Lily: The slideshow
July 2, 2009
Awhile back I’d posted a slideshow of one of my sculptures, Lily, showing the steps in making the clay model. During the move to a new webhost, the slideshow was lost, and I’ve gotten several requests to replace it. So…here ’tis. Enjoy.
Saving (a) face
June 28, 2009
So you think that lifecasting is the EASY way to get out of sculpting a face? HAH. I’ll take sculpting any day.
Case in point: My cousin Jeff called the other night, “Hey, can you make a mold of my face?”
Jeff’s an inventor (and a whole bunch of other things), so brainstorms and projects with him are usually fun and a bit off the wall. “Sure,” I said casually, “Just let me know when you want to try it.”
“I’ll be over in the morning,” he said.
[Read more]
The Joy of Coldworking (book)
June 27, 2009
The Joy of Coldworking
A guide to grinding, smoothing and polishing blown and fused glass
Johnathan Schmuck
$49.95
Available through warmglass.com or the Bullseye Resource Center (although as of 6/27/09 it wasn’t listed in their online store)
No, the book’s title is not an oxymoron, at least not for author Johnathan Schmuck. The dude actually likes to grind and polish glass, and since his writing gives no sign of mental deficiencies I must conclude he knows what he’s talking about.
Winding down a week of glass (BEcon 2009)
June 25, 2009
Draaaagged awake Sunday morning, post BEcon and Saturday night’s Lehr-B-Q. OGG had a pre-daddy’s day demo this morning and if the instructor had been anyone but the famous Marty Kremer (or maybe Keith Richards) I’d have stayed in bed. I was tired.
Fortunately, it was Marty, who’s a pretty bright guy as well as a consummate glassist, so I enjoyed myself immensely. Anybody who skipped that class missed out bigtime; at the end Marty held a drawing for his demo pieces, and several students got very lucky indeed. We ended up at Campbell’s BBQ for nearly three hours of ribs and conversation that ranged from the Israeli glass scene to annealing cycles.
It was the perfect end to a very glassy week.
Glass, relaxed
June 24, 2009
As much as I love the pate de verre processes I’m investigating, they can get kinda intense, tedious and looooong. And they don’t exactly happen overnight.
It’s amazing how nice it feels just to quickly FUSE something for a change.
I’m part of the Oregon Glass Guild, and every year we get together with the Oregon Potters Association (huge, well-oiled org that dwarfs little OGG) for the Empty Bowls benefit. Members get together to make bowls from donated materials, and anything goes–whatever you can dream up with what’s at hand, you can make.
The bowls are sold over the fourth of July at the Waterfront Blues Festival, with all proceeds going to the Oregon Food Bank. Can you think of a nicer way to play with glass? I can’t. In the last ten years we’ve raised more than $120,000 for OFB, and had a lot of fun doing it.
PLUG: DEFINITELY make the blues festival. Reggie Houston, Mary Flower, Linda Hornbuckle and Janice Scroggins will be there and aside from being darn nice people they also make amazing music. I wrote about Hornbuckle and Scroggins’ performance earlier this year–the four of them in the same venue will be amazing. And it’s got a great cause that’s really hurting this year.
OGG members gathered at the Uroboros glass factory in Portland last month to make our contributions (and we also made some additional stuff on our own). Uro generously donates the glass and the first firing of the blanks–and this year my buddy Kat Hartley and co-owner Lorna Lovell also made bowls, which was fun–and then members do any coldwork and final slumping.
I’ve got eight of those fired blanks slumping in the kiln right now, and spent a few hours yesterday coldworking them, doing a little carving, having fun just playing. They’re not great art, but they’re surprisingly nice bowls and plates.
I enjoyed myself hugely when we were making the blanks–anything goes, the glass is all there, buddies encouraging you to just PLAY with the glass… Sometimes I think I get so hung up on controlled testing and planning and precision that I forget how much fun it is to, well, have fun with glass.
And there was something quiet and soothing about standing at the flat lap yesterday and playing with edge treatments on a bunch of simple blanks. No anxiety about surfaces, no worry about messing up the natural surface of a casting…just puuuush into the whirring diamonds, watch the water skim off the surface, and relax.
Hmmmm. Maybe I oughta do this on a regular basis. Right now I’m gonna go down, check the kiln, see if it’s ready to be opened. I’ll let you know.
BEcon, finis
June 21, 2009
Apparently, I am 32, 6 foot 10, built like Morgan Le Fay (or maybe Wonder Woman) with waist-length coal-black hair and a princess conehead hat thingee. (think Frazzeta’s women) I walk around with a computer on my head and a chunk of glass in one hand while the other hand does tiny Queen-like wavelets to the populace. Or so folks meeting me at BEcon thought before the cold light of reality struck. (i.e., they met me)
They got the computer and the glass right, anyway.
This BEcon (i.e., Bullseye glass conference) was a showstopper in many ways, but the best part, as usual, wound up being the people I met and remet.There was as much sharing outside the conference as in, and I met a lot of generous people who were more than happy to clue me in on casting stuff I needed to know. [Read more]
BEcon, second day
June 20, 2009
OK, there's a sculpture in here some place. (Taken on the PSU campus)
You measure the quality of a conference by deltas. That’s delta as in change, not large-muddy-lump-guarding-the-Mississippi. The delta between your pre- and post-conference who/what/which/how knowledge should be at least as great as the trouble and expense you’ve invested in going.
As far as I’m concerned, BEcon’s day two deltas pretty much paid for the trip. (And you can also read about the first day)
BEcon, Day 0.5
June 19, 2009
Artlovers’ tip: When attending a busy Bullseye Gallery reception and all those warm bodies raise the temperature to sweatworthiness, visit the work in the front window. That’s where the best air conditioner vent is positioned and, since the art in the window is generally a showstopper, you can enjoy both a warm contemplation and a cool breeze.
Just don’t expect to be there alone; an amazing number of the throngs attending the BEcon opening reception tonight seemed to know that trick. I met quite a few of them already hogging my spot.
All in a days work for Bullseye’s BEcon, this year a conference on glass casting. This first day was, by turns, heartwarming, fun, fascinating, annoying and humorous, with a touch of old home week thrown in for good measure. I pretty much enjoyed myself from start to finish, met a whole bunch of faces to put to lovely names and personalities I already knew, and found some excellent grub.
More art, more philosophy and a LOT more tech tomorrow–today was mostly about hooking up, with a few highlights. (But you can find day two here)
Art & philosophy
We started with a gorgeous slideshow of attendees’ work, played in the background during the introductory speech. It was an impressive (and humbling) survey of casting possibilities. I got a kick out of hearing BE prez Dan Schwoerer detail the inherent problems in making a casting glass.
Saleshead Jim Jones probably took the discussable humor prize for telling what happens when perfect planning goes astray, although I laughed loudest at Clifford Rainey’s depiction of the left-leaning members of an SF arts committee.
“I avoid the studio movement as much as I can. I do not like to be called a glass artist, I am an artist who works in glass. The glass movement is sometimes its own worst enemy.”
–Clifford Rainey
I was afraid that Richard Whiteley’s “Behind the Actor’s Studio”-style interview with Clifford Rainey wouldn’t be much more than an awkward artist’s retrospective. I was wrong–it relaxed into a thoroughly enjoyable gabfest, with between-the-lines tech tips and a great chance to view a body of work. I’ve not always been a fan of Mr. Rainey’s work, but some of what I saw (and heard) was definitely worth a mind-change, even if he hadn’t been such a delightful speaker.
Tech highlights
The conference tech display isn’t huge this year but the important folks (for me) were there. I skimmed the BE books and squinted at the really cool billet display (I didn’t realize the BE casting palette had that many greens).
I talked refractory kilnshelves with Western Industrial and speculated on the carvability of a new refractory board they’re promoting (I’m thinking I could make one ginormous color sample mold and possibly play around with some negative sculpting…). Played with Dyson’s hollow extruded kilnshelves for awhile, monopolized Bob Stephan of HIS Glassworks for a half hour or so over my favorite diamond bits for coldworking.
Keynote
They say a successful keynote is one that provokes discussion, and by that measure the conference keynote was successful. Speaker Janet Koplos is a former editor of Art Review, currently interim editor at American Craft, and known for less-than-flattering assessments of “glass artists.”
I once saw Steve Jobs start a military conference keynote by explaining that he didn’t really mean it when he said that Apple would never sell to military “babykillers.” Ms. Koplos tapdanced just as nervously, but to a plantation drumbeat. She explained that glass was the highest-paid “craft medium,” that she was hugely a fan of decorative arts (I’d imagine some of her best friends are glass, in fact) and that “the crafts have a noble history of human service.”
Gist of the speech seemed to be that, with only a few transcendental exceptions, glass would never be art, and anybody working in glass should be satisfied to sit at the back of the bus. And then, after carefully establishing glass as not-art, she proceeded to review it…as art. If it looked too realistic or too abstract, if she had to wonder about how it was made, if it was transparent or shiny or colorful, if it was not obvious or too obvious, or possibly if it had been created on a Tuesday by a one-armed man with a monkey on his head, it didn’t make her list.
To be fair, I don’t disagree with everything she said. Craft shouldn’t have to be considered art to have value, and there’s nothing wrong with a good bowl that’s also beautiful. And, IMHO, too many artists let the glass do the talking and call it their art. Yet we aren’t in a country where craft is just as honored as art, and telling a group they’ll never make art in this “craft medium” is tantamount to artistic apartheid. I do, however, give the lady credit for showing up with such a message.
Food
Found a new favorite, Paccini’s, and ate a wonderful hoagie (a real hogie) stuffed with Italian coldcuts. Unless you feel like rolling out of the place, order a half sandwich. Nice view, quiet seats and good food, reasonably priced. Can’t ask for much more than that.
I can ask for more at BlueHour, and I usually get it. In this case, we asked for savings, and BlueHour’s happy hour obliged. Bar food is half-price…and their bar food includes some great salads and pizzas, a wonderful hamburger, cheese fondue and the first deep-fried olives I’ve ever eaten. My only complaint was the noise level (not surprising in a hard-surfaced restaurant).
All in all, this was a glorious day.
PS. If you want to read the whole BEcon report, here are the links:
- BEcon, Day 0.5 (this post)
- BEcon, second day
- BEcon, finis
- Winding down a week of glass
Taking the girls for a stroll
June 16, 2009
There’s an essential part of artistic growth that until recently I mostly missed: Seeing your work through others’ eyes. I’m finding it’s every bit as educational as actually making the things.
Case in point: Met up with Alicia Lomne (and Bonnie and Eric and Andre and Janet and a bunch of other folk down at the BE Resource Center–hi, guys) Tuesday afternoon. She’d asked me to drop by her pate de verre class with the two May sculptures.
Win-win situation, that: She gave me some advice for moving forward with this series (lower the heatwork a bit, pack a bit more evenly) and in exchange she let me show off the Mays to her class. I definitely got the best part of that deal.
BEcon week
June 16, 2009
Bullseye’s every-two-years conference, BEcon, is later this week, and the glass artists are already piling into town. For me, this will be a week of pure indulgence.