can generally find ANY wireless connection and try to hook up, but as far as the new router was concerned, she was blind, deaf and dumb. I wired her (and the rest of my primarily Windows stable) to the router but prepared to take the bloody thing back.
It must have caught wind of my plans, because I came home last night, plugged Freddie back in and up popped a “You have a new wireless device” on my main Windows machine. Checked the router and, sure enough, it was picking up both Freddie’s wire and her wireless signal, and Freddie was picking up a strong and beautiful wireless signal. I unplugged the Ethernet and stayed connected.
One by one it found the wireless desktops, the print server, etc… and hooked them up. I didn’t do a bloody thing. Now someone tell me why it took this long for the router to wake up to wireless…
Backspace
February 9, 2008
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Location: Downtown, near Chinatown
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Price for coffee and a bun for two: About $10
File this one under “experience.” Robyn and I hit up Sushi Takahashi on our weekly dine-out, and asked the hostess where to go for after dinner-cocoa or coffee. She pointed us to Backspace, about three blocks away (and maybe four blocks down from the Contemporary Crafts Museum) in the freezing cold. We opened the door…and realized that the starving students who fill up at Sushi Takahashi probably head right down here for a night of music, e-mail and sock puppets.
Anchors away
February 8, 2008
Yes, I realize it’s spelled “aweigh.” I was making a point. 
For those of you who haven’t heard about it yet, the Asian Internet outages that wreaked so much havoc on overseas business lately were caused–in part–by a ship’s anchor dragging over undersea cables. (You can read about it in WSJ)
The last time this happened, right before the holidays in 2006, a Taiwan earthquake was the proximate cause. Now, you can in some measure predict and protect against moderate earthquakes, but this time the outage was caused by the nautical equivalent of a cow kicking a lantern in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn, and that’s a lot harder to guard against.
When I was a tech reporter covering US federal computing, the nice guys at NIST learned of my fascination with gigantic networks and sent me a chuckle: Mae East was most vulnerable to attack from a sale-crazed Christmas shopper.
Staccato Gelato
February 8, 2008
Location: Laurelhurst
Price for gelato for two (with beverage): About $10
Post-India Grill, Robyn and I took a stroll down toward the Laurelhurst Theatre and explored a bit (noting several restaurants worth trying). We stopped in at Staccato for a hot beverage and gelato. A miniature dual-flavor gelato plus decaf cappucino and espresso set us back about $6. They make a big deal about their home-made donuts–which did look and smell delicious–but we didn’t try those.