Americus

    When I was blowing glass on the back of the truck in Toledo, a very mellow fellow named Devan Cole approached me.  We had a short conversation, all of about 20 minutes, he's a glassblower involved in a school in southwestern Georgia, and after seeing the molds, suggested that I should come for a visit.  Sure.  Why not?  A couple of months later I received an email from Devan, wondering if I was still interested, and laying out some possible details.  We sorted all that stuff out & tuned in on some dates.  At this point it was getting to be late September, almost Autumn in fact.  I had a wedding to attend, then would make my way south after that.

    I have only been to Georgia a few times, Savannah & Atlanta.  I thought about attending Savannah College of Art & Design back in '93, but the price tag was a little steep.  And they didn't offer glass.  What a different life that would have been... My time in Atlanta had been spent between a hotel bar & the mall - I was overseeing the installation of a store's worth of fixtures in a former life.
    Meanwhile, I was finishing up some work time in Philadelphia, and planting some seeds for a return - I had been notified that I was accepted to the Art Market at Tyler, this gave me a positive date that I would be back in town.  A loose plan was starting to develop. Sometimes it is a comfort to have things lined up, other times it is a comfort to be completely open!  One must allow time for things to materialize on their own, you know.
   The trip South was very pleasant, except for the fact that I had to make sure that I always parked uphill when refueling, so that I could pop start the truck - my starter had finally given out on me, I would eventually replace it.  I am not much of a vehicle mechanic - but this truck is very straight forward - two bolts & a little grime & truck starts like a champ!

  I stopped off in Durham to visit & spent a day helping to trick out the shop there.  There is always a list of things to be done in a glass studio, and my hands were much appreciated.  The following evening I made my way to Americus via mostly two lane roads (the best way to travel), past pecan groves and fields of peanuts.  It was harvest time, so the air was thick with the smell of fresh peanuts being pulled from the ground.  They actually till the plants up & flip them over in rows, so that the peanuts are exposed to the air.  They dry out a little like this, then are gathered & separated from the plant & loaded into big bins and carried away to be processed.
    Landed late that night, met up with Devan, then proceeded to head to the hot shop.  Upon entering the shop, I immediately felt comfortable.  The shop is located on the far side of campus (around back), with a row of trees to block the art area from the rest of the campus.  The studio has a rough edge to it, although everything functions beautifully.  The benches and equipment are set up well for working solo.  It is very rare to find a place like this.

    The program was started in the early 70's, and had been under the direction of Ralph Harvey from the mid 70's up through a few years ago, when it was taken over by Charles Wells.  Ralph is quite a character, and frequents the shop nearly everyday in his retirement.  We immediately hit it off & had some fun playing around with my molds.  It is always such an honor to blow glass with someone who has been working in the material as long as I have been alive.  I am rapidly reaching that point myself, having been first introduced to this stuff 19 years ago - often I will be working with folks who are in their early 20's and suddenly realize that they were like two years old when I started!
    Charles is a brilliant multi-media sculptor, who does an excellent job keeping everything rolling. The glass department is small, but well equipped, and well run.  The vibe in the shop reminded me very much of Tyler when I first started.  Loose, and open.  If you have an idea, try it & see what happens.  Charles asked me on the first day what I would like to accomplish while I am visiting.  I have had an idea for a mold floating around in my head for about a year now, and decided that I should build it & see what happens.  My initial intention was to use this opportunity to create work that I could use to apply for a Wheaton Fellowship - going back to that feeling of needing to settle down for a little bit.
    The mold I ended up creating is a step further into the idea of never making the same thing twice.  There are 12 spring loaded buttons that are pushed in by one, two, three, or four people while the bubble is inside the mold.  The glass is hidden, so that everyone is working by feel.  The ends of the buttons are threaded, so the parts that come in contact with the glass are interchangeable.  The end product has varied greatly, there are so many different factors involved, that each time has been a new experience.  Right now, I am more interested in the process and interaction of the participants with the mold & the materials, than in the actual lump of stuff that comes out of the mold.  It was a big deal for me to be able to create this piece, a big step in a direction I have been wanting to explore for some time. Here are some pics from the first few days & the mold.
    The visit culminated with a big demo which involved everyone.  Charles had a life sized head mold that we blew, and placed it in the annealer.  For the next couple of hours, everyone took turns blowing into molds, and attaching the pieces to the head with a "Hot Ball" (a little glue bit of hot glass).  There were some technical difficulties, and we took it all a little too far, the piece ended up breaking, but the energy in the room was awesome! Here is a link to some shots of the demo.

    The day prior to this demo, during a conversation in the morning, Charles had asked me if I have ever considered going back to school to finish my degree.  I never finished my BFA, you see - I had an opportunity to start a studio with a friend in '97, and have meandered through various career paths since.  I did consider it about 10 years ago, for CAD and industrial design, but was offered a job as a Project Coordinator - the job I would be looking for once I graduated with that degree, so of course I took the job. It is something that has always hung over my head, but could not justify the enormous debt I would incur to have a piece of paper that says I can blow glass.  There are certain advantages to obtaining the degree, I am aware of that, it would really free me up to pursue the bigger dreams and ideas.  I could come back to Americus as a Continuing Education Student and once a Georgia resident, attend school & finish my BFA.  I told him I would give it some thought.  Took me about a half hour (I didn't want to appear too eager).
    So that is the New Plan.  I am moving to Georgia at the end of the year.  I will be able to sit still-ish for a bit, finish my BFA, get an MFA somewhere in the world, and then see what happens after all that.  I didn't see this one coming, but very glad it has!

Hmmm...Made In China Studio, in Americus, GA...I like the way that sounds.

Summer Intensity

    The summer was pretty amazing - in many ways.  There was a lot of reflection, soul searching, heart ache, and joy.  Oh, and it was HOT! Record temps in Durham when I was there - like 108!  Left that to Oklahoma's 119!  Dry heat is still f-ing hot & there IS a major difference between 100 and 120, trust me! Anyway, I digress.  Typical of the Oklahoma born male to  revert to weather talk to avoid serious conversation....

   Much happened personally, I finally opened up & let some shit go that had been standing in my way.  Re-evaluation, if you will.  Looking some of my big issues in the face.  Feeling more empowered about where I am in life.  Patterns of behavior that need to change if I am ever going to move forward.  I started to feel a need to sit still for a bit.  Sometimes feelings appear while travelling down one path, then suddenly the path takes a completely unexpected turn on you. That feeling stayed true, but my sitting still did not happen the way I thought it was going to.
    I ended up at my sister's place in Gettysburg one evening.  She had mentioned in an email that I was welcome to come and stay for however long I needed to rest and patch my bones.  Boy, did I need it.  That day at the spa in Hot Springs Arkansas did not cut it (BTW, I highly recommend visiting Hot Springs Arkansas - that water is Amazing!).  I arrived in Gettysburg with it in my mind that I was going to hunker down & home base it for like a month at least.  There were a couple of opportunities that had presented themselves since GAS, and I needed something to do to fill in the gaps.  Not to mention I sort of had the wind knocked out of me a couple of times recently, and just needed to take a break!

    I set up my portable lampworking rig in the garage, so my nephews and I could screw around with it, and proceeded to visit long standing friends and family.  The second day back involved getting lost in the woods  and then found again, with two of my best friends - like we used to do as teenagers.  At a certain point, I actually made plans to start working at a farmer's market, just give up on this whole thing altogether and go sell fruit.  That is when I received a message from the Tyler Alumni regarding the Art Market in early October.  It took me all of ten minutes to apply, so after that I called Nik at East Falls in Philadelphia to inquire about any possible gigs at the glass studio.  That was on a Friday.  He hooked me up teaching a Fun With Glass class on Sunday, and then a smattering of lessons throughout the week.  Back in the saddle again.  Whew, that was close!  Here are some pics from all that....

There's a Glory Hole to be Built!

   Before leaving North Carolina in early June,  it was proposed to me that I should return after the GAS conference to Durham to help build some new equipment.  Originally, I was going to head out to Oklahoma and then back to Durham, but time and money were running a bit short.  So instead I aimlessly meandered South through Ohio and into West Virginia - into the town of  Williamstown.  A small sign lead me to the now closed Fenton Art Glass factory!  I had totally forgotten about this place.  Sad to see a place that has been around for so long no longer in business.  Right around the corner is the Gabbert Cullet company, who we used to get all of our cullet from in college.  Cullet is the name for scrap glass that can be remelted & used.  Theirs was the best.  I remember shovelfuls of little clear teddy bears and angels being thrown into the hot furnace!  We used a bit of their color too, the red was beautiful, as was the crazy carnival glass fabrine blue, and the peachblow...that was weird stuff.  They also had this fantastic striking opal, that would fade from opaque white through blueish white into clear.

    How strange to just happen upon this place after just attending the GAS conference.  I suddenly remembered another - Blenko!  I now had a plan, or the next destination, at least.  Stayed over in the parking lot of a fancy rest stop near Milton, WV.  First thing in the morning, I was at the Blenko Factory.
Blenko is one of my all time favorites.  They do a lot of mold blowing, and have had some pretty fantastic designers in their day.  They have this water bottle that was designed in 1938 and is still in production.  One of my all time favorite glass objects.

A table full of them!

    I spoke with the shop manager - I will admit, I was trying to get my foot in the door to be a guest designer - I think some of my designs would fit nicely in their catalog.  We had a great conversation about glass and the intricacies of dancing with the stuff.  I would really love to hang out at the factory some day & make some glass with those guys.  Unfortunately for me, they were not blowing that day, but casting billets for Dalle de Verre, which turns out to be one of the reasons they are surviving.  They also make rondels for stained glass windows, which is another item that is rare to find.  They have a scrap yard of colored glass that is for sale.

I ended up purchasing some cullet at 50 cents a pound, I'll take some red, thank you very much!  

This is the piece I made later on with that red.  

    Made it to Durham the next day, about a week ahead of when I was expected.  All good, my friend Paul is pretty laid back and open about visitors, I was welcome to chill.  The main project was to build a new glory with a 12" opening, using primarily the materials that Paul has been accumulating over the last couple of decades.  This is my style of equipment building!  Use what you have on hand, and adapt it to your needs.  I have put together a slide show, at this link, of the construction process.  

   All in all I stayed in the area for about 4 weeks. I threw in quite a bit of pleasure with the work - much needed after the previous summer (I spent most of that preparing to leave Philadelphia).  I checked out a fair amount of Central NC, as well as an unforgettable camping trip to the ocean.  My second time ever to the North Carolina beaches, I highly recommend!  It was a blissful month, one that I am so very fortunate to have experienced.  I was reluctant to leave, so I made plans to return after visiting my father.

The GAS Conference

    It had been many years since I have attended a Glass Art Society conference.  My first was in Tuscon in 97.  There have been a few more, Tampa, Seattle, Adelaide Australia, St Louis & Pittsburgh.  I have been talking the Toledo conference up during all my travels.  And it finally arrived.  About a week prior to the conference I realised that I actually could not afford the admission fees.  Nonetheless, having attended previous conferences, I knew that there would be lots of activities going on that I could check out without actually attending the conference.  I will admit that it was a strange experience.  Sort of an outsider feel.  I came upon this sculpture at the ballpark downtown, and it sums up what it felt like!

    But everything happens as it is supposed to, and for a reason.  I spent a lot of the time checking out the city, galleries & museums.  I ran into some friends from River Falls in the first couple of hours - some of the students that had participated in my demos last November, as well as Eoin Breadon & his family.  I attended a great party the first night at Firenation Glass Studio & Gallery where I met a few new & a few long standing friends.  I found out that Eoin would be demonstrating the next day at a venue that I could actually attend - I was pretty psyched.  It would take place at a mobile studio on the back of a box truck, located in a parking lot.  The truck belongs to Neusole Glassworks and wasn't part of the formal GAS agenda.  Sounds just about right.  His demo was a blast to watch, and a great way to spend an afternoon.

    The last day of the conference,  the students from River Falls gave a kick-ass demo at the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art.  This would be the one time I bent the rules a little & snuck in to watch.  The demo was beautifully coordinated, and well practiced.  Everyone worked together well and the piece went very smoothly - they created a blown & sculpted Falcon in a Nest.

     The one big deal at the end of the conference is the party.  It is included in your conference fee & is historically awesome.  I wanted to attend, but could not justify paying the equivalent of several tanks of gasoline for a few hours of partying with folks.  The networking was over at that point, and that would really be the main reason for attending.  I was actually gong to leave town before the party started until I received a  phone call from Eoin.  He had been talking with Jason Chakravarty from Neusole Glassworks.  I met up with them.  Jason asked me how I managed blowtime to make work, seeing how I am travelling all the time. 

"Do you Poach it?"  This is probably one of my favorite questions I have been asked.  

"Sure, man. Why do you ask?"

"There is a furnace on the back of a truck with about 50 lbs of glass in it that needs to be emptied"

"When?"

"Right Now"

    I followed them back to the truck in the parking lot & met the crew of the truck, Logan & Josh.  I pulled a bunch of the molds out of my truck.  Those who had not seen my molds before got pretty excited.  The guys gave me a studio orientation, and we started to play.  The River Falls folks all came by to watch, (and take some great photos, click here) as did a few other folks, it was nice to have the audience.

    First up was with a blowpipe that my friend Chad recently custom made for me.  It is a shorty with a long head, designed for use with small furnaces where you gather out from the top.  The opening in the head is a bit larger, so it requires less pressure to inflate a bubble.  This pipe was originally designed for use with the boro furnaces I was playing with in Montana, but did not acquire it until my recent trip to Gettysburg.  The glass they were using on the truck was Bullseye, which I had not blown since 1995.  Turns out it was great for mold blowing!  There are a few items left from this session available on my Etsy Store (Click Here).

    I must say it was a beautiful evening for blowing glass on the back of a truck.  The sun set in front of us, and as it grew dark, we worked by the glow of the glory hole & the ambient light of the street lights.  A block away in view, there was a wedding reception at a restaurant, the well dressed attendees would periodically stroll over to see what we were up to.  Others would come and go, and for our final feat, all three of us blew into different molds at the same time & stuck the strange glowing shapes together hot.

    I came to Toledo to network, although I did not make a large Quantity of connections, the connections I made were very Quality ones!  

Full Circle

    My friends Andy & Cheryl (the Bozemanites who took me in) were married (I was a groomsman - the primary reason for heading East) in Delaware, it was a lovely time.  I lived with those guys through the planning stage, so it was nice to make it through to the wedding & and see those plans realized.

    That weekend also happened to be my nephew's high school graduation.  I was so very glad to make it to the party.  He was born my first semester at college.  He is half my age.  Thinking about it in those terms is kind of a smack in the face - not that I would really want to be 18 again.  In many ways I don't feel any older now than I did then.  This aging thing is getting really weird...
     The return to Gettysburg was great, I had an interesting interaction with a couple of young kids at the Lion Potter.  Absolutely beautiful work, I do my best to stop in when I am in town.  On this particular day, there were some small pieces that caught my eye, made by the owner's children.  I decided to see if they would be interested in a trade - I pulled out a suit case of the little bowls & had a terrific time looking through them and telling the kids the story of the 99 bowls show in San Francisco.  I now have two small ceramic sculptures mounted to the dash of the truck! I have this mini art collection happening on my dash - all very small pieces, it started before I left Philly with a little Cali Lilly painting...
    Next stop was the Blue Brick Gallery downtown. As it turns out one of the members of the gallery is the Art teacher at Gettysburg High.  "You went to Tyler? So did I. When?"  "93-97" "You might know my brother then - Michael Thrush"  Michael was my freshman year roommate at Tyler School of Art!  It is a very small world indeed.
    The next stop would be Toledo for the annual Glass Art Society Conference.  As this year is the 50th anniversary of the Toledo workshop that started the modern studio glass movement, I did not want to miss this one!  Back to the same path that I took last November.

Return to Philly

     I left North Carolina, it was a short but great visit.  There was a tremendous showing of support there that would follow me through to my next destination, Philadelphia. This would be my first time back since I left the previous November.  It was now the first of June.  My brother lives between NC & Philadelphia, and his son happened to be visiting - so I made a point to stop by for an overnighter.  The topic of hood ornament came up over breakfast, sooo....

By the way, I'm not always this safety conscious!

    Meet Speedy.  He is a flying snail puppy born without wings in 1999.  He developed a rocket pack in order to keep up with his family as they would fly around with their naturally developed wings.  He was one of a series of pieces made when I worked for Greg Leavitt 1999-2001.  The puppies were something that Greg made periodically, and I happened to be there for this batch - one joke led to another & Speedy was born!

    With my mascot finally attached, off I headed.  We had a workshop planned for East Falls Glassworks, another along the lines of what I have done before, but no takers.  Fortunately, I had had a couple of conversations with Nikolaj Christensen (manager extraordinaire) about this prior to my arrival, and he set up a series of shorter lessons for me to teach.  This was a combination of some of the folks that I had as regular lessons prior to my departure, other regulars who had an interest in what I am up to, as guest teacher for beginning classes, and instructor for some newbies.  All in all I had a very busy schedule for five days made up of 2 to 3 hour sessions.  Perfect.  This new model seems like a much better direction to go in with the public access glass studios. This is really the type of thing I would like to develop in other locations as well. Shorter lessons & a variety of experience levels.

    Being back in the city that took so much for me to leave, a lot of strange things happened, psychologically.  I finally straightened out things with my old studio (I was still on the lease up until this point - a major stress).  I had this nagging fear that I was not going to be able to leave, that I was somehow going to get "stuck".  I started to feel strange stresses of the stuff that I left behind there, the ghosts around the corner, so to speak.  I tried out a couple of the old patterns just to see if they still fit - which of course, they didn't.  This intense manic feeling came over me. The oddest thing to me was that I tried to see everyone that I knew, and actually made plans to be in different places with different people AT THE SAME TIME!  I'm still not entirely sure about what was going through my head, I know that I am past that now, and that it won't happen again. Whew!  I didn't take very many photos, but here are some that I did take - Click!

    I left town relieved, but a little confused.  Enter one of the blessings of the Road.  Lots of time alone to think about it & sort it out. 

    

On The Corner of Greensboro and Main

      North Carolina would have a whole lot more in store for me, though I hardly knew it at the time of my arrival.  A friend from Junior High - one of the first folks I became friends with when I moved from Oklahoma to Gettysburg at age 13 - happened to live in the Chapel Hill area.  We both knew that we were in the same general area, but had no specific meet up plan as of yet.  The Friday afternoon, prior to visiting the scrap yard, I decided to head in to Carrboro to see if I could find a Ma Roller somewhere. Seemed like a reasonable idea.  Checked a couple of places out, no luck, I'll try around the corner.  As I turned the corner of Greensboro and Main, I ran directly into my friend!  It had been something like 19-20 years since we last saw each other.  The folks from those days that I have been running into and visiting lately are the kind of friends that you pick up right where you left off, like no time had passed.  There is a connection that runs deep beneath the surface, and like the chance meeting long ago, here it is again.  We caught up a little & decided to get together later on in the little village of Saxapahaw where she lived.

      I continued my search for the Ma Roller to no avail, but I did end up with a hacky-sack.  The Roller would have to wait.  I rejoined George-ann & Charles, we did our trip to the scrap yard, set up for the workshop, and went to an opening for "Transforming Light" at the Hillsborough Art Council Gallery.   The show was a beautiful combination of glass sculpture by Lucartha Kohler, and amazing watercolors by Ginny Runge.  Afterword we all went to meet up with my friend.  Another chance meeting here would develop into a powerful connection that would prove to be trans formative.  I think we all have places in the world that we are drawn to by a force greater than us.  We appear in these places at just the right time.  We know the moments are significant, although we may not understand why or to what degree.  Most people tend to attach a bit of dogma to this, see things as God's will, etc.  I see it more of just being open to universal energy.  Serendipity.  Believing that what you need will present itself when you need it - providing you are open to it, are true to yourself & have faith.