I Do Work Around Here You Know

Coffee was in the Austin skyline mug (Dave comes back home TONIGHT!), "Bad Things" by Jace Everett on iTunes (for the same reason). Airplane and hotel reservations for Vegas are done, new work for the show is planned. Next weekend Bill, Elaine and I will get together at their house in Charleston to plan the display--the exact pieces and placement for them. Maybe by extensive planning on the front end, we can avoid the 23-hour set-up we had last year...

In keeping with the economic theme we started at the Buyer's Market in February, we are debuting several new pieces at ACRE in the $100-$200 bucket--glass and metal together. We had eight new pieces for the Buyer's Market that were under $100, now we're unveiling a slightly larger rectangular stand format with five new designs and four stand pieces with small rounds (our current smallest round stand piece uses 16" glass, the new ones have 7-1/2" glass).

However we aren't neglecting the higher-end work either. We have a new abstract glass and steel sculpture called "Primitive" that looks (to me--I didn't design it) like a bone and obsidian ax head circa 2000 BC. I am seriously inspired to do a really cool glass for it; maybe something in "stone"... I will also have the fused and blown (roll-up) vessels. Finally I'm thinking that I didn't give the Cloudstone pieces enough exposure and it might be time to do a bit more of that glass (the purple was especially yummy). Heck, I have two weeks to get it all done--and only one order to get out in the meantime (at least for now).

I end the post today with a response to all the "Gee, you didn't do much in making the roll-up pieces" comments from the previous posts. The roll-ups are COLLABORATIVE work. I didn't show the process of making the glass in the first place (my part) as that's just what I do--and let's face it, watching someone cut glass, piece it together and put it into the kiln isn't all that... sexy. Glass blowing is sexy. Watching Johnathon swing the pipe with a molten vessel on it around in the air and past his cute little bare legs... that's sexy! Would you rather watch someone clean house or throw a fabulous party in the clean house? Can't do one without the other. Which is not to say I wasn't doing anything during the glass-blowing part of the work. The original video was 45 minutes long after all. I cut it to 16. Most of what I cut was my boring behind moving back and forth, and me directing the shaping. I did cut repetitions of blowing movements and glory hole time too, but my philosophy was if I was the main action in the shot, it could be cut.

I also didn't shoot the two days of coldworking on the finished blown piece that I gave it so it is satiny and lustrous and you just can't stop stroking it when you pick it up. The doing of that wasn't sexy either, but the (almost) finished piece? Oh my, drop-dead sexy.