Losing my APPetite? Sorta
November 28, 2009
Turned off, my iPhone epitomizes Zen design: sleek, nearly featureless and aerodynamic.* Turned on, it looks more like grandma’s attic.
After living with Gigi-the-iPhone for about 18 months, my app fervor has diminished. I’ve six pages (100 apps) sitting on Gigi, but mostly, I use the ones that came with the phone. Of the ones I’ve installed, only five see regular use. I’ve taken at least 20 more off just to relieve some of the clutter.
Happy Thanksgiving!
November 26, 2009
Have a small mushy moment with your pie…and go clean out your email. It may do wonders for your soul.
I’m not kidding–that’s what I did this morning, feeling just a tad sorry for myself. So much to do, not enough time, so much uncertainty (you’d think I’d be used to it by now), etc., etc., etc.
In the midst of all that, I noticed that my email was a mess, thousands and thousands of messages just sitting there in my various inboxes, slowing everything down and making stuff very hard to find.
Zipped up to organization mode, starting putting everything into subfolders, deleting the unnecessary…and discovered I have a helluva lot to be thankful for. In the last year I’ve:
- Received almost constant mentoring from gallery owners, photographers, marketeers, fellow artists (some of whom I’m in awe of and still can’t believe they chat about their work so freely), art groups, glassmaking experts, friends, art critics (and on and on), helping me to develop as a serious artist. (Gee, maybe 2010 is the year I get to stop qualifying “artist” with “serious.”)
- Made a surprising number of new friends, online and off. I’m constantly amazed at the power of the Web to bring people together…and even more amazed at what happens when you finally meet up with a longtime online buddy.
- Seen a remarkable outpouring of support for a laid-back cat in need of a home. Thanks to email and this blog, Ernie not only made friends but got help from those friends when he needed it.
- Met up with one of my first best friends from elementary school, someone I’d lost contact with sometime around the sixth grade. If you ever want a serious headtrip, compare YOUR memories of your childhood with a childhood friend’s.
- Learned and learned about my first true love, high tech, with help from some great experts in everything from web development to social media marketing.
- Stayed connected to my beloved cousins Robyn and Jeff, who work in dangerous, nasty places to ensure that I still have a Thanksgiving each year. I may get into spirited debates on the politics of what they do, but they’re putting far more on the line for their beliefs than I ever have. I respect and greatly admire them for that (and probably envy them a tad). Now, thanks to the immediacy of email, web and VoIP, even in an Afghani outpost, I don’t have to worry about whether they’re OK.
- Been gifted with some truly hilarious videos, images, jokes, etc…usually right when I most needed a laugh.
And a whole bunch more I won’t get into. My email was a sort of personal history, reminding me that I’m connected to a lot more than a computer and a little basement studio. It’s a web in much more than the tech sense, and one I’m very grateful for.
End of mush. Go clean out your email. Eat some pie. And Happy Thanksgiving.
Spamalicious
November 24, 2009
You know, people, I think we’re missing a bet. Have you ever tried reading your spam?
Somewhere inside me is this compulsion not to let anything go to waste (probably DNA from my thrifty Scottish ancestors), so I do actually read the spam that’s posted to this blog or my junk mail folders. Every once in awhile, that is; if I read all of it I’d never do anything else.
Building a garage studio on the cheap. Part I: The problem
November 18, 2009
All Diogenes had to do was find an honest man. If he’d been told to squeeze an entire glass casting setup into an 8×8-foot space, he’d have chucked the lantern and gone to Disneyland.
I know how he feels. Start to finish, my glass casting sequence looks like this:
- Model in clay
- Make master and mothermolds of the model in silicone/urethane/whatever
- Pour wax into the master mold
- Clean, refine and incorporate the resulting wax model into the piece
- Invest the wax with a plaster/silica mix
- Steam the wax out of the mold
- Clean and refine the mold
- Pack in the glass
- Fire the mold
- Clean investment off the fired glass
- Coldwork the glass
- Mount it on whatever (optional)
- Pack the piece and mount for transport
The problem is that each of those steps can contaminate the others, ruining materials and possibly tools. With my old setup, for every hour I spent making, I spent about four hours clearing, cleaning and prepping the workspace for the next step. And since the studio was in the main house, wax, plaster and other potentially hazardous/unslightly/house-destroying materials were tracking upstairs and beginning to damage my home.
I seriously considered selling my house and buying a small storefront or warehouse someplace, a la Linda Ethier’s marvelous studio. I’d make sure the place had a bathroom and high-speed Internet, put a hotplate, minifridge and cot in the back, and go straight to heaven.
Unfortunately, the current housing market put a stop to that. I considered enlarging the existing studio space, but my contractor brother-in-law shook his head. I’d have to demolish a huge concrete patio, tear out a foundation wall, move the HVAC, gas lines, water and electrical service, figure out how to deal with the bedroom floor directly above. It would be cheaper, he said, to tear down the house and start over. (which wasn’t an option)
Putting up a separate studio building behind the house would cost less, but not much less, and would destroy my beloved trees. Plus, local zoning laws made siting a standalone studio difficult.
That pretty much left the garage. This being Portland, where we’re so recycled we’re green, I hatched a plan: I’d use as much recycled/salvaged stuff as possible. And, taking after those home remodeling shows, I’d do it for under $500. And I’d promised to participate in October’s Portland Open Studios, where hundreds of people would visit my studio to see my work, so I had a deadline.
And I made it, with a LOT of help from family and friends (and huge assistance from my mom). There’s still a bunch of stuff left to do, and it’s not perfect, but I’ve got a light, bright, airy space that lets me work without all the nasty cleanup.
Today my old studio is the “clean/creative” space, where I model clay, pack the molds with frit and work with sheet glass. The garage has become my “dirty studio,” with ample storage and separate workstations for waxwork, coldworking, moldmaking, mold cleanup, kiln monitoring, display fabrication and packing.
I’m not suggesting this is a kilnformer’s wonder-studio. If you want one of those, go look at the Corning glass school, Linda Ethier’s place in Portland, the Bullseye Resource Center studios, John Groth’s studio in Beaverton, OR, etc. (And if you’ve got a studio you’re proud of, please post the URL in the comments section–I’m thinking I may want to start talking about other peoples’ studios, too.)
Mine is nothing more than a garage conversion done on the cheap, and it looks it. But it works for me.
I’ve got a LOT to talk about, so I’m going to publish this in installments. Today’s post is mostly about the problems I had to solve. The next post will deal with basic infrastructure and workstations. After that, storage.
I wish I had some good “before” pics, but so far I can’t find them. Those who saw the garage (very few, because I generally had a “keep out” sign on the door), saw a dark, dank, gloomy cave.
What little storage there was, didn’t work well, so the garage floor was where junk came to die. The walls were either dark grey concrete or unpainted drywall; the garage doors and all woodwork had been stained dark brown, making it even darker. Two lightbulbs in the ceiling provided small yellow pools of light that stopped about three feet from the floor. No windows, no source of water, and no ventilation.
Dismal, but with potential. I made a list of requirements for the garage and my old studio to become a real working casting studio:
- Light. Light. Light. I wanted to be able to SEE, in correctly colored light.
- A separate, easily cleaned workstation for every major stage of glass casting.
- Custom storage for all my tools and supplies.
- A water source with multiple feeds for coldworking equipment, moldwork, etc.
- Except for the kilns, NOTHING on the floor that didn’t fold up or roll out of the way.
- Scalable (because I KNOW I’ll be adding gadgets, it’s in the blood).
- Completely restorable to full garage status within an afternoon, in case the snows come or the house needs to sell.
- Reuse as much of the junk on the floor as possible. If I had to buy, first option was buying from Goodwill or a reuse center.
- Total cost $500 or less
I’ve still got some things to do, but I’ve mostly achieved everything on the list for about $475. More on that in the next post.
Juried competitions
November 15, 2009
You know all those stupid, persnickety, idiotic, officious entry rules that show organizers dream up just to ruin an artist’s day? And those smug, supercilious (and expensive) suggestions they make regarding your need for better photography, displays, artist statements, etc…?
Uhm… They’re pretty much on target. After pulling together a (very small) juried competition for a local exhibit, I take back everything I’ve ever, ever said about that stuff.
Well, 90 percent of it, anyway. I’ve only walked maybe five feet in a show organizer’s shoes but as usual it’s an invaluable perspective-changer. [Read more]
Casters: Go get this tipsheet
November 13, 2009
Catching up on the backlog of email, I found a note from Bullseye Glass announcing a new tipsheet on lost wax casting for glass. I gotta say it’s one of the best process guides for glass casting that I’ve come across. Even if you don’t use Bullseye glass, it’s definitely one to have in your reference library.
There are probably as many glass casting practices as there are glass casters; if you’ve been casting for a few years your routine tends to consist of whatever works, whether it’s handed-down wisdom, rocket science or voodoo kilngod stuff.
It’s nice to see a guide that doesn’t just say “do this,” as most do, but also says “and here’s why.” Not all artists are allergic to science (even if some of us, like me, get terribly confused).
That said, I don’t necessarily follow all the practices in this guide. It seems centered on artists doing transparent casting; the layered pate de verre I love is a different beast in several respects (especially when it comes to dealing with water in your investment).
And I’d love to see Bullseye (or somebody) discuss other options for binders and refractories. For example, I’m testing hydrocal and alumina hydrate right now which does a lovely job as a facecoat if it doesn’t bankrupt you first. Not much of that here. More detail on waxworking would have been cool, especially with other waxes than victory brown. A LOT of my wax frustrations ended when I learned to employ the right wax for the job.
But heck–the thing’s already eight pages long and it’s free. And that hairspray trick’s very cool.
The nicest part is that this document gives you enough info so that–if you don’t already understand something–you can make a rational choice. And in the end, that’s what good casting practice is all about.
Very nice job, Bullseye. Don’t know who wrote this but please, share my compliments.
Artful in Seattle
November 13, 2009
I’m not often asked to be the muscle for somebody so when I am, it’s kinda neat. And what could be more fun than hauling glass in Seattle?
My friend Becky owns a gallery in downtown Portland (Fireborne, you should visit), which carries everything from little glass bugs to jewelry to big honkin’ sculpture. She’s getting ready for the Christmas rush, needed to clear out older pieces and bring in new, and wanted to make some exchanges in Seattle. Somebody had to schlep boxes and hold doors for her… was I interested?
Does cobalt turn glass blue?
Guess THIS one!…oh well, drat.
November 12, 2009
Oh well, THAT took about five minutes. (sigh) So a couple of days ago I promised a free drink to the first one to correctly identify the subject of this image:
If you’ve been reading the blog you may have noted my recent forays in the rainy Portland Farmers’ Market, which might have been a clue. It’s where I picked up this intriguing-looking, organically grown heirloom broccoli variant of cauliflower, Broccoli Romanesco (Roman broccoli):
As usual, Gary gets one free drink for being first to hit it generically (and at this rate, Gary, it’d better be lemonade unless you want a hangover of elephantine proportions the next time you hit town). But Ondine not only named it, she gave the real name of the beast, so I think that’s good for another. Lemme know when you want to collect, Ondine.
Despite my love of cruciferous veggies, I mostly bought this one for its photogenic qualities. Between the leaves and the whorls on the fruit itself, it probably corners the market on mathematical equations. Those knobs are particularly interesting-looking fractals, arranged in near-logarithmic patterns, so I couldn’t wait to photograph it. After it’d be sliced, roasted and incorporated into a linguini for dinner.
Too bad it’s a particularly high-protein veggie, thanks to the thousands of houseguests it brought along. I set it up in the kitchen (if you’re into photographing produce, always get a kitchen with a black granite counter–built in backdrops), started snapping away with long exposures and noticed odd blurry areas in the images. Went back and checked, and discovered green aphids, white aphids, odd little purple- and blue-striped bugs, caterpillars, gnats and spiders. (The dancing bugs are the soft blue-white spots on the photo at left)
That cauliflower had more insects than an ant farm, and they eagerly set out to explore the kitchen.
I immersed the veggie in a fast-running coldwater bath for about 15 minutes, probably destroying entire civilizations’ worth of bugs without a whit of conscience. Then I took the rest of my photos.
The bath didn’t phase the surviving bugs a bit–turns out those whorling nodes make excellent bug shelters. When the cauliflower had rested and dried a bit, they popped back out and resumed explorations. More bath, more bugs. When the three-inch caterpillar wended his way across my viewfinder, I pretty much lost my appetite for cauliflower.
So the cauliflower wound up in the yard debris bin outside. And I’m still itching and scrubbing down the kitchen.
You know, sometimes a few pesticides aren’t the end of the world..
P.S. Looked it up on the web and read that it’s very delicious, far more than regular broccoli or cauliflower. Also that the spirally, fractal florets are great hiding places for bugs and that it needs to be soaked in salt water for at least 15 minutes to get rid of them. Hmmmm. Must be the salt that does it; soaking in fresh water only encourages ‘em…
Guess THIS one!
November 10, 2009
I don’t know why I even bother, since every body seems to guess right on the first or second try, (the solution obviously being to find a less savvy audience which so far, thank heavens, hasn’t happened) but I suppose I’m the eternal photo-optimist. For a free drink of your choice next time you’re in town, be the first one to correctly identify the subject of the following image:
Answer will be published in a day or two…
Slinging in the rain
November 7, 2009
The homeless guy plucked at my coat sleeve. “Hey, you’re not thinking of going to the farmers’ market right NOW, are you?”
“Uhm…yeah. Why?”
“Didn’t you check the Doppler radar? Huge storm coming this way–you’ll get soaked to the skin. I’d wait until maybe after 2:00 if I was you.”
I thanked him, musing on the excellent quality of homeless folk you get around here: Friendly, polite and up on their meteorology. But missing the market wasn’t an option, given my current mission: To put Portland in a box.