late summer and one kind of work or another

Saturday...I determined that I want to do the finish work on the first trumpet flower piece before I fill the mold for the second one so I can see how well or not at all some of the shading came out and now that I've had a week off I was determined to get over to the shop today, and start the cold work. Except it is so horribly hot out there. If it was just 92˚ as the thermometer goes it would be manageable with the fan blowing on me but the real feel is 103˚ and they aren't kidding. Plus, I wore myself out yesterday with the trimmer. Two gas tanks worth, had to refill the string bobbin, but I got it all done and my arms were so tired after that I was like Trump, needing two hands to bring a small glass of water up to my lips. And today they are so sore. Well, maybe tomorrow but probably not. I think I'll set up for and pour the wax base for the luna moth model. I can do that in the AC. And today I'll work on a second butterfly drawing for another of the stands...in the AC. Or I might take a nap. We'll see.

It is so dry here, the ground is cracked and the grass is sere and crunchy. It rains all around us but not on us. I'm back to watering, moving the sprinkler from spot to spot. The pots, even the big ones need to be watered every day.

Monday...I thought I had lost the morning glory bush too but it finally returned and is blooming now. It's one of my favorites.

I went outside as soon as I got up to take the picture above because they fade by noon and I had missed the previous days' glories. I took close-ups too, like this one,

but the camera didn't pick up the color, I guess because the sky was completely overcast and getting darker and it did finally give us some rain this morning though not as much as I would have liked.

I'd been watching this flower bud develop on my datura and still would have missed it if I hadn't been intent of getting a picture of the morning glory bush this morning.

I got over to the shop yesterday and poured and trimmed the wax base for the luna moth piece and then collected pictures of tiger swallowtail butterflies, which I think is the next one, to work on a new composition but that's as far as I got.

Today, though, was a frustrating day in the studio. I didn't have any wax sheets big enough or thick enough to suit me and it took me 4 tries to get what I wanted. Then I realized that, the way the luna moth piece is designed with the leaves going off the edges, it won't slip through the brackets at the top and into the stand because with the leaves, it's too thick. Well, fuck fuck fuck and dammitall. Now I have to redesign the piece.

Tuesday...It's not supposed to be as hot today so maybe I'll work on the trumpet flower piece while I noodle over the luna moth. 

just another day or two in the life

 
Another warm hot and humid day Saturday and while I didn't get over to the shop on Friday I did on Saturday for a couple of hours. Poured another wax log since the first one had little bits of wood imbedded in it that transferred from the latex mold the first time but I didn't like this one any better for a different reason so I'm going to try again. Third time's the charm, right? And I mixed up the pink and white modeling glass and rehydrated the mink (sort of a pale pinkish brown kind of like some of the tones in the picture below) that I'm going to need for this piece. I think anyway. I'm not satisfied with the test colors I already did for the lichen. I know, shop talk.

the evening sky last Saturday

The other thing I did on Saturday was wage war on the flies in the house. There must have been 100. Well, not a hundred, 75. OK, probably not 75 but at least 50. I do think I got them all chasing them around from window to window and then I had to clean all the windows and window sills of fly guts. I don't know how that many got in the house. I do keep the back door open when the weather is nice and there isn't a screen but this isn't something I've just started doing. We've never had 50 fucking flies in the house like this. It was sort of like that horror movie where the family moves into a house and there's one room that is always infested with flies no matter how many times they kill them.

Saturday was also our Farmer's Market, the fall version. It runs six or eight weeks in the spring and fall and was dying a slow death when someone took it over I guess, moved it back to a previous location and there have been many more booths. So far this fall, no fresh produce. People have planted their fall gardens but it's still too soon for any harvest so it's crafty stuff and baked and canned goods basically. We usually go for homemade tamales (sold out by the time we got there Saturday) and honey. I was trading a clean quart jar for an empty large squeeze bottle. I buy local honey in the quart jars but didn't have anything more user friendly for dispensing. We also return the canning jars to the lady we buy our pickles from and she gives us a dollar off. I haven't seen the noodle people so far who I buy homemade noodles from.

Sunday we finally got a cool front in that lowered the temperature and humidity instead of just lowering the humidity and so I got out in the ditch and did two more sections of the front fence, just six more to go. 

Then I bathed the dog, clipped her toenails, and poured another wax log.

Yesterday, two more fence sections where I rousted out this little garden snake.

Now just four more to go but the dead debris on those is sparse enough to only amount to two mildly dense sections. I might get it all done today but maybe not. I did pull the third wax log out of the mold and it was even less satisfactory because the cheapo latex mold I made to use just one time is continuing to deteriorate and mis-shape so I picked all the tiny wood bits out of the first one.

section of oak branch, mold, and wax model

Last Thursday, the morning of my supposed dermatologist appointment so I wasn't there that day, my neighbor told me they decided to have another meeting at SHARE this morning to revisit the decision to re-open December 1^st. It sort of slipped my mind this morning and I didn't get up and moving soon enough to get out the door in time so, not going. I trust they'll make the right decision without me. Besides, I'm getting my hair cut later this morning.

My hair has not been this long in decades since I missed my spring cut (you might remember I only get one haircut a year, sometimes two), it's thin and lank and always in my face so it has to be pulled back in a bun or ponytail. I'm going to a new stylist, the one my sister goes to. I'm not dissatisfied with the cuts I've been getting from the woman I usually go to but she talks non-stop with a long litany of one complaint after another.

Signing off with this monarch I found sitting in the street while walking the dog the other evening. It looked newly hatched, it's colors vibrant. I carried it over to a neighbor's flower bed and left it there.

back to work

I finally did something proactive Tuesday toward getting ready for the open house. I drew up cartoons of the feathers in a frame/shadow box to determine shape and dimension and corresponded with my brother, a talented woodworker, who offered to make them for me. 

Now I need to quit procrastinating and get over to the shop to do the cold work on the feathers and the heron box. And I'm ready to try the snowflake ornaments again. I have frames for two of the pieces in stands which involves some woodworking and am having a frame made for the third one. I even made a list to tick things off of.

I spent Tuesday morning in the dentist chair getting prepped for the third of 5 crowns and the seating of the second. None of this is new damage but replacing decades old failing dental work and the resultant decay. Yay me. I'm putting off the last two til after New Year's. Since my insurance only covers x-rays, cleaning, and exam every six months and we are retired for the most part it's nice that they are only charging me what the insurance would pay instead of the walk in price but it's still a hefty chunk of money per tooth.

So yesterday I did get over to the shop and got the cold work on the feathers done except for the blue jay feather as it needs to be re-powdered and re-fired and started on the heron box again. This time I'm refitting the inlay, which no longer fits flat, first before I grind the bottom again. I'm trying to minimize the amount of grinding I do in the recess and instead mostly working on the back of the inlay. I got it pretty close before I quit for the day. The box is not as crisp as it was before we re-fired it but I hope it's pretty enough.

We've had a few really gorgeous days in a row and some outstanding skies

though a front with rain is coming in today and I need to get out there and clean out one of the gutters before it starts raining again and then head over to the shop.

try and try again

Remember these little miniatures from last week? 

We went to the second half of that estate sale, the garage and two more rooms, and I looked at them again. About half had been sold and when I picked one up that looked like an old steam iron, the top flipped open and it was a pencil sharpener! They were all pencil sharpeners! Anyway, the second half was a waste of time for us as it was all tools and garage men's stuff and fishing lures and hooks and molds to make your own wigglers and some craft stuff and a boat load of arrows and split feathers for fletching and all kinds of stuff like metal summer camp dinner trays and if they had one of something they had a dozen of it. At least. I think all the skunks were still there. Oh and here's something I meant to show before...a box of creepy clown doll heads with a few frogs thrown in.

Thursday was the second attempt at making the mold for the heron box. Let's just say it wasn't a total and complete disaster as the wax box was recovered undamaged. This time Marc used boards screwed together to make the casting box, instead of the cardboard box I had constructed, and sealed the corners and around the bottom with clay. After he poured the investment it started leaking out at the bottom and there was no stopping it so he quickly unscrewed one of the sides and pulled out the model so he could rinse it off. Remember when I was doing the water measure for the first mold and when I picked it up the bottom separated and water went all over me, all over the table, and all over the floor? Yeah, like that. It poured out all over the table swallowing a putty knife, a screwdriver, and screws and an even bigger puddle on the concrete.

So, back to the drawing board. We went back to the cardboard box since that didn't leak, just ballooned out, and used the board box to support the sides of the cardboard box. Took me the rest of the day to make a new cardboard box and construct the wood box around that and then replace the wax sprues that got damaged (these create a tunnel through the mold for air to escape instead of getting trapped and creating a hole in your piece) so that today all Marc had to do was level it up, and mix and pour the plaster and then do the de-waxing which is plenty especially in that hot shop.

And as they say, third time's the charm. We have a mold.

I got the water measure done while it was still wet and it's about a pound less glass than the first attempt, the difference in getting an accurate water measure.

Now, of course, because I already don't know if I have enough time to get it finished on time, I'm adding another piece to the whole. It's just a slab, gray like the top but it will go between the bottom and the feet and be the same gray. Sorta like this...

So I have to alter the wax slab for the top and make another one for the bottom. I'm glad he hadn't made that mold yet. But! I have written out the river vignette that goes inside it but I need to get some manuscript vellum to print it out.

The weather is beautiful; days sunny and warm with cool, clear, star-filled Milky Way nights. Up at dawn, quiet contemplation before breakfast and breaking camp. Finally we are loaded and I push off with a sigh as I feel the first tug of the current pulling us into the river, carrying us on through the quiet beauty of the canyons. We are in no hurry as we dip our paddles in the river. We come upon a blue heron at the river's edge and it spreads its wings and flies downriver as we approach. Again and again we chase the heron downstream until it reaches the end of its territory and turns back to fly over us back upriver.

Anyway, working on this piece is going to be about all I'm doing between now and the middle of September.

And after all this trouble, it better be fucking fabulous.

the doldrums of August

I finished the second heron box model Saturday. It's glued down and waiting for the mold to be made. I found the timesheet for the first one...27+/- hours. I didn't keep track this time but I think it went faster especially since I didn't carve the wavy lines like before but incised them instead and scraping more lines in between with a wire brush. Still, it took me a week. 

I like it in wax.

I didn't keep track of my time this time because I've decided to stop doing that. The point was to help me come up with pricing but in reality, it only made me realize how little I get when a piece sells because you can't price artwork by how much time you have in it unless you are one of those artists who have people clamoring for your work.

After I finished the box wax I sorted through my color samples and picked out three dark blue ones 

and then tweaked the formulas for nine new samples which went in the kiln yesterday. And as long as I was at it, I made pure color samples of the 7 colors I have acquired since the last time I did this. I meant to take a picture after I had filled all the little squares with frit but forgot. Here's my set-up though. 

The two sections on pieces of firebrick are tilted up at an angle so I'll get a sample that is thin at one end and thick at the other. At least that's the plan. The kiln was 130something˚ when I looked at it a little while ago.

And here they are out of the kiln.

Nothing much else going on around here. Still hot, flirting with near triple digits, still no rain despite the scant 1/4” we got the other day and were getting into the first stages of drought, still going out and watering first thing in the mornings and usually in the evenings as well, still trying to keep all three bird baths filled with fresh water.

The white wing doves hang out at the one in the little backyard, just to the left out of sight in this picture.

Saturday I caught sight of one of the local red shouldered hawks perched on the naked lady's head but it flew off before I could get the camera up for a sneak pic through the door glass.

one disaster led to another

My luck ran out and that disaster of a mold produced a disaster of a casting. No amount of cold work can make this usable. I'm not sure why it cast so badly, need to consult with my gurus. If I want to make this piece, I have to start over with a new wax model for the box. I've already pulled out my drawings and made a list of sizes for the wax slabs. I'll start on those tomorrow while I'm grinding away on the heron head and the egg. After another hour and a half yesterday morning I freed the sticks. It was after I came back from that that Marc showed me the box. Well, I know a few things I'll change. The color for one. I like it but not enough contrast with the heron. I'll go darker blue. And no billet. From what I can see, I don't like it. I think I'll do some color samples, see if I can come up with a combination with enough of what I have on hand. I may also not carve the wavy lines if I can come up with a texture I like  or do them differently because I'm not sure I like them.

As mentioned, I finished taking all the excess glass off the sticks.

This morning I got up at 7 AM, went out and watered for 45 minutes and then went over to the shop where I set up and poured the wax for four of the six slabs I need to remake the model

and used the ring saw to cut off most of the extra glass on the heron head inlay 

and then ground off some of the thickness. Came back to the house at 9 AM for my coffee and then back to the shop about 45 minutes later where I used a different machine to grind off the excess glass on the egg and then finished it off on my make-shift flat lap, back to the house for Sunday brunch at 11:30 AM and then back to the shop to set up and pour the wax for the last two slabs and the 1/8” thick sheet and back to the house at 1 PM.

So yeah it's hot and we've exceeded the high 90s forecast and have hit triple digits and I may be done for the day, except for maybe doing the dishes that I've been ignoring while I've been working over at the shop the last three days (and no, I'm not going to show you a picture of my messy kitchen) but not for a while yet.

more work on the heron box

I've reassembled the mold for the box part of the heron piece, you'll remember it had broken in three pieces, and I'm ready to start filling it with glass.

you can see along the inside edge of the mold at the top some of the damage that it sustained

with the reservoir on top

I'm going to use some billet and some frit. 

frit left, billet right; same color

The difference between billet and frit is not just that one is solid and the other is crushed but also the amount of air that gets trapped and the resultant 'cloudiness'. A nice solid piece of glass will melt and not trap any air giving the piece clarity. Frit will trap zillions of air bubbles throughout the piece, the smaller the grain size, the more air trapped, giving the piece a more translucent look. So while I have cast a piece using all billet and pieces using using all frit I have never cast a piece using both so I have no idea, no vision in my head, how it will look re the intensity of the color and the amount of clarity or how even those qualities will be throughout, though since every surface of the box will have come in contact with the mold surface or been ground down, no part of it will have the smooth shiny surface of the billet. I finally settled on these percentages: 1/4 gray blue billet, 1/4 clear medium frit, and 1/2 gray blue fine frit, a little less than 6 1/2 pounds.

I didn't think all the glass was going to fit in the mold and reservoir but it did (that dark color in the center is the billet pieces peeking through) and now it's in the kiln. Won't know how it comes out til Monday, maybe.

This is the biggest box I've attempted so far. I've done them with the same length and width but not nearly as deep or if as deep then not nearly as long. The other components have been cast and washed but no finish work done on them yet and I still have to fix the piece for the top. The egg and sticks cast perfectly! Yay!

And the heron head inlay came out well I think except for the end of the beak which is not under fired but a form of devitrification, so one of my gurus tells me, probably because of too wet a mold, packed in too tight, too much intermingling of the silica in the glass and the silica in the mold. I'm hoping some cold work will remedy it good enough and I can avoid re-firing it.

All that glass that isn't egg or sticks or heron head has to be cut or ground off.

I'll be spending weeks on that part which is the cold work, the grinding off of excess glass, softening rough spots, and smoothing out all the surfaces. It will be anything but cold as I'll have to do that work over at the shop in, of course, the hottest part of the summer.

paralyzed with indecision

No, not because of that. It's about the piece I'm working on, the heron box. The only thing that has gone smoothly with this is making the models though I'm sure I griped plenty during that process. The first two pieces cast didn't have quite enough glass in them to the point that one at least will have to be reinvested and re-fired with the appropriate amount of glass. The other, the heron head inlay which otherwise came out good, for some reason the glass in a certain spot didn't quite melt all the way. I think. It may have to be reinvested and re-fired. So now I have to fill the egg mold and the sticks mold. I agonized half a day Tuesday over the egg trying to decide if one of the samples was 'enough' of what I was seeking from it. Finally, fuck it, I just forged ahead and went with it.

I wasn't agonizing just over the egg mold but the sticks mold as well. I agonized over that all fucking day to the point of being paralyzed by indecision. It's not that I've never done sticks before. I have and actually have three left over from other endeavors that I've been including in my agonizing. 

Because I can only guess at the formula that produced them and not because I don't have records, I have notebooks full of records...stick 1, stick 2, stick 3, …, stick 11...but without a picture or a sample piece I don't really know how the formula translates. Was it too pale, too dark, just right? I have a dozen or so colors involved. Ambers, browns, grays, whites.

All day.

Paralyzed with indecision. When I walked the dog I thought I would be better served in casting the box first because if that disaster of a mold in three pieces fell apart in the kiln then all this agonizing would be in vain. Though I suppose I would probably go ahead and cast them anyway. So much has already gone wrong with this piece. Finally that was what freed me. Fuck it. I selected three different grays and clear, two sticks one combo, one stick one combo as well as I can manage since most of the voids to fill with the frit are encased in plaster and I can't see how well they are packed. If they are packed. I'm actually using a pipe cleaner to push the frit into the spaces.

So I finally started on it Tuesday evening (didn't have time to work on it at all yesterday) and plan to finish today, one tiny spoonful at a time.

if it could go wrong...

It's been more of the same. Hot, humid, dry. Though a 'cool' front came in heralded by the 5/8” of rain we finally got Monday night. What that means is the high temp will only be 89˚ - 91˚ for the next week and last night (it did) and the next two nights will get down in the 60˚s! Unheard of this time of year. It was 71˚ when I ventured out at 8:30 this morning, cool and dry as in not humid. Very pleasant out.

There was a time when I sat down to fill a mold I would do it in one sitting, usually about 5 or 6 hours. It was really necessary when I was doing all those small bowls since I was working on a slope. These days it takes me days to fill a mold, work a couple of hours and that's enough for today, day after day. It's easy to walk away from filling an open face mold (of which the heron head inlay is an example) because there's nowhere for the glass to fall down to. This one took me four days. 

The main image I'm working from.

First find the most round correct size chunk of black glass for the pupil of the eye;

mix a little med amber and light amber for the eye and pack that in, a little midnight blue beneath and between the eye and the beak, a little spot of lt amber, a little bit of translucent white above the eye, a bit of pale yellow on the cheek, cover the eye and cheek with translucent white, add the black for the crown;

marigold yellow and medium amber in the beak, build up more of the trans white;

paint a little black powder in stripes on the outside edge of the neck and cover with white powder, sift in lt. sky blue powder, some lt. bronze powder in spots on top of that, lt. silver gray powder over all on top of that, then because I wasn't sure if I had enough silver gray powder I sprinkled in a layer of silver frit (and in this picture it came out so dark that now I'm afraid I put in too much and it will be too dark), build up more amber in the beak, black in the crown, trans white on the cheek;

build up more amber in the beak, black in the crown, and cover everything else with trans white;

mound up translucent white over the whole mess, worry about the silver gray being too dark, uncover a portion of neck and try to do a depth assessment of the colors underneath, decide that maybe it's OK and cover it back up;

and now it's in the kiln.

Then I moved on to the disaster part of the day yesterday...the mold for the box.

My first mistake was thinking I could make (I did) and use a cardboard box for pouring the mold even though I used thick cardboard. We have used these successfully for small castings. This was not small, this would need over 6 pounds of glass. The second mistake was not rigging up a support system for the sides of the cardboard box so when Marc poured the plaster/silica mix in the cardboard got soggy fast and bulged out on all sides so that the amount mixed did not adequately cover the entire wax box model. Well, fuck.

 Bad but not unfixable so he topped it off with a small second pour which resulted in a bulgy convoluted weak at the bottom mold but he got it steamed out and if I had left well enough alone, all would have been fine. But me, who can't leave well enough alone, I decided I would try and carve off some of the excess plaster on the sides of the mold and to do that it had to be very wet so the third mistake was I rehydrated the mold, carved away, got it to a more uniform shape and somewhat thickness, took it outside, rinsed it off, turned it over to pour the water out, aaaand the core fell out. Well, fuck fuck. 

OK, I can deal with this, just set it back in and it's weight will hold it in place. Next was to do the volume measure which as I have explained previously entails filling the mold with water and doing some math. I did this without the core in place because reasons figuring I could do a separate but similar process to determine the volume of the core, do a little math and voila, I would have my volume measure only when I went to pick up the mold and pour out the water, the second small pour of plaster/silica separated from the rest of the mold and over half a gallon of water was released all over me, the table, and the floor and now my mold was in three pieces and I still did not have my volume measure. Well, fuck fuck fuck.

Marc suggested reassembling the mold in a basin with the core in place, pouring the water in which would immediately begin to leak out, remove the pieces of mold from the basin and then weigh the water in the basin. OK, that will work and it did only now not only is my mold in three pieces but all the water and messing around has made the inside of the mold start to deteriorate. Well, fuck fuck fuck fuck. 

So now I'm ready to weigh the water and my digital scale that got doused from the previous minor flood is muerta (dead for those who don't know any Spanish) godammitall  so off I went to the Evil Empire to get a new scale and finally weigh the damn water and get my damn volume measure. I'm not touching it again until it is completely dry and I'm ready to reassemble it,  fill it, and fire it.

I think I can redeem the whole thing with a lot a lot! of grinding and cold work but if I manage to pull this rabbit out of the hat it will be a fucking miracle.

slow progress but new gutters

Well, I thought we would do the egg and the sticks first but I decided to do a color sample for the egg before we do those so I've filled the mold for the top and have spent several hours looking at pictures of blue herons and listing the colors that I think I'll need and getting everything accumulated. And as long as I'm doing one color sample, I might as well do a few more. As mentioned, looking at all the pictures, I had thought that the inlay would be a difficult one but maybe not. Doing the hummingbird twice gave me some valuable experience that I think/hope will translate into the heron and future birds.

Also as mentioned, I led the yoga class Wednesday night. I did, in fact, jot down a list of asanas beforehand and it was much easier. I didn't have to think on the spot, just look at my list...seated, hands and knees, stomach, standing, back...and it went very well I think. Still, I'll be glad when Abby comes back but I won't be so resistant next time she asks me to cover for her.

I was planning to get the mold for the inlay of the heron head filled today but so far all I've managed is to do is grind off the points on a tiny chunk of glass for the iris of the eye and place it in the mold. 

The fact that Rocky and another son, Manny, are here to finally get my gutters replaced isn't helping. Well, if not today, then tomorrow. In the meantime I'm mentally going over how I'm going to blend the colors.

----------

So I did start on the heron head inlay yesterday and so much for it not being as difficult as I thought it would be since it took me several hours and lots of cursing to get this far which is not very far at all. 

Now I'm just waiting for Rocky to finish getting the downspouts in place today to get it finished. Too hard to concentrate when I get interrupted off and on.

While I'm waiting on that I went ahead and poured melted wax into the mold of the small log I've been working on. The plaster impregnated bandages arrived the other day and I had applied two layers of strips over the 12 coats of latex. I didn't want it too stiff, just enough to support the outside so that I could pop the wax replica out easily.