lo and behold

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.

Just spent a week at Snow Farm in a week-long class with Nancy Tobey.  I love that place, and I feel so lucky to have it in my backyard.  So much to write about . . . .

One thing I realized this week is that I love learning about glass and about art.  I have been anxious and intense about not loving my work, and I have wanted making and selling beads to become a new job for me.  But this week, I remembered that I love learning and it’s a luxury and a privilege to learn. So, one night, after many hours at the torch, I came home and jotted down notes to clear my mind.  I realized that I am going to treat myself as if I am in art school. With a “four-year-plan” I can graduate when I am fifty!  That’s kinda cool. And then, who knows what I’ll do, but in the meantime, I am in art school. 

So, what does that mean:  I need to take classes.  Two or three a year. I need to go to conferences and learn the field.  I need to find a mentor(s).  I need to do research.  I need to give myself projects and assignments that help me grow.  I have to take electives.  I want to immerse as much as possible (with two kids and a part-time day job) in the world of art so that when I emerge in four years, I will be confident in my skills and I will have found some good blend of those kills and my voice in glass. 

Sounds pretty good, right? 

One of my more immediate goals is to write the blog.  I am going to assume that nobody reads the blog but me, and I am going to write it to capture my experience.  It’s going to be one of my assignments – a rather typical one for someone in school.  Write to learn – like in my old days as an English teacher.  I am going to work on the photos, but I am not going let lack of photos stop me.  If you do happen to stumble on this blog and you have a question or a comment or I’ve written something you don’t understand, just e-mail me.  Readers, you are welcome, but I am trying to ignore you.  Life is full of contradictions. 

This is Bill, an 84-year old man in my class.  He was at Snow Farm with his wife, Bernie, who was taking a knitting class.  It was their 8th time at Snow Farm.  I loved them both.  Bill was a barrel of laughs – reminded me of my father: making jokes with Nancy, flirting, bursting into song, being sarcastic.  But unlike my Dad, he was so open to new things.  Eight times at Snow Farm – among many other Elderhostels they’ve been on in their retirement!  I don’t think I ever in my life been as happy, healthy, and full of life as he was.  Maybe I can still get there. 

Here a few of Bill’s best beads.  The color in these is really great, and his improvement in shaping over the course of the week was remarkable.  I’ll show my best beads tomorrow. 

And one more thing I want to remember.  There was a kiln glass class in the studio downstairs from us taught by Paula Williams Kochanek.  They were making these gorgeous glass pendants from “pot melts.”  As I understand it, they fill clay flower pots with small pieces of glass and let them cook in the kiln for 19 hours.  The glass melts out the bottom of the hole in the pot into these rounds of bubbly color.  Then they cut and polish pieces from the melts and they are stunning. I am going to take her class sometime.  It’s an elective.