Bullseye’s moving the furniture…
October 21, 2011
…and consequently I have no idea where to sit.
To put it more understandably, Bullseye just unleashed a new website design on the world and in the process broke a whole boatload of links to really important content. Bullseye’s technical documents are pretty much without peer in the art glass industry; I link to them a LOT.
So now a whole boatload of links on MY website are now busted. I am an unhappy camper.
I’m assured that Bullseye technical wizards are working their fingers off to speedily fix those broken links. Until they do, if you click a link on my site and it breaks on bullseyeglass.com, your best bet is to type whatever you’re looking for into the Bullseye search box.
Sorry about that.
And would somebody PLEASE tell me where the reactivity charts live?
Sigh..
Bullseye on iPad
September 29, 2011
So here’s one more reason to buy an iPad (as if I needed one): Bullseye‘s just released a very cool little IOS app for glassists, and it works on iPhone, iPod Touch and…(drumroll)…iPad. And it’s free.
It’s a collection of Bullseye tools and educational documents, pretty much what you find on Bullseye’s website, including tipsheets and technical notes. There’s a Fahrenheit/Celsius converter in there, weblinks to the Bullseye Gallery, their online store and other parts of the website, and a browse-able version of the latest Bullseye catalog.
Coldworking Glass without Machines (book)
July 7, 2011
Lemme borrow a writer’s proverb for a sec:
I hate coldworking. I love having coldworked. More particularly, I love having coldworked by hand.*
I’ve so far found nothing to match the incredible, silky finish you get with hand-coldworking a piece of glass, so I was really interested in Paul Tarlow’s new book, Coldworking Glass without Machines: A complete guide to creating better fused, lampworked & blown glass artwork without spending a small fortune on big equipment.
BeCONica (Best of BeCON 2011)
June 23, 2011
Dr. Steve Immerman (L) and Dan Schwoerer (BE owner)
BeCON’s over and done, my creativity is stirred, my glassjones are bubbling, and I’m bubbling over with new glassist friends. Here’s a wrap-up of my 2011 BeCON reports:
But in case the thought of reading all that stuff makes you wince, I’ll hit the highlights here.
Judith Schaecter talks with BeCON attendees
Hottest topic: 3D printing
I’ve already mentioned this in a previous report, but most of the buzz was generated by the idea that you could ditch traditional casting/forming methods and simply “print” your glass form. People who hadn’t taken Steve Brown’s low-tech 3D printing class were trying to catch those who had, to learn how to do it. I predict a LOT more exploration of this from many, many attendees.
Mimi Abers and Jim Kervin
Best networking location: Hotel Modera’s courtyard lounge
It was outside in the (rare) sunshine, surrounded by firepits, and the artists came and went until ‘way past my bedtime. I hooked up with half of BeCON there the night before it started, and had a ball.
Best celebrity sighting: Ed Harris
He came downstairs at the riverfront McCormick & Schmick’s (twice) dressed in a light brown 1940s-style suit, cap and bow-tie, and finally headed out into the breezy summer evening.
We figured he was with movie crews shooting near Powells bookstore, or he coulda been there for the (pretty good) food. And, yes, I did TOO see him, Brenda! (which reminds me…)
Best houseguests: Brenda Griffith and Tadashi Torii of Siyeh Studios in Atlanta
We (or at least I) had a ball, they bought meals and wine, talked late into the night with me about important stuff and just generally were a delight to be around. I’m still not convinced about the twins separated at birth part, Brenda, but it sure feels right.
Glassblower Tadashi Torii (and the cheek belongs to Brenda Griffith)
Best pre-opening reception dinnerjoint: Blue Hour
The Blue Hour restaurant is across the street from Bullseye Gallery, and if you hit up the happy hour it’s even affordable. The spicy chickpeas, goat cheese fonduta and hamburger sliders ranked high on the popularity scale.
Best chuckle: Pic-snapping on the factory floor
On the last night of the conference we wound through a self-guided factory tour which landed us in front of the guys pouring and rolling glass sheet. They’d raise a ladle of hot glass, and a couple dozen cameras would raise too, snapping away.
It was a rare treat–Bullseye generally doesn’t let you photograph in the factory–but I soon found I was more interested in taking pictures of the picture-takers than of the glass.
Emily Brock in the BE RC gallery (that's Carmen Vetter's work she's examining)
Best little art show: The tiny exhibit in the loft at the Bullseye Resource Center
The work was excellent; I would have expected to see at least some of it in the main gallery crossover show. But definitely go upstairs to see it if you get the chance.
Cleverest ploy: Dan, waving pom-poms
The conference ends with a BBQ (they run ribs and chicken through the annealing lehr and we dine and party in the factory), and the end of the BBQ is a group photo of conference attendees. Previous BeCONs have had most of the Bullseye employees herding artists–worse than cats–and getting pretty frustrated in the process.
This time, BE owner Dan Schwoerer jumped in with pom-poms waving, leading a parade of drummers and flagwavers who danced us all outside in one swell foop, then gave us an excellent drum concert to keep us there. How could you NOT assemble outside? (And with a little manipulation, I suspect I could turn the above photo into a modern-day Starry Night…)
Best-tasting: Jerry’s limoncello
You’d think, with my beloved Portland Farmers Market right next door on BeCON Saturday, I’d have selected, say, Monteillet’s fresh chevre or those delightful raspberries or the handmade cherry-nut chocolates or… but heck! I EXPECT that stuff.
Jerry Jensen, art prof, artist, and limoncello maker, beside a work by Carmen Vetter
What I didn’t expect was Jerry Jensen’s detour to his boat to give us all a taste of his home-made limoncello. I doubt you could remain standing very long with a whole glassful, but one sip sent me to lemonade-on-steroids heaven for about 15 minutes. Imagine using that stuff in a lemon torte…
Barbara Muth (L) talks with Carol Carson at the Lehr-B-Que
Best suggestion for next year: A stopwatch
Heavens knows I’m inclined to run on when talking about myself (the recommended length for a blogpost is 300 words or less, and mine have introductions longer than that), but if you ask artists to talk about themselves without a gong, prepare for overruns.
Most of the time I’m pretty forgiving of that stuff (not being completely hypocritical), but when all that’s keeping me from the Portland Farmers Market is a re-meander down the last five years of someone’s artistic evolution, well…thank your lucky stars you’re not between me and the door. A five-minute warning or, better yet, a dress rehearsal, might help.
Tony Smith taking a pic of me taking a pic of him
Biggest startlement (and maybe biggest quandary): Keeping abstraction in context
I saw and very much liked the crossover art which made its debut at Bullseye Gallery on the conference’s opening night, but it turned out that what I saw really had very little to do with what was there.
Some of the artists in that show also presented at the conference and, with few exceptions, my perception of their work changed radically after I heard the backstories. And I wasn’t the only one; several attendees headed back to the gallery to re-view the work after Friday and Saturday’s presentations.
One of my idols, Emily Brock
Generally, I want a creative work to stand on its own, without a book of instructions. So if I see a piece of glass with a hole in it, I appreciate the void, the texture, the orientation in space…and move on. I guess I take the straight path to the glass-plus-hole.
The artist, though, goes on a long, circuitous journey of conceiving, defining, subtracting, revising and simplifying… to get to a chunk of glass with a hole. The value-add is in the journey, but I’m not sure the audience knew much about that part, so some of us didn’t see it.
How does a gallery inject context into a chunk of glass with a hole in it? Beats me; this is why I don’t own a gallery.
Biggest disappointment (aside from the faces I didn’t see there): More art, less tech
Given the subject (crossover art media), the high emphasis on conceptual artstuff wasn’t a huge surprise, but I really do look to Bullseye for technical expertise. What was there–a discussion of fabrication troubles with large-scale works, unexpected difficulties with seemingly simple fusing projects, a look at future technologies–was excellent. I simply wanted more of it.
Speaking of glasstech, slightly snarky aside: Years ago I took a class at Bullseye where I tack-fused and stacked a whole bunch of sheet glass into a deep, dimensional block. When the block came out it was absolutely delightful except for the draggy squarish bubbles trapped between layers.
Possibly the fiber paper had left a residue, I asked? Nope; it was my fault because I hadn’t cleaned my glass properly, they said. Rankled a bit, so it was kinda fun to hear BE explaining the cause of draggy squarish, non-champagne-like bubbles trapped between the layers of one artist’s work: Thinfire residue, trapped between layers. Heh-heh.
And then I lehr-b-qued with artists who had exactly the opposite view of the glasstech at BeCON: “It was really, really great this year…except for all that technical stuff.” Sigh. I guess you can’t win…
Tony Smith, with camera lowered
Biggest surprise: You guys read
And I mean that in the very nicest way. I was totally astonished at the number of strangers who came up to me at the conference and said, “I read your blog!” (And a couple who could actually recite some of the more, er, pungent passages from memory).
This blog is about a decade old now. It started as a way for me to access my glass notes wherever I was, and I didn’t particularly care if anyone read it. The idea that so many really do read this is kinda scary but lots of fun. Thank you!
Best thing of all: The people
I should think it obvious; despite all the (huge amount of) effort that goes into the conference program, the best thing about BeCON is, was and will probably always be the opportunity to meet, talk with and befriend fellow glassists. I think I put maybe 40 faces to the names of friends on the blog, Warmglass, Facebook and other online sports, and that was very, very cool.
BeCON 2011, final day
June 19, 2011
“We’re just rubbish compared to nature.”
–Steve Royston Brown
The old guy in dripping-wet shorts looked me up and down, once, twice. “Honey,” he said, shaking his head sadly, “You gotta learn to get in out of the rain.”
Well, yeah, but the farmer’s market was over THERE and the nearest shelter was at least a box of raspberries, carton of fresh chevre and wood-fired bagel away. It was Saturday at BeCON, and you’d better believe that a little rain wasn’t keeping me from breakfasting superbly while the glassists talked art.
The presence of Portland Farmers Market a few yards away might be reason enough to attend BeCon, Bullseye’s biannual glass conference, but there are others. I usually gain fresh insights, and the biggest one I picked up this year was a doozy, quite possibly not one intended by our hosts:
Glass isn’t a medium, it’s a crutch. We don’t need to cross over as much as we need to throw away the crutch.
(Honk if you think that’s scary)
BeCON 2011, Day 1
June 18, 2011
‘Cause I’m a rover who has crossed over
And if I never sing again
I’m gonna be rich as old Mr. Rockefeller
Just direct my feet to the sunny side of the street
–Frankie Laine’s version of “Sunny side of the street”
If yesterday’s BeCON was about art vs. craft, today’s was about superstars, the rovers who successfully made the trip from glass artist to artist, or who retained an open enough mind to cross into kiln forming for awhile.
Or at least it started out that way, since the opening presentation was Lino Tagliapietra, Dante Marioni and Marc Petrovic talking about the intersection of glassblowing and kilnforming with BE research dude Ted Sawyer.
BeCON 2011, Day 0.5
June 17, 2011
You can generally say three things about the first half-day of Bullseye’s BeCON glass conference; It’s the world’s longest half-day (about 16 hours this time), it involves a lot of hugging, and the best part happens after 7pm.
Thank heavens they didn’t decide to make this a FULL day.
So let’s start with the best part: The Bullseye Gallery reception. The art was a grab-bag of technique, voice, old, new, famous, startling, predictable, unknown…and worked on just about every level.
I saw four pieces that absolutely belong in my home (well, five, but the fifth is so far out of reach it doesn’t count). I saw work that intrigued me (how the HECK did they do that?), work that bugged me and work that made me stand up and think about my own art.
I’d say that makes the show a success. If you go, pause to ooh and ahhh over the Marioni (well, of course), head back and look at Nathan’s juxtaposition of concrete and glass, but at some point head upstairs where the real action is.
Friends who art, art art
February 7, 2011
(the title? Work it out)
I blow lightly on the glass wafers, watch them tremble, vibrating the shadowlines. I’m utterly delighted at finding a kinetic dimension to what’s been my favorite glass installation for awhile now. And that’s both the wonder and problem of this show, but more about that later.
I’m playing with Stacy Lynn Smith’s “Selection,” which made its “I have arrived” debut last Wednesday night at Bullseye Gallery’s inFORM* show. BE Gallery stuff hasn’t always been to my taste, but as far as I’m concerned they’re batting 1000 lately.
Selection first showed up a couple of years ago in a Bullseye Resource Center show for their employees, took the top prize there, and I remember thinking, “Why the HECK isn’t this in the main gallery?” about two seconds after I saw it. Well thank heavens, here it is.
Bullseye’s new catalog
January 24, 2011
Bullseye’s new product catalog is out, informative as ever but with my same old (minor) gripe, which I’ll get to inna minnit.
You can order the physical copy (or pick it up free in retail places, or I’d imagine they’ll send it to you with an order of glass). Or download it–it’s 12.3MB, so it might take awhile if you don’t have high-speed access.
I keep product specs for all the glasses I use in the studio–Bullseye, Uroboros 90, Gaffer casting crystal, Uroboros billet–where I can get at them easily. By the time the new literature comes out, I’ve usually got the old marked up with all sorts of firing notes, striking characteristics, viscosity observations, etc.
Kilnformer’s murrini (you can buy)
January 20, 2011
I’ve been exploring all the different ways to make murrini cane in a kiln, and having a lot of fun with it. Check out some of these (amazingly long-winded) posts for step-by-step instructions:
- Murrini cane in a kiln: Sandwiches, Part I
- Murrini cane in a kiln: Jellyrolls
- Murrini cane in a kiln: The rod pod
- Kinda like peanuts
But I gotta tell you, it’s a lot of work and it’s not cheap. So what do you do if you want good-looking, kiln-fusing murrini that you don’t have to make yourself?