snowing in corning

It's been snowing all week in Corning and the locals say that winter hasn't begun.

It's a brand new life, and I'm completely in love with it. I'm starting to make friends to blow glass with. Today, I spent all day in the shop renting time, and made a mildly successful mezzastampo. I'm learning, slowly, slowly. I'm studying at the Rakow Library, looking for furnace design and burner systems, combustion, electricity. Even the librarians blow glass and are down to rent time.

I keep meaning to blow ornaments to send to people for the holidays. There are a few people that I need to thank with glass for helping me get out here. But I get in the shop and I just want to try something I'm completely unqualified for, or beat the next problem. It's overwhelming how much there is to know.

I really loved Philadelphia, the city itself. I miss my neighborhood and trashpicking free stuff, and flea markets and farmers markets, the anarchist block, the coffeehouses, the neighbors with tattooed faces. Sometimes I miss Kline & Specter, and feeling like a professional something-or-other. I'm still a novice here. I feel like a blank slate. I'm reimagining how to blow glass. My whole life has been reimagined for me. I'm humbled and thankful.

And now I have my own website up

Speaking of the benefits of having free time, I built a website for me this summer. qartanddesign.com.

It's obviously already a little outdated, since about a week ago I was assuming impending homelessness and unemployment, and I'm still without stuff like a permanent address. But I'm working on it.

My heart in my throat

I'm still wrapping my head around it. I got the shop tech job, as soon as I pass the crim checks and drug tests. It happened so fast, and I've been working so much, it took a few days to sink in.

My life is good here. I loved Philadelphia, the city, but I was always short on time resources, on cash, on education and experience. And here, for whatever else happens, there's time, books, a wealth of experience to draw from, and stability. I never wanted to be a rock star, this is all I need.

I'm in the middle of a stretch of overtime, and I got pretty sick on top of it. There's no one left on the workshop staff to cover for sickness, so I'm working through it in the heat; my voice is stretched for every demo, and when I leave work, I can barely talk above a whisper. I think we're all tired, but doing alright. I'm too nervous and sick to be estatic, but the feeling is somewhere in that vicinty.

Holy shit.

Martin Janecky is my new hero

"I was thirteen years old when I started blowing glass . . . I was skinny little boy, now I am big strapping guy."

Rock and flow

"In his seminal work, 'Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience', Csíkszentmihályi outlines his theory that people are most happy when they are in a state of flow— a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. The idea of flow is identical to the feeling of being in the zone or in the groove. The flow state is an optimal state of intrinsic motivation, where the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing. This is a feeling everyone has at times, characterized by a feeling of great freedom, enjoyment, fulfillment, and skill—and during which temporal concerns (time, food, ego-self, etc.) are typically ignored.[citation needed]

In an interview with Wired magazine, Csíkszentmihályi described flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost." [2]

To achieve a flow state, a balance must be struck between the challenge of the task and the skill of the performer. If the task is too easy or too difficult, flow cannot occur.

The flow state also implies a kind of focused attention, and indeed, it has been noted that mindfulness meditation, yoga, and martial arts seem to improve a person's capacity for flow. Among other benefits, all of these activities train and improve attention.

In short; flow could be described as a state where attention, motivation, and the situation meet, resulting in a kind of productive harmony or feedback."

-Wikipedia

Never enough time

Today, I got up and watched the demo for a little while in the Claire Kelly/Anthony Schafermeyer class. Ian explained the proper difference between a tazza and a low bowl, and I realized that I'd been misusing the word "tazza" for god knows how long. Lee talked reticello and powder pick-ups and bad coffee. I've been thinking a lot about how there's only a month left of this - it's going by so fast. Six months ago, I thought I hit my limit with this. I can't see around this corner now, but I'm guessing for what it's worth, it's not over yet. But time is pressing down a bit, so I left and hit the library so that maybe I can plow through the Combustion Handbook and some other thing I found, a glass-as-a-material engineering handbook before my time here is done, and I go back to some other thing.

I have an interview tomorrow with Harry for an open shop tech position. I kind of want to stay here - there's nothing waiting for me back in Philly. I'm so humbled by all the good things I see every day, and it feels pretty good not being divided between several lifestyles at once - where lawyers may not always see creative types as dedicated workers, and where the closest I can get to production work is being ask to spellcheck the pros because the glassworkers think I'm such a square. So wish me luck with Harry. I probably need it.

The big bad future

I'm pretty good at planning things out, in general. But sometimes I wonder if my method could use a little madness.

Work is going OK, although I've been put on flameworking an insane amount of beads and almost no furnace glassblowing, which is a downer. I haven't blown a single thing since the goblets class. I miss it terribly. I've talked to the boss-lady and asked for more glassblowing time, but no one else has admitted to bead-making skills, although somehow everyone seems to know how to make a pipe. Go figure.

In any case, I'm making the best of it, and my flameworking hands have gotten fast enough that one of the fusing girls is calling me spider-fingers now. I'm renting some time with a co-worker in the flame shop and trying to scavenge some borosilicate tubing from the classes so that I can practice blowing glass on the torch. If I can't afford to constantly be blowing in the hot shop, it might be worth the initial tool investment to make a switch for part of my time. Hot shop time in Philly was, at it's absolute cheapest, $35 per hour. I'm pretty sure I can get a torch for a solid day for $40. As I remember it, blowing on the torch was one of the most frustrating things I ever did try. So I'm all over it.

I'm also working on getting visitors up in this joint from Philly to blow glass with me in the hot shop, which isn't seeming likely. On this subject, I think you Philly people are all insane. Who wouldn't want to rent a couple of solid days in the summer in Corning, NY? The weather's beautiful, and so is the shop.

I applied for a job back in Philly for the first time tonight, as a research associate. And also for a shop tech gig up here in Corning, which isn't likely to materialize for me. And a non-existent Simon Pearce glassblower gig in Vermont. (A girl has got to dream.)

I never believed that life is perfect, I always figured that we do things the best we can with what we have available. If life was ever perfect, what's the point of striving this hard? I don't think this ever ends either, I think I'll always work like this. There's always something to pursue, we are never fully-formed. It's just that when I imagine what life is going to be like come September, I have this insane hope that, for a little while at least, I can make a living by pursuing glass and design. But this thing has worked out for people who've worked every bit as hard as I have for it, people who were working in studios, living and breathing it, and not offices, doing glass after hours. And I've never held my breath for this, since there's rent to pay, and without the cash to pay for it, I won't be making glass at all. And the pros think I'm happy being a hobbyist when I was really waiting by the phone. But I was never happy like that.

Fail Forward

The goblets workshop with Jeff Mack wasn't what I expected.

I'd been blowing pretty well in Philadelphia, not quite production cups, but I was finishing off the spring with thin, centered cups with color and avolios, blown feet, correct proportion. I took the class thinking that I had the basic bubble happening, and that now I'd build some stems, try some new techniques and move on. But I couldn't.

I was stuck - my hands weren't opening vessels, my blow partners weren't the same old Philly crew I knew like the back of my hand. My timing was off, I kept missing the beat. I was too cold, and a year in front of the glory hole couldn't warm up my glass. Maybe the laws of physics were actually being applied differently in my corner of the studio. The information I was receiving in demonstrations and museum lectures was overwhelming and awe-inspiring. Watching the other students, seeing their work product was humbling. Quietly listening to the conversations in the lunchrooms, with these glassworkers from all over the nation, even the world, sharing information and technique, was every idealistic thing we ever dreamed about on the front stoop of our tiny hot shop in Philadelphia and never even came close to achieving in our own little world. Everything was changing, my head restructured the way I was thinking about glass. I just couldn't do anything with it.

By Wednesday, I was beginning to wonder if I could ever do this - glass - if after four years of giving it all I've got, I couldn't get in the studio enough, practice enough, problem solve enough to fix this, to make a stupid cup happen. The few pros I knew back in Philly were right - this can't happen without being in the studio and working your ass off everyday. The work you put in to pay your rent and then get to the studio doesn't count. It won't teach your hands a thing. That night I rallied and banged out a nice enough cup with tall avolios and an optic stem, but by Thursday, it was gone. Some cruel little voice in my head told me not to quit my day job, but I already had.

I asked Jeff Mack what I could do to be a better glassblower, and I think I was waiting for official approval to go back to the hobbyist corner forever. He talked about about a book called Zen and the Art of Guitar Playing and told me to look it over and replace "guitar-playing" with "glassblowing". He said that frustration was just part of the process, that it would never end. And something clicked, I remembered something else entirely. A shock of recognition.

After all was done, and I settled in Philadelphia, after the first year there, I had just started my first intermediate class under Chris. I had been blowing glass for four months. I went to Brooklyn to chill at Coney Island and crash with Gregory. I talked glass half the weekend, like a naive little thing. We were outside on the concrete steps in a summer night, just like growing up, and I said that I had never failed so miserably at anything in my life, and that I thought I might have achieved enlightenment.

It's been a long time since I thought about enlightenment, but now I think I remember why I'm here.

So the Jeff Mack class was about countless failures, open possibilities, a series of minor epiphanies, and small victories in the form of a series of ampolinas and twisty cups in the box. Plus one sweet, tall cup.

Thoughts on art school

Everyone here has been to art school and trained in glass. The people I work with in the seasonal workshops, up to the head tech, the teachers, the students and the hangers-on. Even when they started gathering up in some other setting, in studio work or in public access places, they all went to art school for this.

In Philly, there seem to be two views on art school, coming from the professionals or the close-enoughs. The first is: "Art school was awesome! I learned so much and I still hang out with my homies." The second is: "Art school is full of punk-ass kids and wannabe bitches." Regardless of which view a person takes, the common factor between the people of either mindset is generally that they have all been to (or in one notable exception, taught in) art schools. But I never met any of them as art students anyway. By the time I met all of these people, they were professionals; they were teaching the classes that I was taking in public access settings, and taking the students out drinking, telling us all how life is. And the thing that would separate us, that makes them able to let me know how life is when, technically, I did throw down just as hard as anyone else, the difference between us is the training, and the blowslots subsidized by a university, an educational setting. The time in the studio to experiment instead of the time spent working your ass off to get by, and then maybe get to the studio. Here in Corning, I'm sort of dropped in the middle of all these kids I'm working with, most of whom are still in school or freshly out, and they are all, well, fresh. It's a good word for it.

So when I learned to blow glass, I started late, I was 24 years old. I didn't start out with a lot of money. I was actually nearly broke and spent the last of my cash on a four week class. I sold my car to get the money for an apartment in Philadelphia, I cut murrine and color, swept the floor, assisted in beginner classes, narrated demonstrations, and cleaned the bathroom at the local studio to make enough in trade to take classes, I cleaned buildings and hauled stuff for my landlord for extra cash on the side, to make ends meet while I was coming up in the world. One hundred hours of work on my weekends and evenings got me a single class, in a class we worked on our own work once a week. The classes were three hours long, and geared towards hobbyists. I made one piece a week, if I didn't break it, not that it ever mattered. I quit glass twice, neither time lasted for longer than two weeks. I didn't know if I would ever be able to get it together enough to plan my own sculptures well, or to make a goblet. I've got a long way to go. Because studio glassworking requires practice, observation and experimentation, and in a studio without resources, classes geared towards hobbyists only, all I really knew about glass was that I hadn't seen anything yet. Experimentation was impossible, unaffordable.

Glass is about sheer force of will. A professional glassworker once told me there was no way to learn to work with glass without being in the studio everyday. The pros can be a little dismissive, but he was right. There's a reason that I ( a public-access trained glassworker) in a minority here. Getting here was heartbreaking.

I could dismiss the art students like some of the pros do, but I don't. I get annoyed when certain someones with art degrees skip the line for a beginning teaching or production assistant job that maybe I wanted, when they haven't got the skills or good sense to blow a simple cylinder. But most of them are pretty good while I'm still pretty mediocore in the real world, and when all of these younger kids here are talking amongst themselves about all the numerous ways to cook food in a glass studio, about the things they've tried that didn't necessarily work out, I appreciate that and wish I had the resources to do it that way. What it comes down to is that everything I've seen in the last month, or in the magazines, the contemporary glass that imitates bones, dirt, fruit, stone, objects, creatures, abstractions, all the studio glass that's come about since the sixties, all of it is that result of cheap energy, ubiquitous studios, a sense of experimentation, the willingness to share technique and information, and this is all in part fostered by the university system. And the time, all the time in the world to figure out what questions they want to ask, and then to find the answers. The kids here all know people in common, whether they're from Ohio or California, and in the end, we all speak the same language.

What this soliloquy is really about is how I'm going to find the money and the time to make a body of work just so that eventually, maybe, I can get back to somewhere like that.

getting older

It's quiet in my room, and it was slow at work today. I had only one customer to myself, first thing in the morning, and most of the rest of the day was spent bonding with co-workers and blowing the bowls of goblets and throwing them away. There's something in glassblowing where nothing special really has to be said, but sometimes, you'll lend a hand to someone you barely know, or they'll do something a different way from the way you would, and maybe you won't say a word about anything other than the glass, but from that moment on, you know you'll always dig working with that person.

And then sometimes you run into these fantastic egos, and it takes a minute to get used to the person. If you ever do. In glass, there seem to be a few rock stars in every shop. But I'm getting used to it, and learning from them too.

I came home and did the dishes, made dinner, and studied the web stuff for a bit. I was puttering around a few minutes ago, and I wondered if I'll ever get bored of this. I've been here for three weeks, and my mind drifts more than it did in Philadelphia, I work less, stay home more. I study and I think, I spend time looking at things in the museum, I watch better glassblowers, I get thankful that I've made it this far. I smile more. I study videos, objects, books. And I'm happy just like this.

I was always a quiet kid, I always liked a little time alone, but the older I get, the more I appreciate the quiet times between the chaos.

Everything is new

Today, I started work at CMOG. Got the walk-through of helping customers in the morning, and spent most of the afternoon blowing ornaments with another new-ish girl. As I was blowing ornaments, this Venetian glass master named Gianni Toso wandered out of the flameworking class he was teaching to mess with William Gudenrath and heckle me. After watching us go back and forth a bit, he kicked us off the bench to demonstrate a goblet for us.

It was the best first day at work ever. I got messed with by the guy who made this:





Over the spring, I saw a picture of Gianni both in Glass magazine (featured in a photo essay documenting the beginnings to middle of the Studio Glass movement in the United States) and in the CMOG catalog (next to the description of the flameworking class he is currently teaching). In both images, he had the most fantastic old school bushy beard, in real life, he kind of looks like the Kris Kringle of glassworking with a soft Italian accent. I think you have to be a great glassworker to rock a beard like that and not be afraid of setting your face on fire.

I had the last week or so off between jobs, and I landed in Corning a few days early. I spent it jogging, doing yoga videos, stealing wireless signals, catching up on all the TV shows I missed last year online, studying javascript and borrowing books on PHP, hanging with computer nerds, recalling the ability to cook an awesome dinner out of a microwave from a far distant, impoverished and somewhat transient early-twenty-something era, and generally having a good time. Life is really, really good today.

Cirque du Verre

I should have gone to this at Wheaton Village and I didn't.

The last set of incoming fellows put together a glass circus, and posted to youtube.



Blowing glass in the dark is hard. I trip over things. But pretty.



This seems like a bad idea . . .

More awesome things on the internet

The Pulp Shakespeare Project is a wiki dedicated to the wholesale rewriting of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction in iambic pentameter.

Glassmaking

I drove to the Corning Museum of Glass last weekend, and got hired for the summer as a workshop teacher. They hire about thirty glassblower to make ornaments and flowers from Memorial Day until Labor Day. I'm moving to Corning.

I'm going to be unemployed and homeless in September, but in the meantime, I'm boarding in a vacation spot all summer, gathering glass everyday, and looking forward to the quiet otherwise.

Frozen Grand Central

By Improv Everywhere:

First day in a new studio

I taught a couple of experience workshops at East Falls Glassworks this weekend, and, for the first time ever, had a student completely abandon the idea of glassworking as soon as the furnace door was open. She kept it together enough to attempt to take a gather, but threw it away and refused to stay, even when I offered to make her something to take home. I should have known she had no idea what she was looking at when she saw the massive dragon the advanced sculpture class had previously made as a team project, and asked for me to make her that.

Be fearless

I'm happy to be in this place, where I can apply to things outside of law and not feel like my life would collapse, like I'll be taken advantage of so easily, where I've almost built enough of a range of skill sets that I won't starve living on glass and design work. The future is open.

I've been doing more bikram yoga, and I think the practice really changes your sense of focus. I'm still feeling around my desk for the escape hatch, and I'm coming pretty close. The possibilities are open. In bikram, the class ends and you're laying on the floor in the dark; it's one hundred and five degrees in the room and you are feeling a bit broken. The teacher talks about breath and focus, one read a passage, and told us all to be fearless, that fear is apposite to creation. I'm the opposite of the new age type, but this is valid.

Things I heard today while listening to podcasts

Karen Lamonte, on why she is interested in the figure:


"The human body is the one thing everyone has in common."

Also, paraphrasing with regard to the Bush’s commentary on the Second Amendment case in the Supreme Court today:


"He’s seated at the little kid’s table at the constitutional issues party."