finally done so on to the next

We had one brief shower Thursday, one of those that happens while the sun is shining. We were moderately busy at SHARE which I suppose means President Biden's policies of helping people recover from the pandemic and reducing child poverty is having some effect. When I wasn't filling baskets, I was restocking my shelves and when I wasn't doing either of those I chatted with some of the volunteers or flattened cardboard boxes for taking to the recycling center which I do on my way home. My first day, when we went back to Thursdays last fall, towards closing, the Elders (two young men, and by young I mean 20ish, from the Mormon church here doing their volunteer work, they load the carts of food into the client's cars) had thrown all the cardboard into the dumpster. The next week I told them don't do that, I'll take it to the recycling center. It just astounds me that even now with the planet warming up, landfills full up, the planet running out of resources that people, especially young people, don't think to recycle, even the one thing that is most easily recycled, cardboard.

I managed to get another hour and a half in before yoga Thursday night. I finished all around the feather, once again building up the white or black, so no more fussiness.

Some of y'all have asked how I learned this. We are self-taught as there was no instruction in this technique when I first decided I wanted to do this type of glass casting back in 1995 (and hardly any now either though there is a wide range of glass art now being made as pate de verre but it's far different than what I do). I had seen some pictures of the work produced by the handful of 19^th century French artists, all of whom were very secretive of their processes and to this day there is some uncertainty about how they actually did what they did. My favorite is Almeric Walter but Argy Rousseau's family released some (but not all) of his workbooks on his technique and we bought the book on his work that included this information. Then it was trial and error gleaning pertinent information from jewelry making and bronze casting and ceramics, buying books as they became available with any information by other artists on their own efforts and glass casting in general. We experimented with different plasters and formulas for mold making. There was already an industry for making rubber or silicon reproduction molds. We had a lot of failures but slowly, eventually our failure rate declined and we started producing a series of sculpted small bowls (2 part mold) then larger ones, then a cup form (3 part mold) and then finally now I mostly stick to the easier open face molds. I'm not that interested in pushing the boundaries anymore.

Anyway, I've written about it before so I'm going to refer you to an old post about early days and a link to my website about the technique and our process.

This is a link to the last in a series of posts I did about becoming a glass artist and it explains how we started in this technique.  There's also a link to all 13 of the posts in the very first paragraph.

This is a link to the technique page on my website that shows the step by step process of making one of my little sculptures or wall pieces.  Also on that page in the upper left hand corner is a link to a page with the history of this ancient form of glass casting.

Two and a half hours on Friday before lunch and all the rocks are done.

Two hours after lunch and I'm done. I decided at the last minute not to use the black sand mix as I put the color sample next to one of the big rocks in the mold and decided there wouldn't be enough definition between the two, that they would just all blend together and I spent too much damn time on those rocks to have them disappear so I chose the next darkest sand color (it will darken after it's fired). Of course last night in the middle of the night I'm kicking myself for not adding in a small percentage of black. Now it goes in the kiln.

And I am glad to be finally getting done with this series, four 10” x 10” and six small ones of various dimensions. I made all the models 4 years ago in 2017 right before Harvey and the house flooding. The six little ones and one big one got cast before the end of that year. In 2018 another of the big ones got cast, in 2019 the third big one got cast, and finally now the last one in 2021. Of course those years after Harvey I was dealing with getting the house fixed and then the pandemic and getting Pam's house set up which just took the wind out of my sails.

After this last one is cast and finished I'll post all 10 pictures.

I'll probably take the weekend off though I'll have to go over and clean up and put away all the mold filling tools and materials so that I can get out all the model making stuff and start on the models for the two angel trumpet plaques.

 

rain and cold and recycling and art

We had our first real cold front blow in this weekend, preceded by a most welcome rainy day on Friday, after weeks and weeks of temps in the mid-80s. It was supposed to get down to 38˚ in the wee hours of this morning. Don't know if it actually did but it was cold enough in the house when we got up to turn on the heater which we did for the first time since we turned it off last spring.

Today would be a good day to work in the yard especially since I didn't get out there last Sunday but instead I'm driving to the city to take a truck load of recyclables (remember all those boxes of glass?) to a collection center and then head over to my daughter's house to help her get ready for Thanksgiving which we have been having at her house so the son and daughter-in-law will come.

I have all but finished all the little pieces I was working on for the two weekends in December, even got them photographed. I spent that rainy Friday making a photo box and then tried it out and it worked great! Better pictures than I had been getting and I didn't need to tweak them much if at all. Now I have time to work on my display which is pretty amateurish compared to the more sleek set-ups of some of the other participants.

After the open houses, I'll be starting in earnest on my next body of work...groupings of larger wall hung pieces that are variations on a theme. The first two are feathers on the beach and the moon. They're going to very different, I think, than what I have been doing. I'm also going to do some smaller framed pieces at the request of a gallery in Dallas that has three shows next year that they want to include our work in. I have 5 leftover frames from the Botanicas so I'm going to do pieces that will fit in them.

Well, I need to get on the road, the day is wasting. 

eating the dead

My sister and I go to estate sales on Thursdays or Fridays though we limit our area to about a 30 mile radius. Sometimes we find some neat stuff and sometimes we come away with nothing. They're all basically the same...all the accumulations of the deceased laid out on tables and counters...china and crystal and pottery, collectibles, books, decorations, pictures, jewelry, watches, records (I'm always curious what music they listened to), furniture, clothes, linens, whole kitchens, yard tools, tools, even down to their personal grooming items and cleaning supplies. Sometimes though, you come across a picker's dream. Last Friday we went to one in a blink of a little town, two houses, one of which used to be a church converted into a residence, full of gorgeous antiques and just all kinds of really neat stuff plus a shed, and a big barn. I could have done a whole post on just this one house if I had thought to take pictures. I spent about $40 and this is what I bought:

this very cool pitcher

and this juicer

4 glass knobs

this small wood printers tray

a tabletop table saw

and a wine bottle opener (I broke mine recently) and a putty knife. We had planned to go to a different one but my sister and our boss at the antique store went to this one on Thursday where Donna bought some gorgeous furniture for the store and Pam convinced me that this one was worth going back to. She was right.

I got a lot of the glassware I used in the totems at these sales. I have things I look for like wind chimes (they usually need a little bit of repair).

I  especially like the one above. I had to completely restring it and come up with a substitute for the small glass tube 'ringer' as it was missing and I had to make new thin cardboard 'vanes' and paint them gold as the old ones were torn or missing. It hangs inside just inside the door to the garage and when it's open or the other back door is open, the air coming in will make it tinkle.

And birdhouses

and certain tools. I've picked up some nice wooden spoons and small kitchen knives and a really nice 10” cast iron skillet and I finally got a three tiered hanging wire basket set for the root vegetables. I've been looking out for one of those for a while. My sister was quicker and she got the first one we came across.

Occasionally I run across something that is too good to pass up like this antique lamp for $35 that I have no idea where I am going to put.

OMG! this stuff piles up so fast!

The recycling had mounted up in the kitchen again so I sorted it into all the different plastic bags and added it to the growing pile in the garage. I try and send it home with my daughter who lives in the city or take it there when I'm in town but still it accumulates. This little town recycles plastic bottles, aluminum cans, newspaper, and corrugated cardboard. The other plastics, metal, office paper, cardboard packaging, and glass are thrown out. Unless I bag them up and take them to my daughter's house in the city which does recycle those items. But that's not really fair to her since there are six people in her family and she also recycles and that's a lot of stuff to store til recycling day. Not to mention a lot of stuff to set out. But what else can I do? Since I sold the house in the city last year, I have no place else to take it. And I can't accept just throwing it all away, adding to the already bulging landfills and lost resources.

I don't care for our throw-away culture, the lack of respect it shows towards the planet that we, ironically, need for survival. I have been taking my own bags to the grocery store since sometime after plastic bags became ubiquitous, long before it was the thing, back when the checkers and baggers rolled their eyes at you for doing it. When the newspaper piled up I would take it to the local paper plant that bought paper and they would look at my little truckload and say, lady, that's not enough for us to buy, but they would take it. When a local grocery store chain had locations that would accept aluminum and glass, I would lug it all down there. Plastic bags went to whatever place would take them. I've even taken big bags of styrofoam peanuts back to any box stores that will take them. I was thrilled when the city finally started the curbside recycling program. More and more items were accepted and less and less went in the trash. With a compost pile, we generate about one large size grocery store plastic bag of trash a week with the occasional run to the transfer station for big heavy things. The rest, which is considerable considering the way this country loves to package things, is what can be recycled...if you have access to it.

I'm lucky, I guess, that this little town, whose city government and economic council seem to put roadblocks in front of anything new in a (hopefully doomed to failure) attempt to keep this town from being prosperous and growing, has any recycling at all. But I still don't want to throw all this stuff away.

Maybe I'll just start making midnight forays into the edges of the city on different recycling days and add a little into everyone's bins.