Mold Blowing Workshop - Public Glass

    I arrived in San Francisco early evening, just in time to catch the sunset.  Dramatic lighting - seems to be a theme along this adventure.  I stopped in Oakland, where I would be staying,  to meet up with my gracious host Matt Szösz.  Matt does some amazing things with glass. Here's a link to a video where he inflates fused glass with compressed air. Don't try this at home, kids!  This is just the tip of the iceberg. He is currently the Executive Director of Public Glass, a public access glass studio in San Francisco, where I would be teaching my mold blowing workshop.
     First stop was the glass shop to unload everything that I brought along for the mold blowing workshop, molds, tools, etc.  First impression of the studio was definitely a good one.  Everyone was quite welcoming and friendly, the facility's top notch, plenty of room on the blowing floor, and there is a whole other space for Kiln working and flame working.  Settled in a bit & took public transit into the Mission area of town to walk around.  San Francisco is a bustling city.  It was quite a shift from where I had recently been.
    Spent the Friday getting set up at the glass studio,  and helping Matt blow some glass. That was a blast. Matt doesn't really blow glass that much.  He spent a fair amount of the time exploring the qualities of the glass that came from the floor of the glory hole.  Over time a small pool of glass can build up in the floor of the glory hole - for various reasons - and it consists of a mixture of clear & colored glass & vermiculite & sand & bits of steel firescale, and it gets heated & cooled daily (all this will result in a very funky glass-like material).  It was a lot of fun to play with. Very stiff stuff.  The only "surviving" element was an ornament made from the stuff. Very pretty color.
    Afterwards, I was taken around town by Evan Venaas - the studio tech - he was an excellent tour guide, made it over to watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean while pondering Surfer Philosophy.  An excellent way to spend the afternoon.

    Saturday Morning and the workshop begins.  There were 3 students, Ray, Lauren, & Eric.  We chatted a bit in the morning, then I did some demonstrations of my molds. I did one of the rocket ships that I first discovered at River Falls, only this time I figured out how to get a spire on the top.  I really like these - I need to figure out a way to make a bunch of them.  Here's a pic:

 I think they would look great in metallic colors too.....

    After the demos, we got to work.  We found some really interesting scrap in the tech room, and after a bit of fiddling around, we had our ideas ready to fabricate.  Here is the slide show (with captions) of the first day. Click Here.  

   Fun stuff!  We all had a blast, Eric & Lauren welded for the first time, there were a variety of molds made & lots of ideas bouncing around.  The next day we got to blow them all!  Everyone started out with a couple of mine, I always appreciate when other folks use my molds - many times they do things with the objects that I could never forsee.  It was a day for everyone in the class to play, and play they did! Here are some pics.

    The Energy was great & I think we all inspired each other.