Right before I left to go out of town I had the opportunity to get into the hotshop and blow some glass with a friend. I am hoping to do more now that I am back! Maybe today, maybe Thursday... either way I am exciting and pumped!
I ended up hanging out at Elements for a few hours waiting for the kiln to cool down (so we could see the pieces before we left!) and I took a bunch of pictures while lolly-gagging around the studio. I love the imagery of a hotshop. The glow of heat, the sweaty men, the furnaces and kilns and other equipment. I also love the smell of beeswax and burntness that permeates a hotshop. Its exquisite.
Elements is a public access hotshop that many different gaffers use - that day there was a group of men working on pulling cane - in the picture above you can see them all working on the hot gather together - I loved how the lighting created a look of silhouettes.
These two pictures are of a beautiful piece that Aaron was working on, it was a rebellious piece of glass and kept leaping off the pipe and bouncing across the concrete floor. What you are looking at here is a new puntil attached to the piece and the flame keeping the glass hot as the puntil cools down (the puntil must be rigid enough to hold the weight of the piece before they can really pick it up and get it into a glory hole to re-heat). The wood underneath the glass burned a bit, but Brandyn simply stepped on it and put out the flames once the glass was safely in the glory hole. This was fantastic to watch and take pictures of - I am guessing it was a bit less fun for the artists chasing the hot glass around the studio!!
Right before I left to go out of town I had the opportunity to get into the hotshop and blow some glass with a friend. I am hoping to do more now that I am back! Maybe today, maybe Thursday... either way I am exciting and pumped!
I ended up hanging out at Elements for a few hours waiting for the kiln to cool down (so we could see the pieces before we left!) and I took a bunch of pictures while lolly-gagging around the studio. I love the imagery of a hotshop. The glow of heat, the sweaty men, the furnaces and kilns and other equipment. I also love the smell of beeswax and burntness that permeates a hotshop. Its exquisite.
Elements is a public access hotshop that many different gaffers use - that day there was a group of men working on pulling cane - in the picture above you can see them all working on the hot gather together - I loved how the lighting created a look of silhouettes.
These two pictures are of a beautiful piece that Aaron was working on, it was a rebellious piece of glass and kept leaping off the pipe and bouncing across the concrete floor. What you are looking at here is a new puntil attached to the piece and the flame keeping the glass hot as the puntil cools down (the puntil must be rigid enough to hold the weight of the piece before they can really pick it up and get it into a glory hole to re-heat). The wood underneath the glass burned a bit, but Brandyn simply stepped on it and put out the flames once the glass was safely in the glory hole. This was fantastic to watch and take pictures of - I am guessing it was a bit less fun for the artists chasing the hot glass around the studio!!
3 comments:
Wow! I've never seen that before. Amazing!
I love the last picture. At first glance it looks like the flame is a hand reaching out to scoop up the wayward glass ball.
Hi Leah! I loved your pictures. I was wondering if I could use the last one as part of a graphic for my institute. I promise to give you credit for it in the graphic. Do let me know. You can check out my work at http://news.ncbs.res.in/source/aathira-perinchery. My mail id's aathira@ncbs.res.in. Cheers, Aathira.
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