"You need to invent," she said, "a mythology." "A who?" "A mythology. For your pendants," and she tapped one authoritatively, "You need to involve your customers in the story behind these faces." "Ahhhhhh, you want the backstory," I said, "Sure. See, I always seem to put faces in everything I sculpt, no matter what..." "No," she said impatiently, "MYTH-OL-O-GY. What [...]
There are days I think my life is one big detour...and that's exactly the way I want it. I've
"Wanna buy some cookies?" She's standing with her mom at the entrance to the grocery store, snugly bundled against the rain, reminding me that it's Girl Scout cookie season. Stacks and stacks of cookie boxes weigh down her table and an artfully handmade sign--COOKEZ 4 SAIL!--proclaims that she's open for business. I gulp and stiffen the ol' backbone. I don't need ANY cookies, not even those peanut-buttery ones, or the sweetly tangy lemon--STOP IT CYNTHIA! Besides, my neighborhood scout-lettes will eagerly sell me a box or dozen. Buying cookies from the neighborhood is a given where I live; I'd probably have to sneak strangers' cookies in under cover of darkness.
Last weekend the antmind temporarily took over my master bathroom. Thanks to perseverance and enough bugspray to float a battleship, I retook the disputed territory about fifteen minutes after they planted the flag. Yet spring is coming; this is only round 1. I'm thinking about tenting the house and letting off the formicidean equivalent of a nuclear warhead inside. Take [...]
When does a cane stop being murrini cane and start being pattern bar? Beats me. I can find only two differences. In fact, for many types of murrine you start with a huge pattern bar, then heat and stretch and compress it until it becomes...murrini cane. So... if I use the same techniques I use to make pattern bars, then experiment with ways to stretch and distort those bars in the kiln, and then cut "cane" bars from the resulting stack...I should have murrini, right?
I promised I'd show you what my two Fusing 101 students made in their first class, so here 'tis. Shelby made what's essentially a color map of her favorite place in Monet's beloved Giverny:
Saturday. A dragon's flying over the cash register and out in the parking lot the drivers are totally bloody nuts. Must be Uwajimaya. Uwajimaya is the local Japanese grocery chain, but it's more like an Asian Costco; inside, there's a bookstore, homewares, appliances, all sorts of things. I'm on a mission, seeking handmade Japanese papers for various projects, a few assorted goodies from the produce aisles, and one of Miyazaki's non-English animes. Cherrybaby and I pull into the parking lot, narrowly avoiding a homicidal septuagenarian bent on achieving a prime parking space.
"I've been dreaming about this at night," Shelby told me excitedly, as we tripped down the stairs to my studio, "This is gonna be soooo coool!" Right then, the joy part of making glass hit me--whap--right in the head. If you want to renew your own sense of joy and discovery in art (or probably anything else), just teach someone else to love it, too.
DISCLAIMER: I swear I am NOT making this up. Swear. "Did you know," said Tami, "That your bird just set off the burglar alarm?" Tami is a friend who also happens to clean my house every couple of weeks. We've known each other for years, we trade arttalk (she's a skilled painter and concrete sculptor), and occasionally we grab lunch or share farmer's market stuff or something. I think she believes that I come from another planet, but in her view that just makes things more interesting.
Saturday morning I get up, yawn my way down to the living room to play yoga on the Wii and notice that the trap looks a bit odd. This is the Kness TipTrap I'm talking about, I got it as part of my eviction plans for Nate, and it's been lying in wait for the furry little nuisance for a solid week, untouched. But now the trap's a bit off-kilter and the door is down... OMG!!!!! I CAUGHT NATE!!!!!!!!
