Philip Glass Only Wishes He Was El Diablo

Remember that glass class I mentioned?  I have actually been making stuff all this time!  Problem is, there's a lot of lag time between starting and finishing a piece (especially if you're making plates or bowls and require the use of a mold).  Depending on your design (or, as is more often in my case, how well I plan ahead and/or how much glass I have), there could be multiple firings, each of which adds another week to the production schedule.

We've been learning a variety of techniques, but I've mostly just been sticking to the standard "cut straight lines and grind the rest" school of glasswork.  Since tomorrow is our last class, I'm pretty much done with any large projects; plates and bowls and the like require at least two classes – one for fusing and one for slumping.  Tomorrow I'm planning on just playing around with the glass, rather than focusing on any concrete projects, and we'll see what I come up with.  Probably an owl.  It's always owls.  I feel like I need to redeem my owl-making after that first one.

Perhaps one day I'll sit down and explain some of the different things you can do with glass, once I actually have examples of said things.  Until then, I'll just play Show and Tell so you can see what I've been up to.

A sushi plate for The Husband.  Sushi plates are nice because they're small enough that I usually have the requisite amount of glass (5"x7.5"), but large enough that it feels like a proper thing to make.

A 4.5" square plate (I think this is technically called a candy dish?) with stringers (glass noodles).

A 7" square plate – white base with translucent blue and green overlay, with clear stringers on top.  I sort of wish I had fired it upside down at first (to get the green and blue glass to merge together a bit better), but that would have added to the firing schedule, and I am impatient.

Winter BirdFeet.  12" x 6.5".  The feet are broken bits of stringer; the "snow" (it was far less brightly colored before firing) is frit, which is ground up pieces of glass.

Seabirds (sort of).  This is the first plate I made, so don't judge it as harshly as the others.  The same blue glass as in the 7" plate above, with clear backing.  The egg decorations are either frit (the left and right ones), or confetti (paper-thin shards of glass).  This is also a sushi plate, but it didn't slump as nicely as the other one; I'm pretty sure it's because this one took multiple firings (back before I knew about this whole two-layers-of-glass-for-plates rule), and the glass shrinks in the kiln.

I have a few more plates in the pipeline, and I'll hopefully come up with a few more exciting non-plate pieces tomorrow.  Perhaps another Show and Tell will be called for?

GLASSY EYED AND BUSHY TAILED

Two posts in as many days?  Batten down any hatches and break out the canned goods – we are clearly approaching the End Times, here.*

Actually, not really.∞  I'm just heading to New York tomorrow to experience a bit of proper autumn (planned activities include: picking apples and cooking stews and wearing sweaters and playing in the rain and tasting wine and eating at the best ice cream place in New York [according to USA Today, at least] and generally enjoying life outside of the parched oven that is Phx), and since the internet connection there is measured in double-digit kilobits/second, I probably won't be able to post much unless I leave it running overnight.˚

So, before I go, I thought I would actually talk about something that relates to the "craft" part of this humble blog's subheading.

As long-time readers know, I'm taking a glass fusion class at the Phoenix Center for Visual Arts.  Eventually we'll be doing things like working with glass powders and metals and etching, but right now all I know how to do is (a) cut glass, and (b) grind glass.  But that's enough to make a few things, which I thought I'd share (and to serve as a useful point of comparison for what will hopefully be vast improvement).

OK, first up:  a little glass physics.  The ideal thickness for glass is two layers; if you stack more than two pieces together, it will flatten down (and out) to two layers thick.  To illustrate this, we cut 1" x 1" squares, then stacked and fired them.

1, 2, 5!  Five pieces of glass!

From left to right, we have a stack of five glass pieces, counting down to a single square on the right.  A single piece of glass is the same size as two stacked pieces (going back to the whole "glass loves two layers" thing)^, and it expands from there.

Next are two examples comparing tac fusing with full fusing.  Tac fusing heats the glass just enough for pieces to stick together; full fusing melds the pieces together.

A contented sigh, in glass form

The A is tac fused, and the H is full fused.  Tac fusing creates texture and maintains the original shape better, while full fusion is sleek and shiny.¥

Of course, I tried to make an owl.

This owl has cleavage.

This is what happens when you don't properly balance/attach the cover glass and it slides off in the kiln.  I still love him, though.  He's...special.

See, my owl is scientifically accurate.

But!  I can rebuild him!  We have the technology!¶  Next week, I'll saw off the overhanging bit at the bottom, even out the edges with the grinder, and add some glass to fix the lumpiness.  I have another owl going into the kiln tonight; hopefully this one will be a bit more owly and a bit less, um, horrifically misshapen.

And that is Glass Fusion 101.  Next week I'm going to learn how to cut curved lines, which is terribly exciting.  However, we are getting closer and closer to the time when I have to go buy my own glass, which doesn't really excite me.  Ah, the life of an artist, I suppose.

If I'm not too busy jumping into leaf piles and having bonfires, I'll try to write up some of my adventures in Actual Seasons Land and send them to The Husband to post, if only to taunt those of you reading this in the desert.  And then, when it's 60ºF and sunny in January and I'm walking back from the farmers' market with just-picked oranges, I'll taunt the rest of you.

*Make sure you pay close attention to this post, because I might cover a lot of information and I don't want any of you left behind.
∞Hopefully.  Phx is all dry washes, so I can't be certain that rivers aren't running red with blood.
˚I recently learned that my hometown is technically part of Appalachia.  Our shoddy internet access makes more sense now.
^Science!  Again!
¥Tic-tac fusion leaves behind fresh breath with only one-and-a-half calories.
¶The Six-Billion-Dollar Owl (Adjusted for Inflation)!  This Fall, on Fox!

WHEREIN I CHEEZ MY DAIRY (ALSO, SHARDS OF GLASS)

You know how, when you're doing research, you're supposed to use primary sources more than secondary sources, because that way you get to formulate your own conclusions and sound brilliant instead of citing lots of footnotes and having your thesis advisor repeatedly ask you why you're not doing close readings of the poems?*

Well, lately I've been enchanted with the idea of doing the same thing with my food and trying to make various simple things from scratch.  This is mostly for the sheer novelty of it all, but I've also been on this self-sufficient/survivalist bent where I'm trying to prepare myself for the downfall of civilization and build up a skill set so I can barter my way into one of the better post-apocalyptic societies.  Of course, there are flaws in this plan, since I can't keep cows in downtown PHX and there's a world of difference between a butter churn and a Kitchenaid mixer; as such, my plans rely heavily on (A) my local dairy also surviving the apocalypse and (B) there being a reliable source of electricity in our dystopian futureworld.

But I digress.

So far, my excursions into the wonderful world of dairy-making include butter (pour cream into mixer, turn on, forget about until it starts sloshing) and ice cream (pour batter into mixer attachment, turn on, forget about until it starts clicking).  Both have been successful, but since our dairy CSA gives us copious amounts of butter and ice cream every week, I needed a new challenge.

Enter creme fraiche.

For the uninitiated, creme fraiche is a lot like sour cream, only a bit thicker and with a more restrained tang.  It can be used just like sour cream, and is also found in pasta sauces and in some baked goods.  More importantly, it is right expensive, so it's not something I can just toss into my basket while I'm roaming around the local Fresh and Easy trying to figure out what the cut-off number is between "acceptable" and "besotted lush" in regards to buying cheap wine.

ANYWAYS, I picked up a pint of cream and a pint of buttermilk and decided to try to make some magic.  Essentially, all creme fraiche is is cream plus buttermilk, left to sit at room temperature until the bacteria get feisty and it thickens up.  I am normally of the opinion that dairy left out over night = horrible stomach ache, but I had eaten some sourdough starter (not recommended) and didn't die, so I figured I'd give it a shot.  I mixed one cup cream with half a tablespoon of buttermilk, gave it a stir, and set it on the counter.  In theory, I would wake up to creme fraiche, which would then lead to figgy chocolate scones, which would lead to joy.

In actuality, I woke up to cream that had resisted all efforts to change, save for the addition of a slightly sour smell.  "Perhaps it hasn't sat long enough," I thought.  "Maybe it wasn't warm enough to kickstart the bacteria."  (This is FALSE, given how it is summer in the desert and it is never not warm enough for anything, except maybe for nuclear fusion.)  So I left it out all day.

When night fell, I gave the bowl a stir, and I discovered that while a thick skin had formed on the top, the rest was still just plain cream that smelled a little funny.  I had cheezed the creme fraiche.

this lolcat will never stop being funny

So, there were no scones in guhlersville, for mighty Heather had struck out; or, more accurately, she hadn't paid close enough attention to the recipe to realize she needed cultured buttermilk, not just the leftovers from making butter.  Fortunately, I also have recipes for scones made with cream and buttermilk, of which we are in great supply.  Tomorrow I will drown my sorrows for my lost creme fraiche in sweet sconey goodness, and will start on plans to make cheese (which I will hopefully not cheez).

ALSO!  I started my glass fusion class tonight.  Here is what I have learned so far:

1.  Glasswork is an expensive hobby.
2.  Over the next 10 weeks, I will cut myself.  Probably frequently.
3.  Apart from me, no one under the age of 50 takes art classes.
4.  The softening point for glass is 1100º F.

Next week we will actually start playing with glass, so I'll let you know how that goes (assuming I don't slice off a finger/limb in the process).


*FYI, the appropriate response is "Because I don't actually like poetry, and I especially don't like overanalyzing word choice in poetry, and besides Robert Burns is pretty straightforward about how much he loves the ladies and Scotland and more ladies and the simplicity of farm life and OH DID I MENTION THE LADIES and the point of my thesis is to examine the various ways his entire body of work can and has been co-opted, so if I were to focus on every line of every poem, I would never graduate."