Nuts

In Portland Oregon they call these tasties Filberts. What ever happened to Hazelnuts? Years ago when I moved here it seemed they (locals) said everything weird. Seriously.

This one is odd to me. When there's such wonderful things as hazelnut coffee and hazelnut chocolate and hazelnuts in cookies and whatnot... why call them Filberts? And really, locals don't seem to have a lot of love for them either. They grew up with these things growing in the trees and no one seems to sing their praise. Upon looking it up in Wiki I learned the Corylus avellana (the Hazelnut) is a different plant from the closely related Filbert (Corylus maxima). So maybe these Filberts aren't actually Hazelnuts. Now I am really confused. Locals told me it was all the same. I think.

Discussion at the Museum of Contemporary Craft

Kaffeeklatsch: an informal social gathering for coffee and conversation

Tuesday I had major plans to sit around at home consumed in production isolation(ah the holidays approach) and drowning myself in Election news and media coverage in every form possible. As I was checkin' out my blog feed I saw that Cathy and Diane were both going to be downtown at the Museum of Contemporary Craft for this round-table discussion about DIY in Portland. I looked at the clock and saw that I had time to be there, so I thought, why not.

Heres the official description of the event:
From craft fairs, etsy.com sellers and zinesters to the independent music scene, bike activists and “foodies,” Portland has a reputation as an epicenter for Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture. Join guests Susan Beal and Cathy Pitters (PDX Super Crafty) and Justin Hocking (executive director, Independent Publishing Resource Center) for a discussion on DIY, its connection to craft and the contemporary resurgence of all things independent.

Afterwards I left feeling very positive about Portland (which is great considering it is cold and rainy and gray and I am feeling seasonally effected by the sh*t weather).

This event made me remember that I love living in PDX. I love that we have a Museum of Contemporary Craft, and the Independant Publishing Resource Center, and all the glass resources in town, and the Crafty Wonderland, and the Portland Saturday Market and Mercy Corps NW, and Portland Store Fixtures and the ReBuilding Center and so forth and so on... its such a cool city to live in as a craft person, and in a way that sums up the whole discussion!

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Images on Glass II

The experiments continue - my friend Jan and I made 22 more samples of printing onto glass. Do you see how amazing these blocks are (in the picture above)?! We used Rubber Duckies, a Hammer, Birds on a Line, a Benson Bubbler (water fountains in PDX), and a set of Hearts.

We were very methodical, trying 5 new types of ink (one image for each type of ink so its easy to remember!), an oil based ink (last time we used a rubber based ink), a lithograph ink, an etching ink and an oil based ink that had metal in it (it was called "Copper Gold"), and lastely a transparent Rubber based ink that we mixed colored glass powder into it. We also tried different colors of glass powders/frit (last time we used only black powder and frit).

Interesting observations: glass powder mixed with ink is possible, but it behaves weirdly. The ink sorta seems to cling to the glass particles and create fractal patterns. See: (pictured below is ink under a magnifying lens)
Okay, its come to my attention that the last video I posted from my on-going project of printing on glass, it was not a complete video. :) This was entirely my fault.... the video ended because I hadn't set up the glass for Jan to transfer the ink onto, so I had to stop the video to put down the camera and be helpful and arrange the glass. Jan has been doing the inking and I do the glass. So this next video is much more complete - although I am once more leaving out the end - sheesh! Because inevitably I have to put down the camera in order to pick up the glass frit/powder...



my apologies for having a volume control issues - enjoy the music :)

so if you watched this whole thing (its 3 minutes) and wonder what comes next... basically its simple, I take some glass powder or frit and dump it onto the glass, covering the ink, then I turn the glass over and tap it to knock off all the excess powder/frit. Sometimes I have to take a paint brush to dust off a little clingy stuff, but mostly thats it. Then I fire the glass at a full fuse and the ink is burnt away, completely, leaving behind the print made by the glass powder/frit.

See here for our first results after kiln firing.

And the last experiment of the day was transporting all this glass - we worked at Jan's printing studio this time (the glass studio gets a little busy on the weekends and we need lots of space) and made two trips with the car to carry the inked glass to Aquila. It worked out very smoothly, although I really didn't push things, I just folded up my back seats and laid it all out on trays.

Enjoy!

Mobile Collaboration

This mobile was made in collaboration with Matt Richards of Ekko Mobiles. He designed and created the mobile, I supplied him with the glass for this custom order. This was a first for both of us.

I really enjoy how this turned out - Matt and his family and really great people, his Ekko Mobiles are incredible and I cannot express what its like to have another mobile artist to talk to and work with - its a rare experience in my little world.

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Super Simple Borosilicate Glass Ornament

Clearly I could/should have decorated this glass ball... the point is, its easy to simply blow out a borosilicate point and create a simple Christmas tree ornament. The little metal caps (with the wire) are available from glass supply distributors... if you are an artist that uses the Aquila studio, they have the metal caps available for sale there as well. If you take my Ornament class, you make at least a dozen of these little imperfect creations, and I put the little metal tops on them for you, after they have been annealed.

Come take a class - learn to do this - or try at your studio at home!

Basically... pull a point of tubing, decorate the bubble, blow it out and anneal it. This pic-tutorial shows how to crack off the blowpipe afterwards and create your simple ornament:

Beginning with your annealed point with the blown out ball, blowpipe still attached

Done.

Glass Give-Away: Cutey Drop

I found this little blue droplet and I thought I'd share. He makes me smile and he deserves a good home!

He has a cutsey little "O" expression and a jump-ring thru the little hole on the top of his head.

I made these years ago... in all different colors and different facial expressions. I have a jacket somewhere that I attached a yellow one to the zipper... and a few change purses that these got attached to as well. I even made a few mobiles that every droplet had a different facial expression, like little characters - I loved these mobiles!!! Occasionally their owners will visit me at the Portland Saturday Market and tell me that they own a mobile made by me that have little faces on the drops - and I squeal and smile with the memories and inform them that they own a collectors item :)

Well I found this little blue one and I thought I'd share. He has a cutsey little "O" expression and a jump-ring thru the little hole on the top of his head.

He could be yours! Simply leave a comment (and spread the word to friends and family of the FREE opportunity on my blog here - ANYONE can win!) and make sure that I can contact you if you win (leave your email in the comment if you don't have a blog or if your blog profile is private)

These give-aways are the real deal - HERE you can see who all has won and received previous FREE give-aways. The point of these promotions is to drive more traffic to my blog and give away clutter from my studio.

This giveaway will run from 11/1/08 thru 11/15/08 - Good Luck!

Images on Glass Experiment

I finally took pictures of some of the samples that Jan and I created in our printmaking meets glass experiments.

Today I played hooky from the Portland Saturday Market (the weather was howling and rainy, not weather to sell artwork outdoors in my opinion) but I had to wrap up these glass pieces and take them down there to show Jan. She was bubbling with excitement and apprehension. It was quite cute really, I do believe she did a little jumping up and down when I arrived in her booth. And many other artist neighbors and friends stopped in to say hello. Everyone wanted to know why I wasn't selling (wasn't it obvious!) and what the glass looked like. It got pawed over and looked at by many artists, this was quite fun. Tomorrow we are doing experiment #2. I'll take more pictures and videos. It makes me smile to hear from friends who read my blog - so I'll keep the pictures coming.

So here are the pictures from the first batch... everything was printed on clear, so I put white paper behind the glass to take pictures:

the ginkos:The print above was transfered using wax paper and then dusted with glass powder, not a whole lotta detail, and the black powder is kinda boring... but interesting none the less...

The print below was transfered using vinyl (which was much easier and produced no wasted wax paper to throw out, the vinyl could simply be washed!) and then dusted with glass powder.
The 3rd ginko (below) was dusted with glass frit, this was much easier (the glass powder clung to the glass due to static and had to be brush off gently with a fan brush, but the frit was heavy enough to just fall right off the glass with a little tapping)

You can see in the pictures above and below the differences between using glass frit and glass powder. The frit was much easier to use and much more apparent, but the powder caught the detail. In the picture above you can really see its stars and circles with the powder, but not with the frit. In the picture below you can see the carved lines in the leaf with the powder, but not with the frit.

In the picture below you can see the same leaf printed and then dusted with black glass powder, and then a ghost (aka the ink left after the first transfer was picked up and used for a second print) of that same inking was taken and dusted with glass powder as well. The leaf on the left in the ghost.All the glass so far was fired with the ink printing right on the surface of the clear.

In the picture below all three samples were fired with a second piece of clear glass on top of the ink/glass powder print:

from left to right, the ink print was dusted with frit, the middle was dusted with powder and the right had no glass powder/frit at all, just ink. What is strangely cool is that even though the glass appears perfectly clear, the hop print is very visible, sorta, under certain light. Its very subtle and beautiful.

Below is the same piece of glass as the "clear empty" piece of glass on the right in the picture above. The ink leaves a permanent mark on the glass just like a fingerprint.In the picture below the flower print is first on the left dusted with black powder, the middle piece of glass is no glass powder, just ink, the glass on the right is the same piece of glass as the one in the center, just held at a certain angle you can see the beautiful detail.

The last pictures are of the paper-clip print. Both the pieces of glass below are two layers, you can see the bubbles that got trapped from the frit catching air in between the sheets of clear. The clear piece of glass on the left is simply inked, no glass powder/frit. Below is a picture of the paper-clip when its visible, I just think this is neat... but its super duper subtle.
The ink we used was a purple rubber based ink. Tomorrow we've got some oil based and some that has metal flakes in the ink (copper and gold) which I think will get interesting.... I'll try and take a better video tomorrow that doesn't cut off right when things get juicy :)

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