Hot Glass Bits 2009 Notes

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NOTICE - Laughing Glass Art Studio  invites you to visit our studio for a fun filled weekend of glass blowing demonstrations during the  Cross Timbers 8^th Annual Studio Tour  November 7^th 10am-5pm and November 8^th 12pm-5pm  1099 Cedar Creek Rd. Argyle, Texas 76226 940-455-2142
For more details and a map, visit www.crosstimbersarts.com or www.laughingglassstudio.com Thank you and hope to see you!  Eric and Cheryl Hansen 2009-11-07

HERE DURING FEBRUARY - Although I started Hot Glass Bits long before blogs became the thing, I have not been too bloggy, trying to include a lot of data - but then I don't read blogs much so maybe they do, too. In any case, I have been spending a chunk of my time working on my solar tracking stuff where I am using mirrors of various sizes scrounged from curbside trash and mounting them to get a beam of sunlight coming in one or more windows for playing with inside.  The smaller more sophisticated one will find the sun each day when it is bright enough and track it automatically to bounce it off an overhead angled mirror to fixed ones along the house.  The larger one is built to take advantage of two larger mirrors and a gate closing mechanism and so far is bouncing sun into shade for heating, manually but eventually automatically if simply.  I have spent a fair amount of time uploading images to Photobucket to save space on my server and allow bigger images when clicked.  In the process I have edited many pages. A link up there shows a list of files worked, up to the date assembled automatically.  Otherwise, working on the house.  Not much actual glass working right now. 2009-02-22

AMARILLO MUSEUM BIENNIAL - This competition for glass artists living within 600 miles* of Amarillo is announced in the form of a long, long OCR challenged GIF image rather than text so I will refer you to their website - noting that Dante Marioni is the juror and the deadline is now March 6, 2009 http://www.amarilloart.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.aspx?id=67  *600 miles includes almost all of Texas, all of New Mexico and parts several states including Louisiana - but not New Orleans - Missouri - but not St. Louis - and Tucson, Arizona - but only about half of Phoenix - using Google Earth to measure straight line distances. 2009-02-16

LIVE ONLINE VIDEO - The Tacoma Museum of Glass offers online videos from the past and live coverage of their shop Wed-Sun as noted here. A recent visit by Dante Marioni and a February visit by Lino Tagliapietra were mentioned on the always interesting CraftWeb Glass Forum. (Registration required) 2009-01-26  Watched the feed today (28) and found it neatly done.  The video comes from fixed cameras that can be zoomed and recorded video that fills gaps. The images and narration are those visitors see on the large screens in the studio.  There is no camera on the narrator so items she refers to and small demonstrations - making a small one-gather horse - done close to the audience are not scene.  The cameras are well placed to show close ups on work at the bench and gloryhole and an overall shot.  At one point the narrator said she taught classes at Pratt and was clearly knowledgeable, not just working by rote.

100 YEARS AGO - Almost certainly only relevant to me and my sister, our father was born 100 years ago.  He died in 1979, almost exactly 30 years ago.  I am irresistibly reminded of Victor Borge's joke "This past weekend we celebrated my father's 103rd birthday [pause for applause], unfortunately he wasn't able to be with us having died ..."  At this point in time, with a receding hairline that has changed my hairstyle after forty-some years, I now look more like him than ever.  His death from an aortic aneurism was abrupt and led me to get a sonogram exam last year after John Ritter's similar death brought the risk to the public eye.  As mentioned here only four "generations" exist in our family line from me to the Revolutionary War. This year's inauguration touched me greatly as it would have him. 2009-01-25

GLASS DONATIONS REQUESTED (by 21 February) - The organization named after the elements in glass, SiNaCa Studios [3437 West 7th Street, #252, Fort Worth, Texas 76107 info@sinacastudios.org (817) 899-0024 www.sinacastudios.org ] has made a call for donations to a fund raising exhibition, auction, and runway show in connection with the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.  The exhibition will be March 4th to April 18th and include the city wide Gallery Night on March 28th and the Center's Artist's Reception April 3rd and conclude April 28th with "Where Glass Rules the Runway, which will include both silent and live auctions, lots of food and drink as well as the exciting Glass Runway Show where models will walk the runway displaying glass art."  Artists may donate one or two pieces, the first being 100% to SiNaCa (a 501c3 corporation) the second 20%, returning 80% to the artist. Glass may be blown, fused, slumped, cast, flame worked, cold worked, and illuminated and will be juried for use.  Donations must be received by February 21.  Last year's exhibition was very poplar so 2 weeks have been added. 2009-01-24

$2,500,000 PIANO - A press release from Habatat VA Gallery points to a pair of grand pianos created by Bosendorfer and John Kuhn which have inlaid crystal with gold leaf inclusions.  The images do not offer great detail, but the prices are $1,200,000 and $2,500,000, which is a significant detail. Here 2009-01-24
 

TECHNIQUE MAGAZINE/SITE - Recently, while researching melting/working platinum, I came across this jewelers site (sample article) http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/nenam/metal-weaving.htm and once again was reminded that while woodworkers have magazines like Fine Woodworking [http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/] and lampworkers have Flow [http://www.theflowmagazine.com/], both of which are filled with fine photographs of finished pieces and works in progress with detailed images.  The dominant furnace glass magazine, Glass Journal from UrbanGlass is adamant that it not show techniques, preferring to keep to the stereotypical art journal with critical reviews and history.  I would love to have the resources to travel for pictures and solicit images for the internet, but I am not great as social person and this site is running near its limits which is the trade off for my personal tone and no ads.  If you have or know of a page/site where furnace glass techniques are shown well, let me know and I will add the link to gls-tech.com

LIGHT SHOW - I recommend a show I saw today at the Dallas Museum of Art (until March 15) of works by Olafur Eliasson, an Islandic artist with a great variety of creative projects. I find his website awkward to use and barely gives clues to some of the works  http://www.olafureliasson.net/  The DMA exhibit occupies 22 spaces, 8 of which are wall mounted matrices of color photos showing similar natural objects such as mountains at different times of day, icebergs as traveled around or glacier sink holes with water running into them.  The rest of the spaces, with the exception of the fan swinging on a cable in the middle of the great court, are room sized and are concerned with light and color and having much to do with optical perception.  A room intensely lit with three dozen sodium yellow lights results in everyone becoming black and yellow, but looking like photo printed on yellow paper, since no other colors are available for reflection.  The entrance to the room is a tunnel of dozens triangular mirrors in a wire frame with the backs of ordinary mirrors showing black on the way in, but half-silvered mirrors on the way out, so a view of the world is available.  A ball of much smaller triangular mirrors aimed inward at a bulb is the feature of the second collection of spaces and does not work well as installed, I think.  Two rooms have glass hanging and revolving with a spot light aimed at it.  One is a rectangular mirror exactly spaced so the reflection exactly fills one end wall of the room at the moment that the shadow fills the other end wall.  The other is a disk of dichroic glass - the original definition where it reflects purple and transmits yellow so a purple shape revolves around the room as the yellow stands still and periodically collapses and merges with the purple and re-emerges.  Two rooms have banks of spot lights which are filtered and masked to produce shapes on the wall. In one, the shapes change the perspective of the room, so suddenly the eye sees a new corner twenty feet further away.  In the other, a silver ball on the wall is a focus point and if one holds sight of it, the colored shapes form and vanish abruptly, leaving complementary colored after images.  Perhaps the most disconcerting space is a cylinder with white walls about a foot thick and 9 or 10 feet tall.  Behind the inner wall are very bright fluorescent tubes in the primary colors which are smoothly brightened and dimmed by computer control.  The room changes from dim white to brilliant purple or green or yellow, almost too bright to face, then falls off and a panel of soft edged contrasting color moves around the room. pdf link of room plans 2009-01-06 

SUMMER CLASSES REVIEW - It has been a while since I offered an overview of summer classes which are a major resource for furnace glass blowers.  These classes run a week or two and provide top quality instructors in a high quality environment.  They provide a full day of work for six days (usually) with accessory activities like lectures, slide shows, and studio visits and evening working time in some cases.  The heavy hitters are UrbanGlass, the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass (next), Penland, Pilchuck and Haystack.  Most have a lot of competition and have deadlines in spring for all classes.  Some more popular classes are filled by lottery from the applications and some classes with impressive instructors are juried requiring images of past work to get in.  Most cost over $1500 a week with board and room.  Several are isolated, making transportation more costly.  For more information see the revised summer class page 2009-01-05

CORNING STUDIO CLASSES - The Studio at Corning Museum of Glass has announced their spring and summer 2009 classes.  The complete schedule can be found on their web site http://www.cmog.org/dynamic.aspx?id=156  Spring courses are ten week sessions plus some weekend and one day workshops.  In furnace glass the weekends include five Beginning Glassblowing and two Next Steps.  Six flameworking topics and nine flat glass topics are offered as weekend workshops.  One day workshops include Paperweights at the furnace, beadmaking and beginning.
The summer classes are more accessible to non-residents because they run for a week or two each.  Ten sessions are offered this year from June 1 to Sept 12 with the Glass Art Society conference in the middle of June.  Generally each session has a furnace, a lampworking and one other class that may be flat glass or a mix of techniques.  Among the interesting furnace classes I noticed: June 1-10 Creating and Using Murrine by rolling them up; Coldworking including laminating;  June 8-10 Glass Engraving including stone, diamond, silicone carbide, and copper wheel; June 29-Jul 4 Mold Blowing Madness with traditional and new techniques; and July 27-Aug.1 Combining techniques including blowing grinding and gluing..  Almost every session has some serious coldworking and a fair number of Venetian techniques are included.  Tuition is $750 for 1 week courses with $520 room and board if taken (motel room, restaurant coupons and box lunches) with 3 day being about half and 2 week about double. 2009-01-05