Inaugural visit to Urban Glass

By chance, I reconnected with an old friend from RISD who was enrolled in a graduate program when I was a sophomore way back when. I agreed to assist Susie (who now teaches at SVA) for a 3-hour 'practice' blow slot at Urban Glass just off Fulton Street in Brooklyn, NY.

Urban offers an experimental studio rate for non-commission, non-commercial pieces, which encourages exploratory work and makes the studio more accessible to a broader range of artists. (E-mail them for availabilities on both professional and experimental slots.)

The facilities are beautiful, and I was excited to get a tour from Susie, who had seen Urban both before and after its massive facelift. I booked myself some time this weekend, so getting in those three hours on Wednesday was a great introduction to the open-air layout and well-stocked educational locker.

Susie being fabulous, of course. We were practicing optic twist cups.

April studio purge

Things are in flux at the studio I work out of, both inside my space and out, so I thought today was a good day to completely wipe clean the "gallery" wall, put the salt experiments in storage, and start fresh.

Close-up of the only thing on the wall. Flat black gouache, crystals and sequins.

Mail came today! From Greece, New Zealand and from Bullseye Glass :) Just a couple of nose rings from Etsy plus kiln shelves, kiln posts, and four sample packs of their full sheet fusible line. This will help me order glass in the future without any guesswork; their "striker" colors which change tone after hitting a certain temperature have already been fired, eliminating any confusion.

A deadline I've set with a new client prototyping a clear cast tank....

And lastly something silly I spilled for myself before locking up for the night, because I believe in the restorative powers of "not taking yourself too seriously" on days when you've taken yourself much too seriously:

A variety of results & progress around the shop...

The dyeing went wonderfully. The cats got into the skeins in the middle of the night, so they're looking a little bedraggled, but the colors took beautifully. I did a second round yesterday since the rig was already set up, where I tried various levels of dilution with spring water, and I love the results. Pastels on gleaming fibers, my dream!

They have a bit of "bedhead"...

Maybe I haven't gotten the hang of Parme Rose (some dyes are trickier than others), but I keep getting a camel-ish tone. It's lovely, but not as pink as I'd like.

Oh, that lavender, though...

I checked up on the salt-and-sequin pour. I find the result very humorous, but perhaps I've hit an end with this line of inquiry, at least for now.

Maybe a map of an island?

These crystals are smaller and more uniform. I'm not a chemist but I assume the smaller puddle evaporated more quickly and didn't give it time to develop those lavish, massive encrustations from the earlier salt pour.

My father picked me up some Aji-no-moto MSG (monosodium glutamate) from the Japanese market and I left this guy in the studio today to dry down overnight. I'm a huge fan of MSG conceptually and practically, though I use it extremely rarely in cooking (once in a while, a pinch in a pot of rice is magic). There's so much cultural and gustatory interest in the chemical for me; the idea of "umami" is fascinating; the branding of this flavor-awareness as Asian-specific is also fascinating. It's less neurotoxic and scary than people think. I'd like to play with MSG as a material for a while...

Dust from an old cup trapped in the solution.

I unboxed some murrine I created in Kait Rhoads' fabulous workshop I took a few years ago and have been arranging them loosely while imagining some fused worry stones for anxious types like me. People are so fond of the idea of murrine being a cross-section, as well as the notion that it is drawn thinly to concentrate a pattern and give a high degree of intricacy. Of course this interests me, but I also like thinking of these murrine in a totally different way: as each individual piece being a prismatic little beacon that light shines THROUGH, giving geometric and colored light projections.

Finally, on my way out the door, caught the shop owners working hard on a Sunday night...