"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!!!!!!!!
File this one under "Art vs. Craft." Or maybe "Appliances." Ripley's just announced they've acquired a new artwork: A reproduction of Da Vinci's famous Last Supper...made from dryer lint. It's 14 feet long (the original, below, is about twice as long, but hey--paint and canvas are probably a lot easier to find than the right shade of dryer detritus). The [...]
Bullseye's new product catalog is out, informative as ever but with my same old (minor) gripe, which I'll get to inna minnit.
Glassland is either jubilant or downcast because the Ducks didn’t win on Monday night. The emotional confusion stems from the sadness of losing a championship despite the thrilling honor of being asked to play in the first place. Apparently. I’m pretty sure they were playing football, but that’s about all I know; I’m not the world’s biggest follower of team [...]
Last time around, I talked about murrini cane, and the most obvious way to make them in the kiln: A murrini rod mold, AKA "rodpod." As I've said, I'm not pretending that anything I discuss here is my invention or brand new stuff: Murrini-making is one of the oldest glassmaking techniques. This is just a compendium of methods I use [...]
Weather report for today said mostly cloudy, not much in the way of precipitation. So, naturally, it's been thundering and sleeting and hailing for the last 30 minutes. The ground looks covered with snow to about a half-inch, but it's actually ice pellets. You learn pretty quickly that the glassland gods really love to tweak the weatherman's nose--if you plan [...]
"Would you please put a sock in it?" I called wearily, "It's 4:00 in the morning, Nate!" Whatever Nate the Mouse was doing in the living room obviously took precedence over my good night's rest, because he'd been doing it for hours. At last, I stomped downstairs and turned on the lights, to scare him off. Didn't even slow him [...]
FINALLY I'm back in the studio, messing around, after a six-month hiatus. And I figured I'd start with something easy: Making components for bigger sculptures. Then it turned into this bigger thing, i.e., exploring how to make murrini in a kiln. I'm trying several methods here, and this will probably be a three-parter. Sorry about that. So...I've got some ideas for cast, figurative sculptures and vessels that incorporate murrini, bronze and other things. First order of business: Make enough murrini for easy playing.
