Hot Glass Bits #22

Contact Mike Firth

September 26 - November 22,1994

This issue contains deadline information for

Nov. 26 for Peet Robison in Santa Fe (really tight mailing!) TEXAS HOLIDAY

Emporia State University Glass Open House Tues.Nov.29 - Sat.Dec.3, COLBY SMITH [II]

Dec.3 and 4 for DMA Holiday Shopping Spree, ALLISON

Dec. 10-11 for TEXAS HOLIDAY SALES/OPEN HOUSES

Jan. 20th 95, for 1995 Regional M-AAA/NEA FELLOWSHIPS

Jan. 9th, 1995 for SAF/NEA under title above.

[capitalized KEYWORD starts a paragraph below]

Hot Glass Bits is a personal chronological record of my wanderings through glassblowing and the bits and pieces of knowledge I gather along the way. It includes things I try, thoughts I have, information I receive, and reports on things I do. In many ways it is an edited diary and events calendar about glassblowing. If it is useful to others, it is worth the effort.

WHOAMI? - Mike Firth is a 52 year old, low experience glassblower who signed up for his first class in '91 without having seen anyone blow, although he had seen TV shows and has done stained glass and worked clear tubing in the past. He has built cheap equipment in his back yard to learn and practice. When not blowing, he is a married self-employed computer programmer and teacher about computers.

Vision Thing: It wouldn't hurt to have more glassblowing in Texas.

The legal stuff: Working glass is inherently dangerous, involving heavy materials that can be razor sharp, so hot that damage can be done before feeling occurs, with chemicals immediately poisonous, dusts that can damage the lungs, and heat sources that can wreck the eyes. Understand the safe practices required and use them to blow beautiful glass.

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HB#21 - After Hot Glass Bits 21 was printing and partly prepared for mailing, my first issue of American Crafts arrived with a dual ad for Carlyn Gallarie and Sable V with the Lathe-Turned Wood IV show and A Gathering of Glass where they are showing each and then swapping. So, although I missed the Sable V show, as I mentioned, I will be able to see it here. I talked briefly with Cindy Ray, owner of Carlyn and found that she organized the wood and Sable the glass. (I have seen one of the early wood shows and some of the pieces defy explanation as to how they were done on a lathe.) A Gathering of Glass will be at the Carlyn from October 27 to November 20 (and the wood at Sable for about the same dates.) I ended up including a note with copies of HB for local glass people. Carlyn is near the corner of Preston and Northwest Highway. 9/29/94

CHIHULY - According to Cindy Ray at Carlyn Gallery, the Chihuly show at the Dallas Museum of Art, was a blockbuster, with higher attendance than ever for a summer show, including many repeat visits. I went twice and there were people constantly moving through, although I went in mid-afternoon of mid-week. 9/29/94

COLBY SMITH came to town with Hall David Berber from Emporia Kansas, Berber to sell at the Cottonwood Creek Park Arts and Crafts fair in Richardson and Colby to visit several relatives, talk with me and see what he could see. We had a very good chat and look at my stuff. Coolly had a set of slides of his and I was delighted, as he is working transparent hot glass bits on a variety of shapes, using a color shape that I very much like and have not seen. He features applied dabs of color that stretched along the axis of the piece, wider at one end, so one might think of glass running down the side of the piece. More than ever it convinces me I want to take hot color out of small pots for my stuff. Michael Riffkind and Barbara Kittrell also said nice things and handed over paperwork for showing some of his stuff after the move about the turn of the year. Colby produces one-of-a-kind rather than production.    The Cottonwood Park show looked very good and had a lot of traffic, although Berger reported sales were slow. Berger's pieces were generally a napkin folded or spherical opaque center cased with clear, which was then wrapped with a fine color line, further cased and then cold worked flat on one side to break the surface of the wrapped layer. He was showing shelves of pieces where each shelf had similar color settings and the shapes found on one shelf were also on another. I especially liked some tri-lobed weights, a clear apple built over the core described above. The show had little other glass, some sand blasted and some sagged draped pieces in metal work, including a working fountain. Both these places used Mexican made clear weights with bubble and fine line detail work as part of their pieces. I found the most interesting work to be some wood, especially some highly finished shapes with blackened interiors that made one think of burned trees and polished furniture in the same thought. A humorous touch at another booth was a set of book shelves with a "drip" of wood on each of the upper shelves, which on the next to bottom shelf extended and "fell" to form a pile, like a chocolate drop, on the bottom shelf, all of wood.    Colby teaches and assists at Emporia State in Kansas. They have about thirty students. Emporia also has a high school glassblowing program, apparently virtually the only one in the country, which Colby went through. Emporia State uses a system of Rookie, Bit Boy, and Gaffer, with progressively higher supplies fees, though even the Gaffers only pay $65 a semester. They melt both Spruce Pine 87 and bottle glass, and Colby prefers the latter, finding the former too transparent to reveal the form he is working with. Rookies and Bit Boys are expected to help as part of their training and Bit Boys and Gaffers are expected to train and solve problems for the lower experience people. 10/3/94

BLOOMFIELD - Chatty conversation with Tom Bloomfield in Houston on his nickel. He is looking for more training to do goblets. Along the way we talked about working alone and parking annealers that allow hanging the pipe. He reported that his instructor at Penland, making 25-35 pound pieces, annealed them on the punty, popping it off with a hot gather when the piece was cold. Richard Moiel and Bob Moiser visited him over the weekend. 10/5/94

JOB - My van stopped running and made me hike a bunch and spend too much for cabs. Got good advice from the son (age about mine) of the next door neighbor (who is about 85.) Having had almost no rain for a month, we got 3.7" in about two hours. We have too many cats wandering loose around the neighborhood, having kittens under houses. We have also smelled skunks occasionally. The city will loan live traps and pickup caught animals, but the traps are in short supply, so I bought one at a sporting goods store. The first five times I put it out, with bacon as bait, four times I caught a skunk! 10/9/94 Later: I have caught ten skunks, nine in the first two weeks. 11/4/94

OLD GLASS - I am reading a book, American Glass, Ed.Marvin D.Schwartz, which is articles from the Magazine, Antiques, ca 1922-72 [1974 Weathervane Press.] Half the book is blown and molded and half pressed and cut. My reason for reading a book like this is the ideas I get from some of the pictures.    There are a lot of examples of "lily pad" decoration, which I have mixed feelings about. It is made (apparently) by putting a very hot gather on the bottom and pulling the edges of the added gather into projections or waves.    I like* the pieces with flanged rims, where the lid sits on a flat top, contained by a raised edge of the rim, called a galleried rim, which is the largest diameter of the piece. Many examples are also given of bowls with the rim folded either in or out, so the edge is double the thickness of the rest of the piece.    Looking very strange to me is the use of a glass ball as cover/stopper which appears several times, especially for keeping sugar. The ball intrudes into the bowl, but it also makes the fit automatic.    I like a group of glasses where the stem is a solid extension of the slope of the sides of the glass and then flares out to form the foot. I particularly like the proportion when the stem is not too thin. I like a hollow stem, which is shown on a number of pieces larger than I had considered and I think I will try making some, along with a raised or domed foot, after I do some kind of garage for holding hot stuff while working on other hot stuff..    One of the problems of the book is scale. In a number of cases a pair of photos has one of elaborate pitchers and another of goblets which are printed the same size and one feels the pitchers are much larger, only to find the heights given make the pitchers little creamers, shorter than the glasses.    * like probably means I will try to make some. 10/9/94

ROLLER - I have encountered, in the book above, in the Dallas Museum of Art, and in other museums, glass rolling pins, decorated and not. It would seem to me that such an object would be a challenge to make (keeping it straight sided with nice knobs on the end) and would be a perfect gift for a relative that bakes, showing your skill and a personal appreciation. While a glass rolling pin in general would be nice, one with an opening at one end with a stopper, so it could be filled with ice or ice water would make it nicer for pastry and certain other cold rolling activities. Requiring longer annealing would be solid glass, which could be put in the frig. Of course, a roller must be longer than a handy and cheap wine bottle. The rolling pin in the DMA has threads raked to form a design against the clear glass. 10/9/94

JOB II - Woke up Saturday with a lot of pain in left hip, aggravated while driving my wife downtown so she could catch bus to Louisiana for a visit with her parents. I think the pills given me for the grating in my finger joints masked the usual twinges I get when I haven't exercised my stomach and back muscles. So I filled up with aspirin and did the exercises and the hip pain went away. Unfortunately, the pain that had been radiating down the leg did not. So I have knee pain and an area from my knee to my ankle that feels all the time like I had laid on it and put it to "sleep", I saw a doctor on Monday and the medicine he gave me made me nauseous and congested and doesn't seem to help anything. Cheers! Not!

BOUTTE @ DIVAS - Marc Boutte (yes I spelled it wrong in the last issue) was at Divas Art Glass studio south of Ft. Worth doing a day of demonstrations and requests. Having paid my money, I raced over as soon as I finished my teaching. Marc's first project, the first part of which I missed, was to pickup three bowls/shells he had made the night before each having a thin layer of color on clear. Using a large gather inside the first shell, he put the first in the second and then in the third, having blown them for a close fit. He then worked the layered colors to get them intertwined inside the glass and used that to make a figure kneeling on a base. After a break, he did a series of pieces in clear glass, demonstrating technique, including a vase, a goblet, and perfume bottle. I sketched a lip design I like from one of the McKearin books I have checked out and asked how it was done, so Marc did a bowl to try it, without much luck, then did a neat little lid to fit what he did. 10/13/94

McKEARIN - Two classic books about American glass are by the father and daughter team of George and Helen McKearin. American Glass, 1941, 1948, 22nd printing Dec.1972, 2000 photographs, 1000 drawings, charts & tables and Two Hundred Years of American Blown Glass, Helen & George McKearin, 1949, 50. The former contains literally thousands of small pictures of glass objects to be used by collectors to identify pieces they hold. A lot of narrative accompanies the pictures. The latter has bigger pictures, including color, with very specific descriptions of details.    Several pieces pictured have rims that seem difficult to make. One style is called a galleried rim: from the neck the glass goes horizontally out and then curves sharply up forming something that looks like a balcony with railing (i.e. a gallery) A lid rests on the flat surface and uses are given as sugar, honey and jam pots. The other style is sort of the inverse referred to variously as a collared lip, rounded top, and folded top. The downward curve is more gentle and the outer rim is at about 45° rather than vertical. I would guess that the best way to make the galleried rim would be to make an angled lip then work to bend the area between the rim and neck, perhaps with a special block as Marc suggested. The rounded top seems easier because there are no reversals in the glass curvature. 10/14/94

GLASS Magazine, Number 57, Fall 1994, arrived. After immersing myself for several days in the books mentioned above, Glass is a bit of a shock. The first four or five pages have nothing that relates to the glass production reported in the books. After encountering these pages, the continuing nonsense about whether glass can be used to make art seems especially silly. Janet Koplos, the person who denies any of our stuff is art, continues to write about glass, in this case that of Michael Scheiner, whose work is marked by a dirty appearance created by gray oil paint that makes most of the pieces look like they survived a smoky fire. The critic says "How amazingly self-involved these objects are as they fold back upon themselves! Is that a metaphor for the glass field? The art world? Human nature in general?" Duhhh! The most stunning piece for me is a yellow crystal bowl by Loretta Yang (Sanske Galerie ad) glowing in the light and recalling all the history of the green ancient Chinese bronzes I was looking at the other night.

$2500 - DMAgenda is the bi-monthly full color promotional booklet sent to Dallas Museum of Art [1717 N.Harwood, Dallas 75201] members to provide a calendar and list of events. On the back of the Nov/Dec issue is a photo and promotion for Chihuly's Cobalt Blue Baskets with Cadmium Red Lip Wrap each one is signed by the artist and comes with a certificate of authenticity and a "Plexiglas vitrine" to hold the "fragile artwork" and provide a drawer in the base to hold an autographed copy of Chihuly Baskets a 164 page book with 66 illustrations of the series. [Colleen Brainerd, 214-922-1255 to order] And the price is .... 10/21/94 As further push, a brightly colored 3 page foldout promo for just the Baskets arrived today. Five color pictures showing the glass, the case and the book. 11/19/94

CARLYN I - I went by the Carlyn Galerie (below) to catch the last of the Turned Wood show. Some of the "wood" was alabaster bowls with very thin wood rings around the rim. Even before the arrival of A Gathering of Glass II next week, there was a fair sampling of flameworked and offhand glass work. The work of David Bennett caught my eye. He uses classic forms with copper included, one as simple as solid copper wire made into "rope" rings caught in glass loops. The copper was carefully cleaned, patinaed, and coated with a glossy protective coat (350.) The other was a copper sheet jacket, somewhat tapered, into which the glass was blown and formed to a good shoulder and neck above the copper and vase-like base below. Then, after annealing, the copper was cleaned and decorated with etched patterns including figures. The primitive figures were also enhanced with the detail that the edges of the sheet were joined with a row of punched indentations rather than rivets or wire ($360.) 10/23/94

CARLYN II - It turns out that the piece I described above was an early item for the glass show, A Gathering of Glass II, that opened tonight [thru Nov.20] at Carlyn Galerie [6137 Luther Lane, Dallas TX 214-368-2828] after showing at Sable V in Wimberley. A hundred thirty-five pieces by over 60 artists (some working in pairs) cover the range of hot glass working.    The single piece that most interested me was from Joel O'Dorisio, now working in Wimberley Texas, previously at Alfred University and (perhaps) on his way to a teaching position in Australia. He is taking a short length (18") of 10" log and cutting a hole lengthwise with (I think) a chain saw with a plunge cut, making a four or six sided opening lengthwise. He then blows a large gather into the log's opening, producing huge amounts of smoke and fire according to Carlyn's rep. Often the log is destroyed, but the texture of the flat rough edged saw cuts is transferred to the glass. Sometimes all or a portion of the log survives and can be placed on the finished piece. ($700 with log, $350 without.) Obviously, any gloryhole work would damage the texture, so the neck is ground.    Tim deJong, based in Wimberley, is represented by two "Abalone Wave Bowls" ($225.) Abalone refers to the iridescent pearly white inner surface, wave is the shape of the lip. The base on each is a clear solid cylinder. I had not seen his work before. Marc Boutte (above) has two "Tower" ($2,400, 3,200) pieces each about a foot tall with his convoluted inner color surfaces playing against the heavily cold worked flat shape. Other Texas artists included are lampworkers Ricky Dodson and Cheryl Elms and Thomas Long, blown glass with cast iron sculpture that I missed on this visit.    Some of the artists that attracted my eye included (in alphabetical order from the listing where I made my notes): Jake Albright and Mitchell Barnes work clear colored chunks of glass about 4x4" with lots of 1/8" wide straight facets that interact (up to $1200.) Leon Applebaum's "Narly Bowl" is blown and has what I would call "integrated prunts". I don't usually like prunts and the drip/blob/ameba effect is more often seen in sand cast pieces, but the clear protrusions from the clear glass above the color inside works for me ($400.) Curtiss Brock's "Orange Stone Vessel" is a bowl of an intense orange glass inside rolled in a mixed color frit to resemble granite on the outside. The skin is then cut with a few small geometric shapes that show orange. Kenny Carder had a single amazing piece, "Venus", a figure nearly five feet long, made of many sections and strung on a steel wire. The body parts are blown with thick solid beads with gold leaf between the sections. Neal Drobnis has three pieces from a perfume to a large (20") vessel that are blown into sand molds, not uncommon, but with more effective working of the lip than some do, especially a very flat bowl with a wide worked edge. Benjamin Moore has two pieces with a black sphere at the center, a vase with a slightly tapered cylinder above the ball and a bowl with a perfect flat cone about 2 feet across attached at the equator. Henner Schroder's "Starpod; Powerfigure and Spirit" is cast glass, but as the glass was poured, frit was used like sand painting to make figures on the flat top, then more glass was added to make an absolutely clear, slightly round edged top that is like looking in a limpid bowl of water. Richard Silver is also blowing into copper, in this case curved and straight copper tubes to form a skeletal and an architectural structure. The most impressive failure in the blown work was Gregory Verbois' "Jupiter Eruption", a very tall (22"?) sculpture that inverts the normal idea of blown glass since it is shaped like a three section fold out paper Christmas tree with a single center line. It is clearly hot worked glass (not glued) and has good shape and form. It also is purple and pink and the color combination is icky (childlike review terminology.)    I have certainly short changed most of the artists appearing in the show, but then cast and assembled work doesn't excite me and some of the blown work didn't make it over the edge to interesting at this moment. 10/27/94

COLORING BOOK - On hand at Carlyn is a coloring book created by Josh Simpson to explain how his planet weights are made, to allow kids to color his designs and to make their own. It also has a very good description through pictures of how off-hand glassworking works and specifically how each of the features in his weights is made. It suggests using honey on a stick to show kids how hot glass handles.    So a question: Do you satisfy the buyers curiosity about creation of the piece you make with any kind of brief description of your process, thinking or goals and/or guidelines for care of the glass. If so, would you send me a sample. If not, why not? 10/29/94

SESSION - Fired up in mid-afternoon, to warm slowly since it has rained so much. Full heat by about 4:30. For the first time, I had to quit because the annealer was full rather than because I was out of glass. I actually added glass three times and returned a few botched starts to the pot, but the real reason for the filling is that I was making ornaments/witch balls as fast as possible. CompuServe Crafts has an ornament exchange each year, with 58 people participating last year. A person in Oregon receives the ornaments of all kinds of crafts, photographs them, scans them to GIF files, and then swaps the ornaments around, sending each one someone else's. I have one I can send, so I signed up, but I decided to try making something more interesting, with extras going to relatives and friends. Some that I made seemed good off the pipe and the percentage surviving mistakes was good. 10/29/94

ORNAMENT TECHNIQUE - Not being an expert, my technique is to use a hot pipe: the same pipe and small punty over and over again. When I crack off the ball, I lay the pipe down with the end in a position to keep very warm. After adding the loop (see below) and stashing the ball in the annealer, I reheat the punty and form it, park it to keep warm and pickup the pipe for the first gather. Because the pipe is hot and larger from the previous glass, the first gather is larger. I also don't have to handle several pipes and line them up for preheat.    Adding color bits or streaks has to be done early because there is so little glass in the ornament (or witch ball) that color bits can be a high percentage of the glass. Also the color area, if frit is picked up can easy stretch to 4 or 8 times the area so scale can be a surprise. Making an ornament is a lesson jacking down the neck and shaping the gather before blowing to get an even blow and small neck opening. The most common problem I have (perhaps from uneven blocking before blowing, is a cone-like taper at the top with a rounded bottom. Control of shape can be enhanced by raising the pipe to blow overhead.    Once blown, chill the neck and place the ball in a fibre lined bowl or can to hold it while applying the hanging loop.    To add a glass hanging loop, make a small gather, I use a 1/4" rod, and quickly shape it to a little finger size. The first goal is to cover all the sharp edges and seal the hole. Then pull up to stretch the glass to the proper diameter for the hanger loop and hold until no longer sloppy, cut and quickly fold to a loop with tweezers or tips of diamond sheer. If the cut and loop is done too soon, it will collapse and seal. I carry mine by the loop with the tips of the diamond shears to the annealer. My two common problems are too much glass, so the loop is proportionately too large and sharp corners when I don't get the cut tip down to the squished out base. If the hole isn't sealed moisture and bugs can get inside. 10/29/94

NICE VISIT - Fred Copeland asked to see my setup a couple of weeks ago and came over this afternoon to listen to me talk and ask good questions for a couple hours. 10/29/94

SESSION - Got in a session only a week after the last one! I have decided to send ornaments to relatives, including some I missed last year, so I am being industrious. Also good training with less glass. Of course, it avoids punty work. Worked a small pot with a nice rim, not too fancy. Tried working goblets twice. Lost both, one by shattering when it got to cold before reheat, the other when I got the stem too thin for further work, but the core problem was not necking down far enough to get a clean break. Was fun to try and will try some more. 11/5/94

PAPER - I bought a copy of the New York Times to try the paper working glass, since I reported in earlier issues from various sources that it was supposed to be better. It didn't work for me, turning to pulp before I was done. Maybe I should try the Journal or the Sunday Times. 11/7/94

IRRELEVANT INFORMATION - Yogurt with fruit on the bottom, at least my brand, can be shaken before opening to stir it better than spooning it around. 11/5/94

WOODEN CUPS - I have decided to try making some wooden cups for working the glass. I am using pear. This choice comes about because I have it: a stump of a tree that was cut a couple of years ago. I cut the stump with a new reciprocating saw with a very long blade that I bought for house work. The wood is very hard and fine grained. 11/6/94

M-AAA/NEA FELLOWSHIPS - in Sculpture, Crafts and Photography for the region of AR, KS, MO, NE, OK and TX. (Other regions exist.) Not for full-time students or previous winners. Must be "a professional artist or an artist who is establishing a career and have created a substantial body of work. Ten fellowships of $5,000 in each category. [Contact Marie Adams-Young, Mid-America Arts Alliance, 912 Baltimore, Suite 700, Kansas City MO 64105, 816-421-1388, TTY 1-800-735-2966] Judging is done from 10 slides. The application has 5 required and 4 optional parts. Get the application to prepare. It must include "evidence that the work reflects continued, serious and exceptional aesthetic investigation and that the artist will be at a critical point of development during the proposed fellowship period."Deadline is Jan. 20 1995. 11/8/94 A fax reply from the Southern Arts Federation [181 14th St., NE, Suite 400, Atlanta GA 30309, 404-874-7244, FAX: 404-873-2148 (AL FL GA KY LA MS NC SC TN)] reports an almost identical program, but with a deadline of 9 January. 11/22/94 The other regional organizations did not reply by fax, so if they followed my request, their deadlines are later or they skipped the program. Here are their phone numbers and the territories covered: Arts Midwest, 612-341-0755, FAX: 612-341-0902, (IA IL IN MN MI ND OH SD WI); Consortium of Pacific Arts & Cultures, 808-946-7381, FAX: 808-955-2722, (AS CM GU); Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, 410-539-6656, FAX: 410-837-5517, (DC DE MD NJ NY PA VI VA WV); New England Foundation for the Arts, 617-492-2914, FAX: 617-876-0702, ( CT ME MA NH RI VT); Western States Arts Federation, 505-988-1166, FAX: 505-982-9307, (AK AZ CA CO HI ID MT NM NV OR UT WA WY);

WAX - While visiting the Farmer's Market I found the guy selling honey had beeswax in various sized disks starting at 50 cents. I have reported problems finding beeswax except at sewing centers. 11/11/94

GIRT - Sue "Girt" Girten called to report her interest in eye protection and discuss what she is doing, which includes blowing four times a week. She has found that she can get high grade protection at lower cost at WalMart Optical including more comfortable frames that wrap around the eyes instead of being flat. More information to follow. 11/12/94

PHOTOS - One of the problems with photographs of glass is the sense of scale. A piece that might be ordinary when 6" tall might be extraordinary at either 2" tall or 12" tall. In my opinion, the best scale indicator is a well designed business card. These are standard size and, if well designed, with either a good sized name or logo or both, it identifies the glass as yours in slides and photos. The most common question I have heard in looking at slides is, "How large is this?" while the slide is being held up to the light. The small rectangle, probably unreadable, gives an instant scale more flatteringly than a checkerboard or plain ruler or a coin. 11/15/94 *** Egg CIS

ALLISON - On a large card sent to all DMA members, Art Allison leads the list of artists that will be present at the two day Dallas Museum of Art Member's Holiday Shopping Spree, Dec.3 and 4, where members get a 20% discount on DMA store items. 11/18/94

ART ALLIANCE - As I shut down for getting this thing to the printer next week, a letter has arrived from the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass president Doug Anderson with too little time to followup. I have mentioned Glass Focus, the newsletter of the group, and I wrote to find out what the Alliance does, since I have rarely found information related to the group in Focus. Membership is $45 a year [205 Worth Avenue, Palm Beach FL 33480] and results in Glass Focus, invitations to events, and exchanges with other collectors. Dues funds are used for grants to organizations, payments to Glass Magazine for invited critics, and complementary subscriptions to Glass Mag for museums and national art critics.    A copy of a letter to "Everyone" dated today reports that ARTnews January issue will have a 40 page Special Supplement on the Glass Movement including a 20 page essay by a Seattle art critic.    It also reports that the Corning Museum produces a monthly calendar of glass exhibitions. The cost is $42 per year. [The Corning Museum of Glass, One Museum Way, Corning NY 14830-2253]

TEXAS HOLIDAY SALES/OPEN HOUSES

- Peet Robison Santa Fe NM (Honorary Texan) via CompuServe - Hi Mike, Funny you should ask, we are having our open house this week-end. (Nov.26) I'll be demonstrating and Susan will be wrapping up pieces (I hope!) This will be our 5th year to do it here. We are collaborating with about 12 other artists in the La Cienaga studio tour, as well as our own mailing list. We advertise on radio and newspaper, and the attendance is huge, even when it is snowing! We will have hot cider and home-baked cookies and a whole lot of glass! I have been stashing away the 2nds for the occasion, as well as new pieces. It really is the ultimate craft fair! Right here at my home / studio.

Probably too late for mention in HB 22, but thanks for asking!

Peet P.S. I *always* look forward to the arrival of Hot Glass Bits. Keep it up!

- Divas Art Glass south of Ft.Worth is having an open house sale to "purge the studio" on December 11th 1-5pm (because the Cowboys play on Saturday, lets keep our priorities clear.) 11; - Art Allison in Pottsboro in far north Texas, "Holiday Open House" Dec 10 - 11 , noon to 5, serving eggnog & rum balls.    - Drew Ebelhare in Houston, "Open House", Sun Dec.11, 1-6pm refreshments, homemade wild duck gumbo, home baked goods, holiday sale of paperweights of various qualities. 11; - Tim de Jung in Wimberley, SW of Austin, "Pre-Holiday Sale" , Dec.10-11, 11-6, refreshments    - Matthew Labarbara, Fire Island - Armadillo Christmas Bazaar - 10-24th of Dec, 11am - 11pm, Terrace, (used to be the opera house), 200 Academy, 4th year for them, 60 or so booths. $3 to get in, live music every night, like 19th year, indoors.

COLBY SMITH [II] sends a notice of the Emporia State University Glass Open House from Tuesday November 29 to Saturday December 3. Tuesday thru Thursday includes demonstrations in the afternoon. Friday is for visiting artists (which can include you and may include Vernon Brejcha, Charlie Correll, Tom Hesse, Harve Harris ....) to become familiar with the facilities. Saturday is setup for several demonstrations ending in a BBQ and Buffet. RSVP if you can at 316-341-5246 for some housing or just show up. Facilities include an outdoor studio with a 400 lb. crystal tank, large glory hole, and two benches. The inside facilities include a 400 lb. Correll recuperative tank, a large glory hole and 100 lb. blue glass tank in one building and two 200 lb. color tanks in another with enough annealer space for "the biggest pieces you can blow (guaranteed.)" 11/22/94    Colby also reports that at a one-man show 15 out of 30 pieces representing a year and a half's work were destroyed when the top shelf of a display collapsed. Meanwhile his car was burgled and the stolen checks are being used to the tune of $500 so far.

For all the holidays, including the one as this goes into the mail, for all the year ahead after them, may I, my wife Gigi, Bianca her current and Cara her former Seeing Eye Dogs, our family here in Dallas wish you the very best.

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PHOTOS - I am carrying around a pair of portfolios that show examples of glass of particular artists and photos their equipment. I normally take these pictures when I visit. If you wish to share views of your place, I would prefer the following: two pictures from the same position - one across the shop at the hot wall, the second to the right or left showing most of the rest of the shop often including annealers. A third picture of cold working equipment would be nice. For pictures of work, I favor one picture filled with your best/favorite piece and another showing several pieces that represent the variety of your work. The pictures I carry are 4x6 or 3 1/2x5. If you send slides, I will have prints made. 5/21/94

REFERENCE LISTS - I would like to know of people involved in glassblowing, glassblowers, even those who only blow part of the year; glassblowing studios; and galleries showing and/or selling blown glass. At a minimum, I will send them a copy of Hot Glass Bits. Beyond that, maybe some coordination, reducing costs, sharing experience. Address or phone number needed. Also, schools and people doing teaching in studios so when people ask I can send them some place.

RECIPES - I have started putting together Recipes - sets of directions for some specific glassblowing task, most often construction right now - following the model of a cookbook including the personal nature of cooking, generally a couple of pages long, some with a drawing. If you would like to offer something, please do so; ask for a sample page if you wish. The following are available now, $3 for the first one, $2 for each additional ordered at the same time, to cover copy, processing and mailing costs.

Blow good Glass

Three groups of people get Hot Glass Bits at this point: Those who are mentioned in an issue, those I feel like sending a copy to, and those who have paid some money. The only ones guaranteed to get the next issue are the last group.

Started 9/25/94, ending 11/22/94

67 Artists & 61 Glass-DB = 150 copies 128 total plus direct to LA sent