Art For Me!

Marietta Old Vine Red Lot Number 54 and Van Morrison's "Wild Night" on the radio playing through the restaurant--the restaurant being Tomaselli's Pastry Mill and Cafe in Elkton, OR across the street from the Elkton Cash Market and kitty-corner from the Brandborg Winery. My pizza has a chipotle-peanut butter BBQ sauced chicken, red and green peppers, and jalapenos on it... Can you say SPICY? It also has an amazing crust.

I promised a post on my upcoming artistic endeavors, and it's time to deliver. The summer looms (I whine my perennial "where did the spring go" lament) and I am staring down the barrel of orders, the BMAC, shuttling back and forth to Montana to help my Mom prepare her house for sale, and, oh yes, adding new work to my studio practice (yep, I've whole-spleenedly embraced that phrase)...

I have been trying to set-up regular casting in the studio since I got back from the last BECon and Linda Ethier's wonderful casting workshop. I have not succeeded. I have passionately talked a good game and enthusiastically encouraged other artists to provide me with their work (or rather, wax models of their work as they normally carve stone or sculpt clay to cast in pewter or bronze) which I would then render in glass. But who has had time? Not me. I am hoping that my upcoming visit to Hugh McKay's Cast Glass Forms foundry with Cynthia with rekindle the zest and sharpen my laser focus on casting.

Even more compelling to me right now than casting, however, is to continue my explorations of creating 3-D glass forms from glass powder cradled in clay powder and laid down on the kiln shelf through a series of screens--the lo-tech 3-D printing I learned in Steve Brown's workshop. Think of it as dry silkscreen printing over and over in the same spot until it's really, really thick. This is work I could easily do with a bag of clay powder, a kiln shelf, some mullite dams, a bunch of glass powders and a kiln. Oh yes and some screens (which I have from my class) sieves, sifters and brushes. It seems like a lot, but unlike lost wax casting, it's a very clean process with none of the messy boiling, spitting water from a wallpaper steamer melting out wax from a mold. A table, a box of dust masks, a little hand broom and dustpan and I'm good to go!

So how am I going to accomplish new work this post-BECon when I failed so ignominiously before? Heh. I am going to run away. I mentioned previously that I am going to Montana a bit this summer. The truth is that I am spending the bulk of the summer there, and there isn't a glass studio. Yet. I am looking forward to beginning one this year. For the present I am not going to try to do my current production work. Instead, I want to set up a medium-sized kiln and work in casting with traditional plaster silica molds and the lo-tech 3-D printing described above. I am leaving Judy in charge of the studio in Atlanta, and Lori, Tadashi, Lee, Domenick, Amy, and Brian will keep the studio running smoothly without me. No equipment will break, nothing outside of the usual course of business will happen, there won't be any art emergencies where a client needs some thing RIGHT NOW... Well, I can dream, can't I?

I promised Dave that when I turned 50 I would SLOW DOWN. It's time to make good on that promise, and stepping away from the Atlanta studio a bit (and setting up a Montana studio) is a good start. Really. Did I mention I am completely obsessed with this screen/powder technique?