lo and behold

I live in a college town and today was the last day of classes. Finals coming up for the students, but not for me!  No exams in my personal fake graduate school. 

Classes:

• Three days in Austin, TX for classes with Jill Symons and Heather Trimlett.  Wrote about it here, here and here.   Felt very welcomed by Jim and Rose of Blue Moon Glassworks.  Enjoyed the social and the solitude.  Definitely worth going. 
• Had more than a few “ahah” moments at the torch in Austin, many of which I felt impacting me immediately when I started working again at home.   Will detail this in another post. 
• Also, visited Nancy Tobey at Snow Farm and got re-inspired to take a class there in the fall.  (Plus, Nancy said she likes my blog and that was a big smile for me.  Hi Nancy!)
• Next:  I am taking a weekend class with Kristina Logan in May.
• Next:  Will continue to keep my eye open for classes with bead makers I admire. I would like to take at least one “travel class” a year.  Maybe Bead and Button next year? 
• Next:  Will also look for teaching studios in a wider driving distance. Recently discovered some interesting classes in Rochester, NY. Need to look into Boston, Worcester, CT, NYC, DC. 
• Next:  I am re-thinking the Gathering in July.  Maybe TX and NJ are enough and I could add Snow Farm. The Gathering is very expensive and long and it may be a better use of my energy to keep up steady practice on my torch and focus on getting my indoor studio set up before the fall. Plus, my mother is having surgery at the end of June and I may want to travel to Michigan to see her. 

Reading:

• Caught up on my magazine reading while on the plane to Austin: Jewelry Artist, Step-by-Step Wire, The Flow.
• Next:  Not sure.  I felt like reading was really important in the winter when I couldn’t torch.  But now that I can, I think doing is more important. 

Blogging:

• 15 posts in April.  Down from March, but still in my zone
• Learned to post from my iPhone!
• Got a new camera.  Long needed.  Can take much better photos now with little additional effort.  At some point, I will actually learn something about taking photos and they will get better still. 
• Added my blog to the BlogHer network. 
• Discovered some more “midlife bloggers.”  Will write about them soon.
• Next: My 100th post is coming up.  I think this one is number 95.  Want to mark this in some way.
• Next:  Stop writing report cards. It’s feeling tedious for me - which means it probably even more tedious to read it. 

Studio:

• Spoke with building commissioner of my town. More food for thought about how to proceed.
• Met someone in Austin who powers her torch with natural gas and an oxygen concentrator in a spare bedroom of her house.  Suddenly, that sounded very safe and comfortable and maybe like the answer to having the studio in an already finished but unused room of our basement (used to be an office that Steve and I shared). 
• Next:  Do some more computer research into oxygen concentrators and maybe look at some at Carlisle . It would be so great to find one there and drive it back in my car.  I assume the class will also use Mini CCs which will be the first time I’ve used something different than a Minor Burner.  One of the best reasons to go to the Gathering is to check out the technical vendor display. But we’ll see. 

Making:

• Heather said “A bead a day" and that’s what I’m doing.  Well, actually it’s more like an hour a day which includes 3 mini spacers for a warm up, and then usually two or three other beads. Where I used to think I worked best if I had at least a three hour block of time, I am rather liking this daily dose of glassy love. 
• Next:  Torch as much as I can.  Go where it takes me.  This is the most important thing and what I most want to do. I may stop writing altogether and post just big photos of what I make every day. 

Professional/Networking:

• Am making local connections through a group called Artisans of Western Mass. Went to one meeting. Will get myself on their website soon. 
• I had hoped to set up my Artfire store and do some selling for the Mother’s Day/Graduation gift season, but I couldn’t do it without a better camera.  I have now taken photos to list ten items and I hope to get them up by end of May.  
• Next: Going to a <free> workshop tomorrow about business and marketing for artists. 

Three hours.

Ten beads.

Every single one of them sucks.

I know the rectangle one looks kind of cool, but it’s really badly shaped at the ends.

Today:

Thirty freshly-dipped mandrels. 

At some point, skill improves the odds – right? 

Snow Farm started offering open studios recently, and finally, I was able to go this weekend for three hours of torching! It has been four months since I closed down my torch for the “season” in early November.  I felt as excited and nervous and giddy as someone going on first date.  Would I know what to say?  What to do?  How to hold the mandrel?  Is it like riding a bike – hop on and body memory does the rest? 

Turns out I was fine, well, not exactly fine, but surely good enough. My first few “one wrap spacers” were wobbly, but yes, body memory kicked in.  And in the process, I remembered one of the things I love most about melting glass in open flame:  YOU HAVE TO GO SLOW.  You have to be right there in the present moment to make it work.  For me, at least, making beads with melted glass is like a meditation.  It’s repetitive, quiet, and in the moment.  And it works much better with my personality to come out of a meditative experience with a product that I can hold in my hand (that’s probably totally against the point in REAL meditation) than to just benefit by peace of mind.  Torching gives me both:  a product and process. 

As you can see, I was trying some color experiments with the rainbow.  More on that soon.  And, it’s almost 60 degrees today.  That means its practically torching season again in my own little corner of the garage.  YAY! 

You can enter my Happy Friday Giveaway until midnight tonight.  Take a minute more and check it out.

I am so, so, so excited – and I feel like a madwoman!

I have made a decision, and signed on the dotted line.

In April, I am putting myself on a plane and flying myself down to Austin, TX to take a three-day glass class with Heather Trimlett at Blue Moon Glassworks. Check this out:   Marbles. Buttons. Beads.  One each day.  Can you imagine anything better?

And then, in May, I am driving myself down to New Jersey and taking a two-day glass class with Kristina Logan at Carlisle School of Glass Art . Two whole days – I think the title is something like Take Your Bead Making to the Next Level. 

I am looking at five days of glass instruction and inspiration with women whose beads I love and admire, whose aesthetics feel near to my own, artists who are nationally and internationally recognized for their skill and their pioneering efforts in the bead making world. These women have fingerprints, and I’m ready to have them all over me.  They feel like mentors – not that they are going to take me under wing and become my best friend or anything, but I feel quite differently about learning from them than I did about the Italian glass master that I wrote about a few weeks ago.   I would feel nervous about taking his class – that I wasn’t good enough yet, that I’m not so interested in sculpture so maybe it’s not a good idea to spend time tinkering in it. . . .but for these two classes, I am nothing but thrilled to death!

I’m still a babe when it comes to this lampwork stuff, and taking these two classes, and even in such proximity to each other, feels like an amazing opportunity to feel as if I really was in art school.  I took two glass classes last year, and they were great, but I made the choices based on what was close by, what times worked, basically, what was simplest.  But now, I am making decisions with intention and direction.  And apparently, I’m willing to go far to get what I think I need to become the artist I want to be!   These five days are going to fuel me for the rest of the year.

Two months in a row – that’s what makes me feel like a madwoman.  This is where the “middle age, midlife” thing comes into play.  I am leaving my family, spending money, and doing something for. my. self. And it makes me just want to grin from ear to ear. 

But it’s not even totally for myself.  Or rather, it’s not like it’s just spending five days by myself on a beach in the Caribbean (but that wouldn’t be so bad either).  I’m trying to build a new business.  A creative business. The creative business that I did not manage to build from my writing skills.  Until now, I’ve made almost all the decisions about my work life around what would keep me most flexible and available for my job as a mother.  I gave things up.  Sometimes knowingly, and sometimes not so much.  I don’t regret that I did, but now, I want a work life that nurtures me, and I know that flying to Austin, TX is part of what it will take to make that happen.  And other people will give things up, for me.

So, why does it make me feel like a madwoman?  I think it happens to a lot of women and a lot of moms.  We lose ourselves along the way – sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.  If you had asked me when I got married if I would “lose myself” in motherhood, I would have laughed in your face. I was in my early thirties, I was a strong feminist, a deep thinker, a woman of ideas and integrity.  I knew what I wanted and what I didn’t. But ya know, it didn’t go as smoothly as I expected.  I’m certainly not the first for whom that is true. 

When I told my a local friend about my plan for Austin, and said that I felt like a madwoman, she looked at me and said, “I need to find my madness.”  She is a creative soul, and she knew exactly what I was talking about.  And she will find her madness, I know. It’s part of how and why we are friends. 

The more I make choices that make me feel like a madwoman, the sooner those kinds of choices will be the “new normal” and not madness at all. 

P.S.  Come back to tomorrow.  I’m giving out presents to celebrate my madness!

Let me just say, I think I visited 50 blogs yesterday.  It was like eating potato chips, it was a feast, it was a drug;  I just couldn’t stop.  I was bleary-eyed, my tired fingertips bleeding, and I just kept going.  One more . . .Just one more . . .Just one more.  I kept thinking I was close to the end, and then I find another and another that I hadn’t yet seen. 

And let me just say, I’m having one of the happiest hangovers I’ve ever had.  Thank you again, Lori Anderson, for such wonderful opportunity. 

Over the next few posts, I’d like to reflect more in depth on some of the art and artists I met during this blog fun.  Since I’m treating this whole period in my life as a personal art school, I really enjoy the process of gathering other artists into my fold and thinking about how I am like them and how I am different.  I feel like it all contributes to my own sense of voice and vision in what I’m doing. 

So, of course, every single piece of jewelry I saw was lovely.  Really.  Not a dud in the crowd :).  But this one photo keeps coming back to my mind. 

This necklace was made by Cindy Wimmer using beads she got from Lyn Foley.  I would love to hold it in my hand, to see how heavy it feels, to see how it moves.  I like that it’s a substantial piece, but it’s also trim, and short.  I can’t really figure out how big those gemstones in the back really are, and I don’t think Cindy mentioned what gauge wire she used.  She called that wire technique “chunky herringbone weave” so I can investigate it from there.  I am also simply enchanted by those empty links between the lampwork and the gemstones.  I don’t know why, but I think they are brilliant. 

As an aspiring lampwork artist, I know that I want to make jewelry with my beads.  I also know that I want the beads to be the main attraction.  I love sterling, and I love glass and silver, but I don’t like the way, for example, the sterling beads in a Troll bracelet (and others of those variety) compete with the glass.  I also don’t love too many glass beads, one on top of another (though I have definitely seen exceptions which I will talk about later). This necklace seems to strike the perfect balance.  The sterling is there in service to the beads, yet it is unique and beautiful in its own right. 

One thing I tried on my Bead Soup necklace was making my own jump rings.  I simply did not have the size I wanted, so I quick did some coiling and cutting.  I cannot say they were successful at all.  The cut edges were a ragged mess and I felt like I was ruining my wire cutters, even though I’ve bought what I think are good ones.  I’ve been eyeing a class at Snow Farm by metalsmith Joy Raskin, and now I’m seriously thinking that it may be my elective this year. 

I still have thirty-ish blogs to visit and I’m sure I will get to every one! 

PS.  RSS my blog before February 15 and tell me in a comment that you did it, so I can enter you in my giveaway. 

My kids got their report cards last week, and since I’m in art school, I’m going to get report cards, too. 

Blogging:  13 posts, participation in a blog party with 80 other people = A+

Studio:  acquisition of new tools and a used RedMax torch by Nortel  =  A

Reading:  Torchworked Marbles, Step-by-Step Wire, Jewelry Artist = A

Making: finished a bead crochet necklace, worked on and then gave up a knitted sweater that was torturing me = B

Health:  kept a journal of healthy behaviors, bought and took vitamins= A

I have a bunch of posts coming to elaborate on some of these accomplishments.  Stay tuned to see my torch and hear about an excellent article I recently read.

Goals for Feb: 

• Get my blog on the latest Wordpress platform, continue posting
• consult with contractor re studio
• make piece for blog party, string bead crochet for trip in Feb
• enter a jewelry contest or submit to a magazine
• exercise once each weekend, once during the week

Note to file:

• next year:  attend at least two major marketplace shows i.e. Tucson, Bead and Button, ACC