Tonight is the night.

Tonight is my first night of hot shop rental. 4 hours of just me and another fellow glassblowing student playing with hot glass for 4 hours. I can't wait! 

Wish me luck!

-drew-

Open House

In my last post I made mention of an open house I was attending on Saturday. I did end up going in spite of being sick for most of last week. I got there about 12:30 and at that time there were no big demos going on but the studio owner was making some really nice little wine goblets and explaining each step as he went along. I was watching him work and his assistant disappeared for a minute so he asked me to help! Needless to say I was a little worried I'd mess up something but after having him teach one of my classes and talking to him over the year or so I've been hanging out at his studio I knew he would talk me through whatever he needed. And he did. I delivered a few bits for the stem of the goblet and didn't hurt him, myself, or the goblet so it all worked out well. His assistant came back and actually gave me some gathering tips and answered all my newbie questions. 

After hanging around for an hour or so watching some incredible stuff being made the owner Michael said there was an open bench and I should make something. I was thinking to myself, "What? With all these people watching me?". I ended up hooking up with two other relative new blowers and we switched off making a piece at a time. My first attempt was a simple clear tumbler that was reasonable successful. I practiced trimming the lip since the lip was really fat coming off the pipe and for my second only lip trim I was happy with the results. It turned out too small to really hold much but it will hold at least one handful of Peanut M&Ms so I call it a success. Then one of my instructors, Steve Claypatch, asked if I would help him with a piece. I assisted with my first bench blow and flipped the piece while he shaped the sides with cork paddles. I also helped with a punty and the transfer. You can really learn a lot just by helping someone who knows what they are doing. I helped Steve with a second small vase he made that had trapped bubbles by using an optical mold. After the transfer to the punty he pretended he was an Italian master and sat an the bench and had me do all his reheats for him. It was quite fun and a bunch of guys in the shop were giving him a hard time about it. I made my second piece and Steve helped me add some color by adding some color to the pipe before my first gather and then gathering over it. Another new technique for me. (most of them are) After my first gather I added some opaque blue frit, another gather, and blew it out into another small, slightly lumpy, tumbler. I tell you, if there is ever a booming market for small lumpy tumblers I am good to go. I could have probably stayed for another couple of hours but I had to head home. It was another great experience. I don't have the stuff I made yet, it was not out of the annealer until yesterday and I have not had a chance to go in and pick it up. I promise to post some pics once I get them in hand. 

On a side note, another student and myself have booked our first slot for next week. Next Wednesday the 18th he and I have a spot for 4 hours. I can't wait! 

Thanks for reading!

-drew-

First Public Glassblowing Appearance

As I mentioned in the post below I will be making my first public glassblowing appearance (yikes!) this weekend at Foci Glass in Minneapolis. Here is the info:

 Valentines Open House

Join us on February 7th from 11 AM until 5 PM for glassblowing demonstrations by Michael Boyd at NOON, Andy Thompson at 2:00, and Todd Cameron at 4:00.  Enjoy light refreshments and an open gallery featuring work of local glass artists.

For more information you can visit the Foci site by clicking here.

Hope to see you there!

-drew-

Class is over

Well last Wednesday was my last class, for now. I do plan on taking more advanced classes in the future after I get more experience with the basics. Here are my impressions of the class.

The instructors were excellent. Over the 4 week course we worked with 3 different instructors and it was nice to get a feel for how they all did things. They never made me feel like I was in over my head. They answered every question very well considering how little I knew going into this. I would highly recommend the school and the instructors. Over the four week course I made 2 paperweights, several nice started bubbles, a nice small clear tumbler, a clear tumbler "floor model" as described in an earlier blog entry, and two floppy, lumpy colored tumblers. I am also infected with the glassblowing bug. I already ordered some color and have begun making plans to get back into the studio with another student who just finished classes as well. And this Saturday the studio is having their annual Valentine's open houseand one of my instructors promised that if I show up I will get a chance to play around a bit. I am excited to go but a little nervous about making stuff in front of a crowd with as little skill as I have at the moment. I am of course going to do it and hopefully will not make too many "floor models". I am going to make a seperate entry in my blog to annouce the open house so watch for it here sometime today. 

Thanks for reading. 

-drew-

Experiment

Yesterday while shopping at a new local surplus store I found these little stainless steel soap dishes. The were originally sold by the Gap for $6 but the surplus store was selling them for 45 cents each. I bought 4.


I laid the top part of the dish up in my kiln like this:



Then put two sheets of white in the stainless steel square like this. The black sharpie X in the white sheet marks the center of the sheet so I can attempt to get the thing centered above. I laid up different chunks of blue, green and white scrap in the soap dish above the white sheets.




I fired using a slight variation in the potmelt tutorial found on Steve Immerman's site here. You can see by the picture below that it looks like I had really bad spalling from the dish. The flakes you see are the glass that did not pour out and it popped loose from the stainless soap dish while it cooled. There were tiny shards everywhere but the vacuumed up nicely with the shop vac and nothing actually stuck to the glass.



After I removed the dams and posts:



And a closeup of the final piece. I like the pattern but it looks like I have some glass that didn't like the high heat or was reactive with another color since it turned kind of muddy in parts. I still see this as a successful experiment. One other problem is the long soak at the high temp brought bubbles to the surface of the white. They are all either tiny craters or just have a super thin skin of glass. I think the next time I rent coldworking time I will sandblast this guy to pop those bubbles and refire to polish it.


Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think.

-drew-

Afro Celotto

While looking for different videos online of glassblowing I came across a few featuring Afro Celotto. This guy is incredible. I will try to embed one of the videos here:

Look around on Youtube for more of his work. It's awesome.

Glass Class

On Wednesday night I had my third glassblowing class. We focused on starter bubbles, forming a small tumbler shape, transfer to the punty, shaping the lip and getting the piece in the box. It was a good night. 

I went down to the studio over an hour early to try and get into the cold shop to polish the paperweights we had made the first night of class but there was already someone using the cold shop. I hung around talking to one of the instructors and watched him make a couple small vases and helped him where I could since he was alone in the shop at the time. He used an optic mold to form the vases which was cool to watch. I also got some tips along the way that will help in the future, I hope. 

When class started we were picking up from where we were last week. There are 3 students to each instructor and when the three in my group were asked who wanted to go first neither of them wanted to so I did. I successfully made a starter bubble in my first gather and after a second gather managed to shape it into a thick, short, slightly lopsided tumbler. I am really looking forward to seeing how it turned out after next week's class. I then switched instructors and went again. Again another good bubble and second gather. I was getting a little to heavy with the blowing and blew the bottom a little thin. I ended up sticking the punty to the bottom a little too well and it shattered during the transfer. My fellow student who delivered the punty was shocked and started apologizing immediately. I laughed and told her not to worry about it. It's not going to be the last, and definitely not the nicest, thing I will make that hits the floor. 

After class the coldworking room was going to be open for a while so I got to put a nice polish on my paperweights.  Hopefully this weekend I can get a couple pictures of them to post.  

In order to feed my new addiction I have been surfing the web looking for information and better yet videos on glass blowing. I came across this series on Expert Village by Jim McKelvey that is pretty good. Check them out if you are interested.

Link to videos

Let me know if you know of any other sources of cool videos, I can't get enough of this stuff. 

Thanks for reading,

-drew-

Where it all began...

I thought I might type up a little something about where my glass journey started so here I go...

After changing jobs back in 2004 I lost my tuition reimbursement while attending college. I could not afford or justify the cost of paying for the whole thing myself so I stopped going. But I had been going part time for a couple years and was really enjoying learning new things. So I grabbed my local community ed. schedule and signed up for 2 classes. One was "buying a duplex as an investment" and the other was "beginning stained glass". Well I never bought a duplex, and in this market I am really glad about that. But I did immediately take to playing with glass. I ordered a full set of tools from my instructor on the first night of class. I did that for over a year and loved it. Here is probably my favorite stained glass piece that I ever made. It still hangs in my living room.

One day I was talking to my stained glass instructor who I became friends with and she told me she had just gotten a glass kiln. She invited me over to make a couple small pieces and give it a try. I was immediatly hooked. I had the kilnforming bug. It stayed planted in my head for about six months and then I came across a Craigslist ad for a glass kiln. I went and took a look at it and bought it on the spot. The problem was that it was too big for my current house. So into storage it went until I could sell my house and move into a bigger house. The bug was still there. I continued to browse Craigslist for kilns and came across this little guy:

It runs on normal household current and was ready to go. I played with it for a little while using the manual controls but that got old quickly. So I tracked down a used 120v kiln controller on Warmglass.com. I was now able to program the kiln. I started making stuff, and more stuff, and more stuff. My then fiance (now wife) said she thought my stuff was really nice and I should start selling. So I did. I actually sold a lot of stuff. People seemed to like what I was making. If you want to see some of the things I made here is a link to my flickr page with a lot of my glass work posted on it.

Somewhere during this journey I stopped at a glass blowing studio during an art crawl. It was my last stop. I stayed there for a few hours watching these guys make glass stuff. Playing with 2000 degree glass like it was Play Do. Very hot and dangerous Play Do! I decided it was something I needed to try. My then future mother-in-law (now current mother-in-law) bought me a gift certificate to Foci Glass for a "Glass Exploration" class for Christmas. Basically a paperweight class. I worked one on one with one of the resident glassblowers, Todd Cameron, and made a couple goofy little lopsided paperweights. One of them proudly featuring chunks of the glory hole door embedded in it. I was hooked. So this holiday season all my sales from my kilnformed glass went into saving for glassblowing classes and if all went well hot shop time after the class was over. My now mother-in-law once again came through with my favorite Christmas gift of this season. A gift certificate to Foci to help pay for the class! I am now halfway through the class and have a couple more slightly less lopsided paperweights and have actually managed to put a bubble into glass and make something slightly resembling a vessel. That I let get a little too cold and cracked during the knockoff but it was fun to make and a great learning experience. Tonight is my third night of class and I am going in early to polish the bottoms of my paperweights and see if I can watch any of the more experienced blowers working.

Well if you made it this far thanks for reading my ramblings. Stay tuned to this page for more of my glass adventures.

-drew-

Glass Blowing Sites

With my latest glass addiction, glass blowing, I have been devouring any information I have found on the web. In particular there are some very good sites for sharing information. Here are a few I have found useful and entertaining:

CraftWEB Hot Glass Talk
This is one of the first I found and it has new posts most days. I read it almost daily. 

Handmade-Glass.com

A barebones site with tons of useful info.

Glassblower.info
Another site with a lot of useful links and great photos. It has not been updated since November but I could spend days sifting through all the information on there. (and probably have)

Scott Novota's Blog 

Entertaining blog from Florida glass blower Scott Novota.

Foci Glass

I need to also put in a plug for the studio where I am taking my classes. This is the place I first witnessed glass blowing and I knew I needed to do it someday the minute I saw it done. Watch for posts on my classes. Maybe I'll even post some of the lopsided work I am making. 

I will add more as I come across them on the web.

-drew-

Shattered

This is a piece that everyone comments on but it just doesn't seem to sell. I am kind of glad though because I really like it and would hate to see it go.

Do over!

I have deleted all my old posts. They were stale and somewhat boring. I am going to try to revive this blog with my more current work and ramblings about my newest adventure, glass blowing. Stay tuned!