"Cool tatt," I said, nodding at the lines peeking out from under Sean's arm, "Who's the artist?" "Oh, he's back in Maine," he explained, rolling up the sleeve of his t-shirt to reveal a massive outline of trees, flowers and very artistic nudes, embracing. "This is just the linework, none of it's been filled in yet. I've got to get it finished because it really looks pretty dorky this way."
Right around lunchtime I heard a quiet tapping on my front door and sighed. (door to door peddlers famously interrupt my Saturday afternoons) I opened the door to a woman about 25, slim, vivacious and smiling. "Hi!" she said brightly, "I'm Lisa, and you're going to think this is really weird, but can I take a picture of your tree?"
You know you're in Oregon when you walk into a dockside pancake shack and the sign on the wall says, "Gluten-free pancakes with organic chai tea." I'm down in Coos Bay this weekend, about five hours south of Portland, working through a casting problem with Hugh McKay of Cast Glass Forms. Hugh's in Port Orford; Gigi the iPhone led me a merry GPS dance through cow pastures and abandoned farmland to get there. "Geeeez, that's hours out of the way," said Hugh, "Don't you computer people ever look at a map?"
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 actually chop them up?
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.
Yesterday a girl ran headlong down the aisle at the Container Store, skidding to a halt about five inches from my belly. She was maybe 17, a blue-eyed brunette dressed like a tree. (Typical glasslander costume: Nondescript fabric in grey, brown and moss, none too clean, shaggy so you're not quite sure there's a girl in there and a couple of holes thrown in for spice.) She took a deep breath and opened her mouth all the way back to her tonsils.
"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.
There's something seductive about working from home, whether it's in a studio or behind a computer. You can be as unwashed and floppy as you like and wear things the Goodwill wouldn't accept if you paid 'em (even in Portland). What you can't do, however, is drop everything and get to your next meeting on time. Too often I look up from whatever it is I'm doing and realize I have 15 bloody minutes to shower, blow-dry, make-up, dress, print out whatever it is I need and drive across town.
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 when you have to stick, say, a hollow pate de verre relief sculpture onto 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.
"I just need $14.50," the woman said anxiously, "And I'll have enough for a room for the night. That's all, and I'm not lying! It's only so I have a place to sleep." I'd had a rare hour to spare before my next appointment in Portland's Pearl District and so I did my favorite thing: I drifted through the streets and watched.