Adventures in the Bay Area

Immediately following the workshop, Public Glass opened up the blowing floor to area glassblowers to come and hone their skills by making cups.  The cups are then used for the Hot Glass Cold Beer fundraisers.  This time though, we had started to crank the furnace up, so that we could ladle out the remaining glass.  It was time for their annual shutdown, when the furnace gets a new crucible, some elements get replaced, this time the crown needed to be replaced as well.

   Once the furnace was emptied, it was brought down to room temperature over the course of several days.  We would not get back to it until after Christmas.

    In the mean time, there was lots to explore. There is another public access studio in the area, about an hour south,  in San Jose, called BAGI.  I actually had an order for some work, so I thought it would be a good time to check it out.

    Terrific studio to work in.  Joan Phillips is the Executive Director, and as chance would have it - a Philadelphia native!  I was able to fill my order & make some good connections at the same time.  I left a couple of my molds behind for the next renters to play with.  From the looks of things the next day - They had some fun!
    Joan sent me into town to check out a place called TechShop, man did that place get my gears going.  So much so that I needed to go check out the ocean in Santa Cruz to calm down!  That was a really cool place to visit.  The part of the shore I checked out was cliff-like with very small beaches.There were little pools of water where sea anemones and snails and sometimes very small fish reside. The textures in the rocks were great! Here are some pics.