Cynthia

Art takes courage. I find that fascinating (also scary).
I’m not talking about the courage it takes to put your work out there, live through rejection and put it out again, although that takes plenty of guts. But rejection’s a given in my dayjob, and like most writers I’ve built up armor against it: You don’t [...]

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Don’t know if this’ll be useful for anyone, but I got tired of “figgerin” on paper when my stuff would come out of the kiln. So I built a little firing calculator to do it for me, and you’re welcome to download the file and try it. (You’ll need an application that can read Microsoft Excel 2003 [...]

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So what if your kiln was smart? (Gosh, this sounds like a GE commercial)
But… what if your kiln really was smart? What if it sensed things happening during a firing, analyzed and decided on a course of action, then responded appropriately? 
Would that make a difference in the way you fire glass? The time it takes? [...]

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First of all, I’ve never really thought of myself as sentimentalist. Sure, I sometimes sob at tearjerker chickflicks. And a cracking good animation or a sublimely elegant algorithm or hardware that really IS “plug and play” or somebody just being nice for no good reason or truly amazing or content-rich art invariably results in leaky optics. And maybe [...]

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You know what I love about the glass community? They’re so bloody generous.
As I’ve said ad nauseum, my kiln died. (Well, c’maaaaaaan–that kiln’s been a constant companion for the last five years. Not having one handy is almost as unsettling as losing a mobile phone, which probably says something about my gadget jones.) 
Within hours of [...]

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