Back to work!!
February 17, 2010
I’m SUPPOSED to be working. Instead, I’m petting crystal, which either means I’m a glassist who’s finally gone over the edge…or that the nice delivery man just dropped off a big honkin’ Gaffer shipment.
Lordee, these things are gorgeous. How are you supposed to chop them up?
Weekwhacker
February 13, 2010
Why does there seem to be so little time when you’re facing the future, and so much when you’re looking back?
It’s mid-February already? How did that happen? Eeek. I’ve got to get on the ball. Now. I’ve got a show at Guardino’s in late March/April and another, OGG’s Spring Glass Gallery, at the end of April, and I’m not nearly ready.
I *am* getting stuff done. Dayjob stuff is moving along. And I’ve set up two shows in the last six weeks, one in the Mayor’s office at City Hall. I’m in a third, and I’m working with the Oregon Glass Guild to set up a LOT of exhibit/sales opportunities throughout the year.
Quick note to glassists: If you live in Oregon or just over the border in Washington state, this would be a GOOD year to join OGG. We’re working hard to get your glass in the face of just about anybody with a checkbook.
Folks told me that I (or rather, SHOUT!) showed up on the email blast and home page of one of my favorite blogs, Susan Lomuto’s Daily Art Muse. Very cool surprise that’s sending all kinds of web traffic to my portfolio site, cynthiamorgan.com. I KNEW I should have gotten that bloody site rebuilt–it’s not really ready for visitors. Sigh.
The available kiln has pretty much constrained my work to open-faced relief panels; I can’t fit mold-plus-reservoir in the kiln, not in the size I like to work. SHOUT!, however, whetted my 3D appetite and the fact that I get the pedestals at Guardino’s while Leah gets the walls just exacerbated it. (I’m teamed with the marvelous Leah Wilson for this show)
The show is themed around water. I’m having a blast designing watery stuff and playing up blue, green and straw-colored glasses.
There are 15 people inhabiting this sculpture and eight of them can be seen in this view. Can you pick them out? (Hint: rotate the piece about 15 degrees and half of them will disappear entirely)
And wow–I’m in love with sculpting all over again. Creating in full 3D, not just bas-relief, is as ecstatic as I can get with my hands in clay (the movie “Ghost” notwithstanding).
Sometimes the brain disengages and I just watch the hands. They know what to do. I don’t care if everyone else hates it, if it never sells, if people call it sentimental, old-fashioned trash and a thousand galleries and competitions turn up their noses…it just feels right and I’m having fun watching it.
I’ve finished the silicone for Currents Repose, the sixth piece in the Guardino show (left). With luck, the wax will be done by Monday or Tuesday. She and her 25 pounds of glass are still small enough to fit in Scooby-the-Skutt, albeit with some skullduggery.
The seventh, Currents Breaking, is not. Not by a long shot, so I’m renting a kiln for her. So far, the only thing she’s been breaking is my heart.
She’s also an example of Les’ More Syndrome (say it out loud), named after my friend Les Rowe-Israelson, who WILL expand a piece to fit the available kilnspace and just a bit more. I twit her about it all the time, but it’s clear that, in 3D, I have the same disease.
Breaking started out as a nice, simple curve with wave action. As usual, she sprouted a face, the face became an integral part of the work…and all of a sudden she’s 16 inches tall and requires probably 40 pounds of glass to complete. She poses some pretty problems in casting–I *NEED* to take a class or five in large-scale casting because this make-it-up-as-you-go-along stuff can’t continue–and the one now being siliconed, right, should more properly be called “Breaking II.”
Breaking I was killed by an extension cord, with a lot of help from me. I tripped over the cord while carrying the base coat mold across the studio, smashing it into about 20 pieces. (In retrospect, Breaking might not have been such a hot name.) I had decided to skip the mastermold process and work directly from the clay model–which is dug out of the mold and therefore destroyed. When I make silicones, I never need them again. When I don’t…this happens.
Fortunately, the memory of her was still in my hands, so I rebuilt her from scratch in about five hours. I actually like the second one much, much better, although she’ll be a more difficult cast. I’ve still got the process slideshow online, if you’d like to see her in rotation (I use these slideshows to check my progress while I’m working).
And so Breaking is on her third coat of silicone right now, three more to go before I can make the mothershell. Pouring the wax and steaming out the mold will be a royal PITA. In my dreams these pieces will someday make enough money that I can be a REAL sculptor, one who sends the model to the foundry and lets them do all this nonsense while I just create.
For now, this is where the week goes…
Mighty arty
February 7, 2010
“That is not glass,” the man said flatly, “The label’s wrong.”
Well, yeah, it IS glass–I kinda gave birth to it–but I didn’t contradict him. I was having too much fun.
His wife edged up to the pate de verre panel, until her nose nearly touched it. “No, I think it *is* glass, honey,” she said doubtfully, “I can see light through it.”
The man thwocked the piece with thumb and middle finger–I winced–and it rang satisfactorily. “I guess you’re right,” he said, and they moved on.
ATTACK!!! (epoxy remover)
February 3, 2010
Glass sticks to almost anything when it’s hot, and practically nothing when it’s cold, which is why I love it as a work surface. It’s also why it’s such a pain to attach something, say a hollow pate de verre relief sculpture, to a wall.
We won’t go into the time I used GE Silicone II to attach hangers to three pate de verre panels for a show, except to say I’m very, very glad that pate de verre bounces.
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The art of ignorance
January 20, 2010
“I just LOVE your collection,” I gushed, “Absolutely incredible. How long have you been collecting?”
My host looked puzzled…
Lemme backtrack a bit: I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t obsessed with art, but it’s rarely played nicely with my other obsession, technology. Since technology pays the bills, art has almost always taken a back seat.
I treasure the rare moments when they’ve combined, as in computer animation, or the heady time I was asked to join a tech corporation’s selection committee for buying “positional” art (which, as it turned out, was because they wanted me to write nice things about their products, not because they really wanted my artistic opinion).
Compound eyes
January 16, 2010
This was a week of contrasts, of suicide bombers and gems, art and armor. A rich week of brainstorming and artstorming and talk, one that brought home the value of new and shared perceptions.
Hey–whatcha workin’ on in twenty-ten?
January 1, 2010
The new year is a time for lots of new direction, projects, ideas, etc. So I’ll show you one of mine, if you show me yours. 
This is roughly 18 inches tall, another one of those “won’t fit the kiln” projects that’ll get silicone master-molded, filled with wax and stuck on the shelf somewhere. It didn’t start out this way, BTW–originally, this was a long, flowing shape for another project, but I discovered a tragic ancestor* and all of a sudden it grew people.
The sculpture that wouldn’t die. Part III. Period.
December 20, 2009
OK, so where are we? Oh yeah. At the end of the first firing of Triangle, this was the tally:
- One destroyed clay sculpture (getting it out of the mold kills it)
- No silicone master as a backup
- One spent plaster/silica mold
- About 8 pounds of unfused frit mixed with talc and hence garbage
- One giant glass donut that should have been a sculpture
Drat. This stuff should really come with an undo button. Fortunately, *I* come with a REdo button, so after a buncha work this is what I pulled out of the kiln:
The sculpture that wouldn’t die, part II (of 3)
December 17, 2009
In Part I, I wandered through a lot of creative angst and a clay sculpture I called “Triangle.” Now, in part II, I pretty much wreck the whole thing in seven deadly mistakes.
The sculpture that wouldn’t die, part I (of 3)
December 15, 2009
Note to readers: I’m going to try to break this up into manageable, readable lengths that stand on their own. I’m not trying to do cliffhangers, I’m just trying to reduce dismay at the lengths of my huge posts…so this is a three-parter.
Sometimes, no matter how often you destroy it, a piece refuses to go quietly. Instead, it hangs around and bugs you until, in desperation, you finish it just for the sake of peace and quiet.
Triangle was one of those. Despite seven disastrous mistakes, it’s finally out of the kiln. Along the way, it taught me quite a bit about what makes my work tick.
Emotives: SHOUT