"Teacher's Pet"

This month the Morean Arts Center has an exhibition called Teacher's Pet. They ask their instructors to chose one piece from one of their students to put on display in the exhibit. Doug chose one of my pieces for it. Yesterday the family and I had a chance to get down to the museum and check it out.

Here's me in my first public showing! The yellow, green and blue bowl is mine, the purple spinout is Dougs.

And what Doug had to say about me...

Instructor Assisted Studio

The past few times I've worked in the studio I've started feeling like I wasn't making any progress. I was making the same mistakes and my pieces were all pretty similar. I had some pieces that I liked but I didn't feel like I was growing. So last week I did a studio session with Doug, my instructor from the classes.

We spent a lot of time focusing on form and technique and it was immensely helpful. It was extremely helpfull and I think helped to get me back on track.

I started with just a clear vase. Doug did one first and then I did the same thing. This was to work on getting the bubble shaped properly and get the glass thickness nice and even.

The next two were spin outs. The first was a bowl, the second one was practicing a rondel (a plate). I think I'm spinning them out too fast as both of them had an edge that got away from me.

The past few times I've worked in the studio I've started feeling like I wasn't making any progress. I was making the same mistakes and my pieces were all pretty similar. I had some pieces that I liked but I didn't feel like I was growing. So last week I did a studio session with Doug, my instructor from the classes.

We spent a lot of time focusing on form and technique and it was immensely helpful. It was extremely helpfull and I think helped to get me back on track.

I started with just a clear vase. Doug did one first and then I did the same thing. This was to work on getting the bubble shaped properly and get the glass thickness nice and even.

Finally, I wanted to do a smooth bowl. On my third gather on this piece I didn't let enough glass strip off and it was really big. Too much for me to really work with to be honest, but this time I had Doug and he helped me along. When you have a lot of glass on your pipe, everything is much harder to control. The biggest issue is making the jackline because the glass is so thick. Piece came out great though!

Teacher / Student Exhibition

A couple weeks ago Doug asked me to give him a piece to put into the Teacher & Student exhibition that the Morean Art Center is doing. We chose my yellow and blue bowl from my last studio session for it. Should be fun seeing my piece at the museum! I don't know the dates yet, will post them when I do.

June 22nd Studio

Jeff and I had a rough night on this one. We both lost our main pieces. I ended up redoing mine, he worked on something else.

Mine was supposed to be a longer vase and wanted to work on thinning out the walls as well. First I blew my piece a little thin in one spot so I had to stop, couldn't thin it out any further. We puntied up and tried to transfer. Had a bad attachment and the punty popped off. While Jeff was getting a new one, I went to the glory hole to get a flash. Bad idea. The piece exploded in the glory hole.

I decided to redo the same piece and again had trouble blowing it out evenly. Instead of a vase, I ended up with more of a bowl shape. The piece came out good even though it wasn't exactly what I was trying for.

We each only got two pieces out this time. My second one was a paperweight that I wanted to spin out. Same technique as the one I tried a few months ago that flopped over. Didn't have quite as much glass this time and managed to keep it under better controle.

June 4th Studio

Sorry for the delay on this one. After picking up my most recent pieces, I realized I didn't put up my previous ones!

Three pieces from this session. My main piece was also the most instructive! I wanted to try a larger piece and was shooting for a vase. I also experimented with putting some cane in the optic mold to get a line pattern on it.

I jumped a little too far on this one. After my last gather, I should have let some of the glass strip off before coming out of the furnace (or stripped off into a bucket). I cooled my pipe and then sat down at the bench to start shaping it...and that when I lost control. There was too much glass dripping down, the pipe got heavy and lopsided so I couldn't turn it, and the next thing we knew, there was a puddle of molten glass on the floor.

To top it off, it landed on wax drippings so it also burst into flames! Yeah, exciting piece! We recovered from it, and then I proceeded to blow the piece too thin at the bottom. The piece came out sloppy, but we learned a lot from it.

Next I wanted to practice another cup. The focus of this piece was to work on thinner walls and nice clean base. Met all my goals on this one!

Finally, a small test. How fast could I get through a simple paperweight. This one took 15 minutes from start to finish. Definitely improving!

Some new pieces

First, I picked up the two pieces that I made while assisting Doug in class last month. The first one was an example of using an optic mold in a simple paperweight. The second was just getting in some practice while the class was taking a break.

These next three are from my studio session last week. I bought some dichroic glass scrap to play around with. I started with a simple paperweight with some shards in it just to get a feel for how to use the dichroic without burning it off. You have to be very carefull with the heat exposure or the metal oxides burn away.

The next two pieces I was focusing on trying to get the thickness of the glass correct. They came out perfect in that regard. Unfortunately, the "plate" didn't spin out enough and has a funky shape because I didn't trim up the lip. And the foot cracked off of the blue piece when we were taking it off the punty. Oh well, them's the breaks I guess.

Assisting

A couple of weeks ago Doug asked me that since I wasn't taking another course if I would be interested in assisting him in his classes. He thought it would be beneficial for other students new to glassblowing to have someone else that was just starting out to talk to and have help them.

I was very excited about it and was flattered that he thought I'd progressed enough to be helfull as a teachers assistant. I won't be able to do it regularly, just here and there as Jen and I can juggle schedules.

Today was the first class for this session. Doug has only two students in this session, Rayna and Gail. We spent some time talking about glassblowing in general and then Doug had me demo a paperweight while he talked to the class about each step. Apparently all I really need is an audience because everything went perfectly. And I think it was the straightest jack line I've done to date! Afterwards I just hung around and talked "shop" with the ladies. I really enjoy acting as a mentor; I like helping other people and honestly I learn a lot myself. Hopefully the class got some benefit from me being there!

To top it off, Doug let me sneak in a piece on my own while they were taking a break!

It'll be a few weeks, but I'm looking forward to going and helping out again.

Final Piece from Class

I picked up my last piece from class today. Gotta say I'm extermely happy with how it turned out! It's almost exactly what I was envisioning before I started work on it. Did a much better job thinning out the bubble before puntying it up so happy about that.

Add the color spots was pretty hard and I think they came out well. I made them from broken pieces of a "floor model". What was hard is they were pretty thick and it took a long time to melt them in. Spent almost an hour going back and forth from the glory hole keeping a balance between melting the pieces and trying not to collapse the bubble.

Just about my only criticism is that at one point I used the paper to try and smooth it out and I shouldn't have. There is a little bit of ash that got caught on the edges that gave the color spots a bit of a burnt look. Still quite happy, but it's always good to find something to learn from with each piece!

Last Class

Tonight was our last glassblowing class for this session. I'm not planning on taking another class at the moment. Instead, I'm going to focus on renting studio time to practice the skills that I've learned so far.

I'm very happy with how my last piece turned out tonight. Ann got adventurous and got us started putting a foot on our pieces, so of course I had to try one too! Pictures in a couple of days when I pick it up.

Doug - I really enjoyed your classes and have learned a ton of things from you. I planning on attending your demos as regularly as I feel that I've learned just as much from watching you and Pauli than I have from the class. And if you ever need a "punty boy", just give me a holler.

Jeff, Ann and Lauren - It was great meeting you guys. Hopefully we can get up a regular studio routine. I don't have any weekends in April, but definitely planning on one or two in May. I will let you know.

The piece I brought home tonight was an Alex "commission". Last week he asked me to make him a cup. He wanted blue, green and yellow but I didn't have a mix that I liked, so he got just blue.

Lampworking

A few weeks ago I decided to order some basic lampworking tools and give that a try. Sort of a mini "fix" to play with glass in between hot shop sessions. This morning I had some time to sit down and give it a go. Had a lot of fun doing it and my beads didn't turn out too bad. I have to work on using the proper place in the torch. A lot of the beads look "dirty" and I think it's because I was putting the glass too close to the torch (I'm using a basic hot head setup right now and I've heard that can happen; it's also brand new, maybe there's a break in period?).

Anyway, here's the obligatory pictures. Full gallery can be seen here. Right now, I'm not properly annealing them (waiting to make sure I want to continue before I drop a few clams on a kiln) so everything is pretty much practice at this point.

Studio time

This past Sunday Jeff and I rented studio time in the hot shop. Being on our own was definitely a different experience but we did really well. My goal for the day was to practice just blowing a simple ornament, making a cup (with a bottom this time!) and pushing myself a little bit by doing a third gather.

This piece was my blue and white bowl from last weeks class.

Rob asked for some scale in the pictures last week, so just for you bud. Todays pieces compared to a Lego Luke Skywalker :).

At work

A couple of weeks ago, Bryan Leighty (http://bwlphotography.com) brought his photography class in to the hot shop and took some pictures of us at work. Here are a couple of shots of me from his gallery. The full gallery can be seen here. Thanks for letting me post these here Bryan.

Assume the title

Tonights class was a big milestone for me.  Tonight I left feeling like a glassblower.  A beginner still for sure, but a glassblower.

Up until now the only blown glass pieces we have done were heavily assisted by Doug.  We've done some paperweights (solid pieces worked on the punty, no blowing) on our own (assisting each other but no direct help from the teacher), but nothing on the blowpipe by ourselves.

Tonight we learned how to punty a piece.  After a practice exercise, Lauren and I worked on blown pieces completely on our own.  Her piece was a short vase (or a large cup) and mine was a vase that I spun out to get some ruffled edges.  More importantly we did every step without help!  Pics of the piece will be up next week.

Edit: New pics from last weeks "screwup".

Classes

To get started on my journey into the world of hot glass, I started taking classes at the Morean Arts Center in downtown St. Petersburg.  Classes are 6 week sessions, meeting for three hours once a week (Tuesdays).  I'm in my second class.  The class is taught by Doug Taylor Jr. (http://www.skulldougery.com/).  In the class with me are 3 other people; Jeff, Lauren and Ann.

Kickoff

A lot of friends and family have been interested in my latest money pit...er, hobby.  That is, glassblowing!  So I figured I'd get with the times and start a blog about it.  Going forward, I'll use this as an outlet to talk about my latest pieces, how I'm doing, things I'd like to try, etc.  Basically, all things glass related!

A big part of what I'd like to get out of this is some commentary on how my work is coming along so please feel encouraged to comment / critique at will.