Glass Stock West 2011

Last weekend we headed up to Eugene Oregon for Glass Stock West.  It was basically like summer camp for glass workers, so very, very awesome!    I had an opportunity to meet some of the greats, Paul Trautman, the father of colored borosilicate glass, Bandu Dunham, who literally wrote the flameworkers "bible", Deb Crowley, the founder of Glass Stock and wonderful artist and many, many more. 

It was 4 solid days (morning, noon and night) of playing with glass, learning fun and very challenging new techniques as well as a couple of lessons in metal wire work for jewelry. 

The weekend started off with a bang on Thursday, watching Shawn Tucker make beautiful, delicate blown boro perfume bottles.   We got to try our hands at it after Shawn finished the demo and it was so far beyond my current skill level I just had to laugh at the epic fail (too epic for pictures).  I was pretty concerned at this point that I had gotten in WAY over my head and would never be able to keep up with the classes.  Luckily, this turned out not to be the case.

Below is Shawn in his "One Man Band/Inspector Gadget" mobile set up.  He makes most of his rigs, jigs and tools from thrift store finds and is very talented at putting them all together.  I think he is/was a drummer after watching him make some crazy, spinning moves with the hot glass rods.  He used a more traditional table set up for the demo : )

 

 Friday was fantastic.  The day started with a lesson in how to make Byzantine chain with Patty Pulliam.  She is funny and nice, there were only 3 of us all together so we had lots of laughs and made a couple of cool (in my humble opinion) bracelets. Here's mine (made with copper byzantine links and my own lampworked beads).

After lunch at the Laughing Planet (highly recommend this place for vegetarians and omnivores yum, yummy), it was time for the incomparable Deb Crowley to show a few of us lucky students how to make blown boro sea shells.  She is a great teacher, clearly explaining the whys and wherefores all the while throwing out valuable tips and tricks. I so wanted a third or fourth hand to take notes with.  We started out with a "simple" file type shell.  I finally learned how to add color over clear in boro tubing, this technique is basic and critical to learn and has eluded me for a long time.

Next up was a Rooster Conch, it took Deb the entire rest of the afternoon session to demonstrate how to make it, while we were all madly scribbling notes knowing we would have to make it ALL BY OURSELVES in the evening at Open Torch while Deb ran around organizing the evening activities.   This turned out to be a fun bonding experience as all of us students had to help each other get through it, yelling out questions and answers across the table as we sweated out our first solo shell efforts.  I'm proud to say mine came out of the kiln in one piece and looks like a shell (perhaps not exactly like the rooster conch as taught, but after literally 3 hours of sweaty concentration I kinda forgot what it was supposed to look like, LOL).

I missed most of what else was happening that evening, something about a crazy hat contest.  The winner was a young artist from Portland, Doloros D. Low, who made a glass hat modeled on beer drinking ball caps, only this was basically shaped like a bra, and of course named "the Beverage Brassiere", I think she's drinking a Screwdriver (OJ on one side, vodka on the other).

Saturday was another huge learning curve day starting with Eric Edner's class on Intermediate boro sculpture making orchids.   I was pretty happy I had gotten the hang of coloring over clear tubing the day before because that's the very first thing we had to do and I would have felt super silly to have to ask Eric for help on that as this was billed an "Intermediate", not "Remedial" class, LOL.  He was the most patient teacher!  The other torches in the room kept "POPPING" very loudly and randomly, people were yelling, the fans were going full blast and glass was shattering left and right, and yet in the middle of all that Eric patiently went around to each student and quietly helped them make it right! 

I had never attempted something this complicated before with multiple pieces & parts going in and outta of the kiln and complex assembly steps.  I still have a long way to go and must get better at bridging, but overall I'm pretty pleased with this first attempt (Eric made the goblet foot for me)

In the afternoon a few of us learned and practiced using butane fueled jeweler's (or creme brulee) torches to fuse silver links together.  The person teaching this class was pretty funny, his wife put him up to it and he was super nervous, I mean SUPER nervous!  He knew the techniques and had clearly made jewelery before so it all worked out and after the initial part where he had to demo the technique everyone relaxed (yes, all the students were really sweating it out in sympathy for Mr. Meow, you know that feeling when your friend is on stage in the Christmas pageant and all you can think is "oh God, please, please don't let her trip, fall, fart or forget her lines").  Here is the very happy instructor (class was finally over) and one of his proud students.

I love what Brenda did with her bracelet, it's a little hard to see in the picture, but she didn't stick to the basic lesson plan (see mine below), instead she fused scrolled curves together to make a delicate, art nouveau type cuff.  I just did the basic, hammered rings, wasn't really feeling creative with all the post fusing pounding to flatten the links giving me a massive headache.

 Saturday night was "Artist Auction" to raise money for GlassStock West (for new furniture and tools) and the artists, who got 50% of the proceeds.   I swore I wasn't going to bid on anyone, but then inevitably got caught up in the excitement and couldn't resist when Polly Bettencourt, of DragonArtGlass in Santa Cruz, can up for auction.  She is cool and interesting.  I won the bid (1.5 hours of custom work) and Polly made me this vortex marble with a dragon curled around it, wow.

Yet more fun on Sunday learning the tips and tricks for working the Trautman Art Glass (TAG) soft glass reactive colors.  Jenny Newtson showed us how to make the colors really pop.  One of the tricks to reducing TAG104 for a silvery effect is to use what's known as a "Dragon's Breathe" flame, all propane, no O2 and with a gap between torch face and flame.

The Sunday night BBQ was fun and a little sad as I knew we were headed home the next day. 

All in all, great fun was had by all.