Trust Yourself

No coffee yet--I have got to start remembering to set it up at night before I go to bed. No music either--Dave and Jessie both still slumber peacefully. I started my morning with the peaceful activity of fiddling with the pond fountain to make it spit more muddy water (I don't think it is ever going to clear) and feeding the fish. Just knowing that they are all still alive is very comforting.

At right is the result of yesterday's combing. The colors are Egyptian blue and French vanilla (blue? it looks black! well, now it is black...). I am reminded of a valuable lesson that I had thought long ago learned: do not take the easy way out and follow someone else's directions over your own instincts. For whatever reason, most of the glass community likes to kilnform their glass at very high temps. I don't. I never fuse at the common 1500 degrees--1465 in one kiln and 1440 in the other for full fuse.

Yesterday when I decided to comb for the first time in many, many years, I looked in my kilnforming library for a recommended schedule instead of going back through my firing logs. Logs for the past few years are on the computer and, until my time got consumed with blogging, writing and gallery popularity, I was slowly working my way back through the paper logs and getting them online for easier searching. The library was more easily searched.

The first schedule I found called for a fuse temp of 1700 degrees--100 degrees higher than I had set the kiln to go. I went with my instincts and programmed the kiln for a soak at 1600, at which point I would turn off the kiln, open it, comb, close and restart. When it was at 1535 degrees I chickened out (if it is in print, it must be true) and set it for 1700. Mistake. I might still have lost the firing, but the problems with it would have been my own.

Why not go to 1700 degrees? Because it is overkill. Yes, at that temp you can rake several passes before the glass cools too much and you have to re-heat it, but the rake has less drag and so moves less glass on either side of the contact point resulting in a smaller pattern. Colors in glass made for kilnforming at lower temperatures can also change--the blue I used went to black and that might be from exposure to the French vanilla, or it might be the high temp. When I do melts from a flower pot my reds always go to muddy brown at that temp. At that high temp you also run a greater risk of air bubbles. An finally, kilnwash is not as effective and you almost always have to scrape, soak and use acid products (or sandblast) to get it off.

So I am going to redo this piece, and this time I will start at 1600 degrees. If that is not high enough, I will work my way incrementally up to find the lowest temp I can successfully rake at, and I will verify my belief that I will be able to do it with fewer bubbles and truer colors. I have to decide whether I also want to make wider stripes and use all transparent colors too. Maybe I'll do two sample pieces simultaneously to decide.

This would be a wonderfully fun puzzle if I were not under deadline!

Happy Solstice!

Coffee in the Montreal Skyline mug--it's in French!--"What I Like About You" by the Romantics transitioning into "Fox on the Run" by Sweet on iTunes (the latter of these is too embarrassing even for the Shame playlist). The first firing of the preschool coasters is done and they look great! This morning I am going to drop off the sample squares I made and let them layer them and talk about how the design changes depending on which one you put on top. A nice introduction to dimension and perspective that would probably be more effective if they weren't still adjusting to a new classroom and new peers. Their little brains can only handle so much new at a time.

I still haven't heard from the publisher since I sent my project list in a couple of weeks ago. We were supposed to have a phone conversation, but I think I have fallen through the cracks. It is now firmly in the last half of June and I do not have a schedule of interim deadlines, a final approval of the projects, a complete outline (or the assignment to do an outline)... zip, zilch, nada.

I put together a schedule for a clear-glass test firing and have been following it, but I think all it was doing was giving me a false sense of security. I know what the photographer is going to want for the book: a finished piece, one or more mid-state photos (which means one or more copies of the piece finished to that state ready to photograph), and a photograph of me doing a beginning or interim stage. Each photo will more than likely require its own version of the project.

So if I really want to get this book done--and since I have not been given any direction from the publisher--today I am not only going to cut the three versions of the wall sconce and fire/comb one of them, I am also going to make a stages list for each of the other projects and begin prepping (cutting, etc.) that number of each of them. This activity will require a substantial amount of storage space, but I still have an unused wire shelving unit that I will dedicate to holding projects.

Last night I decided the final colors on all but two of the projects, and I settled on a fountain design. I have had so many ideas for different kinds of glass fountains that I could probably make a book of just glass fountain projects! But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Today I will go to Home depot and buy copper tubing and something to bend and pierce it with--I hope. If not, I will have to switch designs again.

I never did get to Creative Spirit to break down my show yesterday so that has to happen today too. It was 93 degrees yesterday afternoon, and I just wasn't up to it. It's supposed to be in the 90's today too. *sigh*


Good thing it is the longest day of the year!

Teaching!

No coffee yet, no music either. The rest of the household is sleeping in this morning and the only sounds are the hum of the air conditioner, the buzzing of a fly trapped in the office with me and the tapping of my keys.

After I posted yesterday I took Jessie to school and was reminded that this is Art Week at Phoenix Summer Camp and I volunteered to teach the project... Whoopsie Daisy. So yesterday there were no firings. I spent the afternoon racking my brain for a fun, NEW project suitable for 19 4-6 years olds.

We're going to make coasters! I cut 48 4" clear squares and ground down all the edges and corners so nothing is sharp. I packed up jars and jars of opal frit (with over 30 jars of opal frit picked, I decided to skip transparent frit and all powders this time) and Dave went to the grocery store last night and bought Elmer's glue all and dixie cups. Today they will put the frit on the glass with glue--two pieces for two layers, one coaster each--and I will flat fuse each piece.

Then tomorrow I will stack and fuse the layers (using a digital picture I will take of each child's set to tell me whose is whose, what the orientation is, and which one goes on top). Thursday they are going on a field trip to the High Museum of Art--I will not be able to accompany them, though I think I might have already volunteered. Friday I will take the finished coasters back to school and the children will put the little rubber feet on their coasters and sign their names in black sharpie on the bottom. Sharpie pen fires out so putting their names on in advance would do nothing.

The afternoon was taken up with a tutorial on the "tool" my web design/hosting company expects me to use to maintain my website. I thought tools were supposed to be useful. It has got to be the least flexible, most cumbersome interface I have ever used. There is no proportional resize of any elements--including jpegs. There is no drag and drop. All sizing is done by typing in the height and width in pixels in for each block on the page, and if you accidentally get one too big, it breaks the look of the page. The sizes are not displayed for the elements so you can't easily tell where it's broken. All this means I am going to have to spend a lot more time and attention to update my pages--and create the ones which are still not done. At least I got the slide show working and know what was wrong with it. Maybe I'll even have it on the real home page by the end of the week.

So this morning I teach, this afternoon I break down the show I had at Creative Spirit last week, and I fuse the children's coaster tiles. I hope I also get a chance to do the combed sconce project scheduled for today. The anxiety attacks are just going to have to wait--I have no time for them today.

Monday, Monday

Coffee in the Chicago Skyline mug, "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats on iTunes. No, it is not random chance. I got up at 6:13 this morning to get a jump on my week and ended up puttering it all away on the little pond (The fish are alive! The fish are alive!), iTunes, email, computer syncing... I begin to think it is just not worth it to get a new computer ever. What I want is to be able to pug one computer into another and say "duplicate all of this--documents, settings, music, pictures, whatever--just go through a check list and have it magically work. No hardware issues, no OS woes, just WORKS. My weekend was so far from that it was not funny--but I am told I will love the Mac.

But today, today, what does it bring? Ikebana for me at 9:30. I am in the Research course now (ooooh). Swimming for Jessie--her summer camp class goes to the Y for swimming Monday and Wednesday mornings--so I need to braid her hair, dress her in her suit and pack clothes and a towel. Then, work for me!

My new website went live Thursday night. It took three months to get it to the state it is in (notice I didn't say "done"), and there is no end in sight. Trust me to have picked a website design/hosting company which does not allow ftp. You have to use their little tool. I refrained (barely) from saying crappy little tool. The last thing I want to have to do now is learn yet another piece of software! I am getting REALLY TIRED OF COMPUTERS! The web developer said he could not do an image slideshow (a little flash element) for me that I would be able to manage or edit. I need to do it myself, so I did. It works fine in Dreamweaver and in a test browser on my system. As soon as I move it up to their server, it doesn't work anymore...

This was not supposed to be a bitch session post. I hadn't realized I was still so frustrated by my recent tech overload. Need to think of something positive... Ah, yes, glass! I will make glass today! Two orders to start producing for the final two gallery orders pre-BMAC (Buyer's Market in Philadelphia in July). Also time to start on the Art Institute order.

This week's book projects are:
garden stake
wall sconce
2-D panel in a stand
wall mirror
cast paperweight

Oh boy. The garden stake hardware is on backorder from my distributor and I haven't been able to find one retail anywhere. This is not a project I want to drop, but I frankly don't see teaching copper tube bending and soldering. I wonder if Michaels' has anything I could use. The technique effort has ratcheted up too: the wall sconce is combed, the 2-D panel is from an aperture pour, the wall mirror is a pattern bar piece, and the paperweight will involve modeling, mold making and casting.

This week the exhibition services order for the BMAC must be submitted (what kind of walls, what color carpet, poles for lights--where and how many, etc.). One might think it would be cake as this is the fourth time I have done this show. Unfortunately, all four have had different booth configurations requiring a different set-up.

It's going to be a busy week. Better make a schedule and a list!

Let the Projects Roll

Coffee in the Washington DC skyline mug (it has fireworks on it--appropriate for the day) (thank you again Barbara!), "Too Bad About Your Girl" by the Donnas on iTunes. The drape vase at right was made from the pate de verre wafer that I made when I did the pate de verre bowl (see the picture of it flat just post-fuse in the post below, "All in but One").

I really like this technique! The frit I used was #1 (sugar grain), #2 (kosher salt) and #3 (rock salt) all mixed together, but when it is sprinkled onto a flat surface, the smallest grains fall to the bottom. This creates an interesting effect in terms of color and surface texture on the inside of the piece (second picture). I need to work a bit on the draping schedule for this one as the wafer is too fragile and tears apart in the middle if draped too quickly (shown but almost impossible to see in the third picture).

This piece was done for fun. It won't be in the book, nor will it make it into my product line. I may, however, work on the technique and combine it with other things into a piece for Corning's New Glass Review or Bullseye's eMerge competitions this year. The only competition I entered last year was Niche, but this year--because of the amount I am having to stretch my repertoire-- I hope to have entries for all three.

Second project shown is a quick pocket vase I did out of clear tekta just to test the technique and a firing schedule. It turned out pretty much as expected except for some needlepointing on the topmost edge. The finished piece inspired me enough to see the colors and pattern for it, and to work out a final project which is simple enough for a beginner, and nice enough to be something more than just a learning piece.

So what to do today... first off I think I will inventory all the finished pieces I have in the studio. I have let my inventory get completely out of control since, oh, February. I have a solo trunk show Thursday night at Creative Spirit Gallery in Decatur as part of Decatur's Third Thursday Gallery Tours. I have assured Becky I have enough work, but I should inventory today just in case so I can whip up new work to fill in any gaps.

I also need to get my materials orders in to Hoy's and Bullseye. On the subject of materials I found a great source for clock parts yesterday. They have atomic clock mechanisms, reverse clocks, cuckoo clock parts, and pendulum mechanisms. If I weren't already so over-extended I would consider making a bunch of clocks for fun and product. I did buy five mechanisms as one of the book projects is a clock.

Today's book project test is the windchimes/mobile. I want to do the mobile so I think I'll ask Dave to help me with the math. In the book this project will be painted float glass but I don't have the paints or the tin scope yet so I will just use more tekta (Bullseye's machine rolled fusible clear).

I will round out the day with some paperwork (mostly bills and billing) and shipping (catalog and commission).

All in but One

No coffee, no music. Got to fix that if I am going to continue getting up at 6:00. Maybe I should start setting it up the night before and using the automatic time feature. Spent the first hour of the day reading and responding to (mostly book-related) email. All of the artists I invited to participate in the gallery have responded save one, and all the responses were yes but two. By some odd twist, I will up with exactly 30 if the lone person I haven't heard from says yes.

Then checked the medium kiln to see how yesterday's pate de verre firing went. I made a bowl using scrap frit (crushed glass) and since I still had room in the kiln I decided to do an abstract flat wafer of frit for draping. It is firing now and I will post the results tomorrow. The bowl turned out technically well. I could take it a bit higher in temp and make it fuse together a bit more, but I am happy with it. Artistically it is crap--neither the shape nor the color have any inherent tension to give interest to the work. Fortunately I will neither use this mold nor scrap frit for the piece in the book.

Today I get in the materials order I was working on yesterday--and which I must finish this morning--and I write my edits of the techniques portion of the basics section of the book for the publisher. We will talk this week and hammer out the project list. (Which I still have not posted here. I am a slug.)

The old Compaq laptop threw two blue screens of death yesterday. I hastily copied all of my documents, application data (email and bookmarks), and templates over to the new iMac. I will also back them all up to the external drive this morning.

Finally made contact yesterday with the woman who has a gallery in Michigan and is interested in carrying my work. I will mail her a catalog today.

The Art Institute in Chicago received the piece I sent for final color-matching approval and it was a go so I am ready to schedule and begin making 75 of them. It's also time to do my last two orders from the February Buyer's Market show--just in time to start preparing for the summer Buyer's Market in July. And that's a day!

Let the 6 am Days Begin

No coffee yet, which is a crime as it is just after 6 am. No music either. Dave is also up and on his laptop, but the Sprout sleeps on and I am just not awake enough yet. It was a harrowing weekend. I finally got out the solicitation for participation emails to the other glass artists I am inviting to submit images to the gallery section of the book. There are 30 of them, and though this seems a huge number, it was really, really difficult to get my list down to it. I consoled myself with the knowledge that some people will decline and then I will get to invite more people. Think of it less as an alternates list than as the rest of the initial list which I haven't had a chance to get to yet.

Unexpectedly but predictably it turned into a repeat of seventh grade. I hated seventh grade. Like any party, some of the kids asked who else is coming and I naively provided a list of the names of the first 30. The list then made the rounds of the Internet both to the invited, the not and not yet invited. It was a mess. I consoled myself again with the knowledge that we artists have the attention span of mayflies. With no further stirring up, it should all blow over in the next few days. After all, we are all long past seventh grade and we have many other issues pressing for our time and attention.

I begin to feel the time squeeze in this first major deadline (hence starting my morning at 6:00 am rather than 8:00 am). I am to have all the projects done and ready to photograph by 8/1. I have not yet ordered/purchased the remaining glass and hardware that I need to do them all. The order for the hardware will go in today, the couple of pieces of non-Bullseye glass I need I may just buy locally at a stained glass store (at full retail, Ugh!). It feels like every time I blink, another week has passed. Time to write up a complete schedule/timeline for now through 8/1. Usually writing up and following a schedule calms me down and allows me to pace through the overwhelming tasks between me and a deadline/goal. Let's hope it works this time.

Faster, Faster, FASTER!

Coffee in the Barcelona skyline mug (brought to me this morning by a Concerned Spouse), "Too Bad About Your Girl" by the Donnas on iTunes. As soon as I am don posting I am off to the Phoenix School to drive on a field trip to the Fernbank Science Center. It's a Mom Day. One of those "I am letting work take over my life and I have to make more time for my family" things. I do not really have time to do it, but if I breathe deeply and concentrate on relaxing, I will get through.

Yesterday was my half-life birthday and I celebrated appropriately. It took a long time to get to yesterday and I am looking forward to another good long time to get to the end. I also took the time to make a few rest-of-my-life resolutions:

1) Start being comfortable saying No.
2) Be realistic about scheduling even if the schedule might disappoint someone (i.e., don't kill myself to get something done just because it is more convenient for someone else).
3) Schedule downtime.
4) Obviate seven-day work weeks.
5) Stop worrying about my inability to separate business work and life work into their own time slots (e.g., 9-5 and all other times).

Now that I have all that settled I just need to get through my current bout of over-committed/over-scheduledness. The bad news is that it runs through November.

The image at top right is the first project in the book--a double layer vase drape. This one was done with two layers of glass powders over clear. I haven't decided whether to use pre-colored glass for the project or to make my own. I will probably just use Spectrum Baroque or Bullseye confetti.

Today contains a wrap of the work on the trunk show next week, all email going out to the artists being solicited for participation in the gallery section of the book, picking up the panel I had drilled and shipping it off to the client in Chicago, and putting in the order for all the hardware and supplementary materials I need for the projects in the book. I pretty much have the glass, but there is a lot of stuff I don't have and I didn't have time while I was in Chicago to stop by Ed Hoy's and pick it all up.

9:00, off to Fernbank!

Back to Work!

Coffee in the Montreal Skyline mug this morning, "Rio" by Duran Duran on the iPod. It is a truly cosmopolitain morning (no, I haven't started drinking... yet!). Details on the trip to Chicago (with pictures!) and a follow-up on the neighbors' dogs in Stranded in the South.

My new webpage is almost finished (by the web design company). When they finish, then I have to create the remaining pages using the pages they created as templates. The site can be previewed here and I would love feedback.

Tomorrow I will post the list of projects I plan for the book. I would again love feedback--if you know nothing of kilnformed glass, would the chance to learn to make these things make you want to have the book and if you know kilnformed glass, is there anything here that would make you want the book so could learn the techniques? Some of them might be difficult to understand/envision if you are not a kilnformer, but I can't put in any images which are not my work. What I am looking for is a balance in size and complexity. Colors are TBD later.

Today, fusing, and slumping and artist solicitations rule. Paperwork is an unfortunate necessity after the big trip and I will try to get to it. I have been approached about teaching a couple of seminars on Selling and Marketing and need to plan a bit for them. And finally, follow-up on commission and gallery requests will complete the day.

Atlanta!

Coffee in the Atlanta Skyline mug (the collection grows), "A Little Less Conversation" by Elvis Presley on iTunes. Life for the past couple of weeks has been a fight for everything--nothing has been simple. And yet I am still in good spirits and have kept the breakdowns to infrequent minis. The latest additions to the list of catastrophes associated with the trip to Chicago: the stereo system in the Odyssey, bamboo, carpet, router and neighbors.

We picked up the van almost without incident from the dealership in Nashville yesterday morning. It was almost without incident as the battery was dead from one of the dome lights being left on for a week while it sat in their parking lot. A jump later and it was running, but the anti-theft security on the radio had been triggered so we needed to put in the code. Also not too much of a problem, they looked it up for us there. I didn't try to get the iPod and all working until we were on the road, but when I did, I found that power adapter (used to be called a cigarette lighter adapter) and the cd player/radio had no power. It would have been a long silent ride home (the dvd player did not work for the Sprout either), but we made metaphoric lemonade and took turns singing silly old songs (Clementine, Bicycle Built for Two, Yankee Doodle, etc.) and playing counting games. Jessie's favorite that she sang was Yankee Doodle, but she just would not accept that pronunciation/name and sang "Rankie Doodoo" all the way home.

There was no lemonade for the bamboo. This year for the first year since I put them in, the yellow and green Castillonis bamboo sent up shoots, big shoots, five of them. They were about a foot high (and over an inch around) when I left for Chicago and one of the first things I did yesterday upon my return was run to the backyard to marvel at their glory. But they weren't there towering over the rest of the bamboo. What the hell? So I looked closer and discovered to my horror that bamboo shoots are either tasty to deerhounds or Seraph was really stressed at my departure. All five shoots were about four feet tall and splintered off at the top from being chewed. No leaves at all so they probably are not even going to live. In the case they can't grow from being cut off in the middle, I need to cut them back to the ground so they don't siphon off nutrients from the rest of the plants. *sigh* There's always next year (bamboo shoots once a year and the full growth of the new culms happens in one growing season so these plants will always be as they are this year.

The lemonade for the carpet was that it could have been worse. The gate to the upstairs did not get closed before we were all gone so the dogs had free run of the upstairs in our absence and the carpet suffered in a few spots. Enough said on THAT one.

I just threw up my hands and out the lemons on the router. Went to get Dave the security key for the router so he could get his laptop connected last night and the lights on the router were all off. I couldn't connect to the router via either the laptop or the iMac and my laptop couldn't connect to the net. I think I am still able to get on via the iMac as a pass through from the DSL modem. The electricity was out while we were gone and the router might have gotten fried by lightning. In any case I foresee a frustrating morning of sys adminning to get the problem resolved and the home network functional again.

I wish I had saved the lemons to through at the neighbors. And last, but not least, the crappy neighbors with the yappy dogs moved while I was gone. So how could this be a catastrophe? Guess what they left behind--the yappy dogs. I went over last night and the dogs had no food and no water. I went over this morning and, again, no food and no water. It is going to be 85 degrees today. I do not know these dogs well enough to open their kennel, go in and take care of them. As far as I know, they have never been out of the kennel and though they look friendly, I am not going to risk being bitten. So I called animal services and their response is to put an abandonment notice on the kennel giving the owners 36 hours to take the dogs away. No amount of protesting would convince the operator that the dogs could be dead in 36 hours. Alvin and Belinda have been gone for over a week now, and I have seen no evidence that they are coming by to take care of the dogs. After much aggravation and $7.95, I have found the landlady's name and address (the internet is a truly wonderful thing) and called her. She did not know they had moved and said she would call Alvin (Allen, whatever) at work to find out. She might or might not call me back to let me know what she finds out. And the police should be here in the next hour.

Even if the Alvin and Belinda complaint falls through I still need the police. I have finally decided to do something about the dog in the yard next to Alvin and Belinda's. Another set of renters moved in there and they have a young female pit-bull in a prong collar chained 24/7 in their backyard with nothing more than a small airline carrier kennel for shelter. It is illegal in our county to chain animals at all. Even trolley systems can only be used in the day--not from 10 pm to 6 am--and require a back-up containment system. I have not complained before now because I did not have the time to dedicate to the process and was nervous about the fallout from the neighbors. I am still nervous about the fallout from the neighbors (the dog owner is a big guy and if he bangs on my door with temper and ill-intent for making a complaint...) but it is the Right Thing To Do.

In tomorrow's post I will get around to all the good things that happened in Chicago and all the fun we had. For now I have to unload the van, fix/replace the router, fire a couple of commissions, review the web pages I have *finally* received for review from the website development company, and write the publisher about their response (I haven't received one yet) to the project outline I sent last week and the week before.

Chicago!

Coffee this morning was, appropriately, in the Chicago skyline mug. We arrived safely in Chicago Friday at 1:00pm. It took 48 hours to get here with one thing and another. But here we got, I did The Prairie Arts Festival Saturday and Sunday and did quite well even though it was in the 90's both days and patrons were sparse. I even picked up a new gift store locally to carry my work.

I love doing this show. It is in a beautiful park and the pond in the park is right in front of my booth. I get to watch the swans and their cygnets all day (thanks to my friend and booth neighbor Sandy Mannix for the great swan photos--I forgot my camera both days). This year I even got the added treat of a great blue heron fishing out in the middle of the pond by the swans' nest. I had the same neighbors on each side as last year--it is just a thoroughly wonderful experience.

It took a long time to pack and load last night. My booth was as far from parking as you could get at this show, and it was almost 10:00 pm when I got home. I took it easy today--I haven't even called in my credit card sales yet--and just lounged and read. Jessie spent the weekend with Gramma, Grampa and Aunt Jan perfecting her bike riding skills and showing off her new bike helmet. She even got to ride on the tram with Gramma in the Memorial Day Parade today.

Tomorrow I need to get the last part of my project outline off to the Editor, do all the paperwork and record-keeping for the show, and catch up on my email. I am woefully behind on answering both personal and professional mail. I will also send out the first request for submission forms to the artists whose work I would like in the book. I have only spoken to three of the thirty I need. I might need to make some phone calls too... or that could just wait till next week when I am back home. There is much to be said for a little rest, relaxation and vacation!

The Road to Chicago: Day 2

Don't spoil the surprise. Our saga begins here on the Road to Chicago Day 1.

Slept fitfully dreaming of Legionnaire’s disease to the badly tuned hum of the wall air conditioning unit and woke with a stuffed nose to the sound of phlegmy coughing from the J. Woke at 6:12 am with a panic attack sure that I had left half my poles for my display tent in Atlanta. Called Dave and caught him with running bathwater and a mouthful of toothpaste. When he called back, he confirmed that I had, indeed, forgotten all the upper and lower supports for the tent. I cannot use the tent without those poles, and I cannot do the show without a tent. IF Heather can find me a Grand Caravan it will cost me $385 base AND I will have to return to Atlanta for my poles (500 miles roundtrip) which gives me 1000 miles left to Chicago.

So I sit at 7:00 am reviewing my options. Option A: Stay in Nashville till the transmission is done Friday afternoon and head back home, metaphorical tail between legs obeying the obvious will of the gods. Option 2: Refuse to bow to a conspiracy of unfortunate circumstance and do whatever it takes to forge on.

On the one hand, if I go on, I get a mini-vacation with the family and J gets to spend a couple of weeks with Gramma and Grampa. I get to see the Broadway play “Wicked” (my birthday gift from my in-laws was a ticket for Tuesday 5/30 at the Fox Theater in Aurora). I follow through on my show commitment and maybe get a big commission or two. Dave gets to use his plane ticket and we get a tiny vacation this year (between his schedule at CNN and the book this is the only time we have before November 6). I get to buy more hostas at the grower in Princeton, IL. My batteries fully charge for the work ahead—the book projects are fully percolated and ready to be started on my return. Finally I get to stop by the Art Institute to make sure I have the right color blend for the 75 platters I have to do for them by the end of July.

On the other hand, the Prairie Arts Festival is a nice little show that I would not do if I did not bring J and stay with Dave’s parents so that J could have Gramma and Grampa time and vice-versa. There is no way that I can expect it to cover the mounting costs of this expedition. Gas alone right now is making the trip almost cost-prohibitive, and add the cost of the rental car… Then there are the issues of time and energy. Driving back to Atlanta for the poles and then back to Nashville (just because it is on the way) and on to Chicago again is a huge time and energy sink. I could just cut my losses and rechannel that time and energy into meeting my book and production deadlines. Not going to Chicago would put me physically way ahead of the game. I could just mail the platter to the Art Institute to verify the match and skip vacation altogether this year. Of course I might not get into the Prairie Arts Festival again, my ticket to “Wicked” is lost and Dave’s plane ticket has to be repurposed.

It’s a lot to think about and really hinges on being able to get a vehicle. Time to gird the loins both figuratively and literally, fuel the belly and the soul, and head across the street to Honda/Enterprise. Oh yes, I also forgot my wireless adapter for the laptop so I cannot even get this up to Glass Incarnate. But if I go back to Atlanta today I’ll be able to get it too!

The Road to Chicago: Day 1

First big news: The trip has been extended again. Dave is going to fly up next Wednesday so we can all have a mini family vacation and he and I are going to spend a day and night downtown celebrating my birthday (a week early). Then he will drive back with us on Sunday, June 3.

Now the actual nitty gritty of the journey. Tuesday morning the plan was to get on the road by 6:00 am Wednesday. By 5:15 when I hadn’t even started loading the car, the plan changed to leave by 10:00 am Wednesday after getting up at 5:00 and loading the car. I actually got up at 7:30 and had the car loaded by 1:00 pm so we left then. At the north end of the city I realized I had forgotten to pack all the hanging display stands for the plates and I had to go back. By the time I arrived back home I had also thought of two more things I had forgotten: my tool box with all the tools and cable ties, and the top to my little sales cabinet. Both would have been minor disasters in their own right. Picked up everything and was back on the road by 2:00 pm with a scheduled arrival in Chicago (per the GPS) of 12:32 am. I think it was a bit optimistic.

It is now 7:30 pm Wednesday and J and I are in Nashville at the Marriott across the street from the Crest Honda dealership downtown. One might wonder what we are doing in Nashville, stopped for the night not even halfway to Chicago. Well, we are here because just before 5:00 as I was stopping and going in rush hour traffic on I-24 the transmission started going out on the Honda. I didn’t even know where we were when it happened. I was lost in an audiobook on the iPod and cruising to the GPS. There is nothing scarier when you are driving (barring a real accident) than being in evening rush hour on a freeway in a strange town and having your car start jerking and shuddering—especially when you do not even know which strange town it is. I knew I was in Tennessee and I knew I was already past Chattanooga, but then I was drawing a blank.

I took the first off ramp into a clearly central downtown area and saw a sign on a building that said “Nashville”. One mystery solved. I had my cell phone so I pulled over to the curb and called directory assistance to see if they could get me to a Honda dealership. Clearly I had my technologies confused as the operators were unable to do more than recite a list of dealerships to me interspersed with apologies and excuses. While they were fumbling and listing, I glanced up at the GPS and on a whim, typed in “Honda”. In seconds I had the name, address, phone number and directions to a dealership two miles away. By then it was 5:00 and I figured their service department would probably be closed, but I hoped someone might be there late and could do a quick diagnostic and get me set up for service tomorrow. I lucked out, they had someone who would wait for me. I pulled cautiously away from the curb and headed for them.

When I got there they told me the diagnostic would be $95. It wasn’t like I had a choice. They hooked up their computer and sure enough, my car gave it transmission codes. I told them I had had transmission problems a month and a half ago and had had the solenoid replaced (it was about $700), and they said it shouldn’t have been done: Honda’s service guidelines say to never (their formatting, I saw it on the screen) replace the solenoid if the car has more then 20,000 miles. I have over 80,000. Grrrrr. They said I would probably need a new transmission. Then they looked up my Vin number in their computer and said something which turned my day around—Honda had a problem with the transmissions in some minivans the same year as ours so they extended the warranty to 7 years or 100,000 miles. I get the diagnostics and the new transmission for free!

The bad news is that they can’t get the transmission in and do the work till Friday—too late for me to get to Chicago to do my show this weekend. But Honda service did not end there. Josselyn asked if I wanted to rent a car—there is an Enterprise rent-a-car attached to the dealership. And she called over to see what they had. Moving right along on the good news/bad news continuum, there were no cars there or at other Enterprise that would work for me.

Josselyn also gave me the names and phone numbers of the two closest hotels—the woman at the dealership who might have been able to get me a special rate was already gone for the day so I didn’t luck out there—so I got a hotel room at the Marriott across the street and tomorrow morning Heather is going to try again to find me a car. Barring that I will probably rent a small U-Haul truck and get to Chicago that way. More tomorrow….

Crack that Whip! Tote that Barge!

Coffee in the Chicago Skyline mug, "Take it Off" by the Donnas on iTunes. Yep, the Mac is back and the song choice is not random. I wanted music today that was really fast and that I would not be ashamed of. And Guitar Hero rules our lives right now. I had a 333 note streak the other night... and what does any of this have to do with glass? It's all over the place--and THAT has a lot to do with glass. Glass is all over the place right now too. Here are the highlights:

Tomorrow J and I leave for Chicago. I am doing the Prairie Arts Festival up there over Memorial Day weekend. As soon as I finish this I will put the last firepolish load in Big Bertha and get packing. I don't want to have to move the contractors too much and they are squatting with their stuff in the middle of the driveway... that didn't come out quite right. I need to get my van by them and down to the garage so I can load it.

Then I need to finish updating my mailing list and print out labels from it to take to Becky (the owner of Creative Spirit Gallery). She is sending out postcards for a solo trunk show I am doing there on June 15. This afternoon I will fuse a plate commission I got yesterday, and pack another commission I finished yesterday for shipping. And finally at 3:00, I have a phone conference to go over the I-hope-final website design I commissioned on March 20. Little things, these are just little things.

And there are big things. I finally had a phone meeting with the senior editor at the publisher. She gave me a deadline and it is a doozy. The book has grown. It is now slated for 144 pages and 20 projects. By the end of the day today I am to have a complete list of the proposed projects in detail, in color and preferably with photos so they can review them for scale, interest and visual appeal. The projects need to be completed and ready to photograph by August 1. Besides photographing the finished project, the photographer will also need to do the interim stage photos for the instructions... So I need to have multiples of each project completed to different stages. Twenty of them. By August 1. I am in Chicago for one week of that time and Philadelphia for another. Do the math. I had planned on a week per project. Instead...

But I have not given up. I have not yet been able to make a schedule where I can see pulling it off, but I still have hope. Of course my extra week in Chicago with the family and the summer vacation in Montana have been cancelled. I do have the big order to get out for the Art Institute and the penultimate and antipenultimate gallery orders from the February show also due in July. Good thing I have three kilns.

So what am I doing on the computer? I need to get working! Next post, Live from Chicago!

To Print or Not to Print, Whether Tis Nobler (and Cheaper)...

Coffee in the Austin Skyline mug, but it is Jupiter coffee with an extra shot of espresso. Too lazy to brew this week. Still no music (I want my Mac back!).

I have a laser printer. I bought it last year so I could print out the designs to photoprocess onto sandblast resist so I could etch my own designs easily and quickly. This was when I thought I would be making slumped wine bottle cheese plates. This was before I discovered that doing this kind of crafty little thing for money would suck my soul right out through my ears. But I still have the laser printer. And my printer (an actual guy--the one who did my postcards) uses a laser printer to print the back of my postcards for each show I do and he charges me $.15 each for the privilege. So I thought I could save a little (saving is good) and print them myself for the Prairie Arts Festival. I could also get them done without ever having to leave the house or talk to anyone and I am just enough of a hermit for that scenario to appeal.

But I am becoming very frustrated and having little luck printing the postcards on my laser printer: it has a roller so instead of just passing straight through, the paper curves around the roller (under intense heat) which cause the postcards to curve after printing. I also have to send them through the manual feed one at a time and sometimes they go through fine and sometimes they don't. Futzing around with it is taking a lot of time. It might be worth it to go to the printers and pay $15 to have these done. What am I thinking? Of course it is worth it! So that is my afternoon.

My morning will be filled with cutting all the blanks for the firings I have to do in the next three days and getting the first two of those loads in. I broke my dry spell yesterday and fused two full loads. It is good to be back in the saddle again.

Not a Popularity Contest

I was going to try posting after getting a kiln load in under the hypothesis that maybe that way I would actually *fire today*. But I have a brand spanking new coffee mug that I had to break in this morning and I wanted to share the news. So, coffee in the Washington DC Skyline mug--thank you very much Barbara for the wonderful gift!!!!! iTunes is dark.

Thus far this morning I have already dealt with a credit agency (for the 8th time) looking for Brenda J Griffin, filed a complaint with the FTC about said agency and called Bellsouth to see if there is anything further I can do to stop them from calling me. Alas, there is not. Do the people who work for these agencies not attend school? My last name ends in "th", not in "n". My daughter can spell better than they can and she is only 4 and 1/2.

We also freed all the butterflies. There is one chrysallis left un-hatched, and I hope the butterfly breaks free today as I am not into the "heir and a spare" philosohy of raising young.

Today I really *must* fuse a load for Chicago. Yesterday I did landscaping and landscaping communication all afternoon and got absolutely nothing done in the studio except another shelving unit built. I am not yet panicking about my inventory for the show, but I am really close. No more interruptions!!! And I will also get the postcards ordered as they must hit the mail no later than Monday.

On the book front, yesterday I heard from the assistant to my editor and she asked how I want to handle the other artist photo gallery. My choices were they send out a call for submissions or I pick the people whose work I want in the book. That was an easy one. I am a control freak. They want 30 artsists and three photos each. It sounds like a lot, but I have already made a preliminary list of 29, and I know there are people I am forgetting whose work I would like to include. And I already know there are people who are going to be very offended that I don't ask them and there will be all kinds of fall-out from that. But this is not a popularity contest. I am picking people because they produce diverse, unique kiln-formed work. Not because they are the latest Hot Things or because they are (possibly soon to be "were") my friends. In case there is a thought I exaggerate, I must remind that one of the reasons artists do what they do is because many of them don't work and play well with others and are better suited to their own solitary, idiosyncratic lives. You should read some of the stuff that flies on the warmglass.com bulletin board. Snits galore. Ok, to fuse! To fuse!

Mosaic in the Garden

Coffee in the Jupiter Coffee go cup--ex lg house blend with an extra shot of espresso. No music because the iMac is dead and iTunes on the laptop can't find all the music files. *sigh* Yep the Mac is really dead. It thinks it doesn't have a hard drive. I hope the Mac Tech support people at the Apple Store can convince it otherwise or at least get all my data back. In the meantime I am back on the pc laptop--and have lost my firing schedule for this, the week before I go to Chicago.

On other fronts, yesterday was Mother's Day and I was feted to the max. I received wonderful presents--Jessie made me a photo-cup at school and (through Dave) got me an orchid and a book on mosaic projects for the garden--and they made me a French toast, bacon and fresh fruit breakfast. After breakfast we dropped the Mac off at the Apple Store and headed out to the Botanical Gardens. At the Botanical Garden we saw all the incredible mostly mosaic sculpture of Niki de St. Phalle. This is a perfectly timed exhibition for me as I have been planning to do a freeform concrete mosaic wall-bench around half the pond. Dave, knowing this, enabled me with the gift of the book. Now he has neither excuse nor recourse. Construction is imminent.

I have long been fascinated with large-scale mosaic. My favorite building anywhere is the Casa Batllo in Barcelona created by Antonio Gaudi. Sadly I took all my pictures of it before I had a digital camera and have not scanned them yet so I will have to fall back on someone else's photo of it and the colors just do not come through. Both it and the benches in Parc Guell (also Gaudi, also Barcelona) have the undulating curves and abstract colors which are driving my design of the pond. And the materials I plan to use? All the old stained glass I been collecting for over 20 years, all the blobs and jewels, shells and agates. We will finally have a piece of my work in our house/garden and it is going to be massive.

And it is going to be done at the same time as I am writing the book, doing another Buyer's Market of American Craft Show in Philadelphia (July), and getting out 75 pieces for the Art Institute of Chicago. The cool thing about mosaic is that there is no rush. The big part will be getting the concrete part poured, but then adding the mosaic to it can be done in stages. I am doing a model in clay to start, then the big technical piece I need to master is the steel-reinforced concrete form. But that's ok, if the how-to isn't in the book Dave gave me, it will be in another one!

I love Mondays. I feel like I can do anything on Monday. There is no project to big, no commitment too scary, no deadline too close. Too bad it won't last. Now off to Ikebana. It is my last day in the advanced class and I have to do a symmetrical form. I hate symmetrical.

And what about fused glass? This afternoon a full fuse load for the Prairie Arts Festival in Chicago (and I have to get the postcards ordered!).

The Space Wars

Coffee in the Austin skyline mug, "Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz on iTunes. The check from Canada has cleared and the order ships today. Just in time, the shipping area is set-up! 15 cu ft of styrofoam peanuts hang from my garage ceiling.

The majority of the scrap glass has also been sorted into bins so I can see the top of my work table again--just in time to cut all the blanks for the pieces I need for the Prairie Arts Festival in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend. I am two days behind the firing schedule I planned out for that work, but there were a couple of days unscheduled so it will all work out.

I also heard from the Publisher yesterday. They, and so by extension we, have another problem with the contract: they used my social security number with the contract and I used my employer identification number with the W-9. More forms to fill out and snail mail in and more delay. Tick, tick, tick. I asked about getting an editor and GETTING STARTED.

Maybe they think I am already writing? If it were fiction, I could be. But I am not going to risk heading off in a direction they do not want and writing up a a bunch of stuff I can't use. Of course if I get the content done, the format might not matter and I might be delaying for nothing. Maybe I'll start writing this weekend after all.

It doesn't help that what I really want to write about right now is the business of being a professional artist/artisan--storage, shipping, consignment, wholesale, marketing and advertising, capital...

Hey I know, maybe I'll work on two books this summer! Nothing like planning ahead. Now off to school with the J.

Wet Sand Anyone?

Coffee was an extra large Ethiopian with an extra shot of espresso from Jupiter (go cup, of course). "Love to Love You" by Donna Summer is on iTunes. Today is another day running through wet sand. It is already 11:00 and I have not yet begun in the studio. I have taken care of email and reconciling an invoice, blech. Glass artisan appears to be morphing into office manager. Need to stop that trend. And since I am back on a full regular firing schedule from today till I leave for Chicago on the 22nd, that ought to be as easily done as said.

One last note on the activities of the morning: Best Buy should open before 10:00 am, and Guitar Hero is THE optimal birthday gift for a white male in his forties. Now down to the bowels of the studio.

Topsy Turvy

It's one of those mornings: no coffee, no music and no more morning. Where did it go? My child chose to sleep in until 10:00 today, then I had a conference call with my web designer from 10:00-11:15. Then there was another phone call, lunch and arranging a play date for J at 3:00 as it is too late for her to go to school today (lunch at 12:00 then nap from 1:00-3:00... I don't think so). Now it's 12:35 and I am finally getting into the studio.

All of the glass got moved yesterday and two of the new shelves were assembled and installed. Today is for scrap glass storage, and signing/packing of the order for Canada. That one is dragging out a lot. I am reluctant to ship without the check clearing, but really, what are the odds that it is not good now? They know I was going to wait to deposit it so they wouldn't send a bad one. I overnighted it to my bank and I think I will just go ahead and ship their order tomorrow.

Last on the list for today is a full Morceaux de Verre fuse load and design of the back of the postcards for the Prairie Arts Festival in Chicago at the end of the month. We'll see how far I get in this time-warped day.

Back to Fusing... Really Soon

Coffee was a large French roast in a Jupiter Coffee go cup with an extra shot of espresso. The song on iTunes is "I'm So Excited" by The Pointer Sisters. So appropriate. JustTrash.com is going to improve my life immeasureably today. They are going to haul away the old kiln lid, wooden pallets, unuseable old glass crates and other assorted stuff that is providing a home for snakes, rodents and big bugs on the driveway in front of the garage.

The Deathwatch widget on the iPod added 11 days to my life today. I wonder what that's all about. Now it says (based on my birthday, gender and personality--I'm an optimist) that I will die on Halloween in 2052, a comfortably far-off date and further evidence that I am celebrating my half-life birthday next month. I have asserted for the past few months that this is my biggest birthday (forget the silly decade b-days--there are lots of them) and the iMac widget supports my contension. And lest an uncharitable soul muse aloud what any of this has to do with GLASS, I respond that puttering for a little bit on the iMac every morning and learning a new bit of functionality (today's lesson: screen shots and partial shots) is a requirement to mastering this new tool.

But more about glass. I moved 1500 lbs Bullseye glass in sheets on Saturday. Today I need to move about the same amount in architectural clears. It is a good thing my biorthythm widget indicates I am at a physical peak right now. Then I'll assemble and deploy the six new shelving units and put all the extant scrap glass in the new plastic bins I bought at Target last week and move it all to shleves. When all this organinzing and storing is done I may finally be down to reclaimed work surfaces... and dust. Dust is another topic for another day. My biorythms indicate a low interest in dealing with dust this year.

Finally I sign and pack 68 pieces for shipment to Canada. I have my fingers crossed that the check for them will arrive today.

It's All About Where to Put Things

Coffee in the Jupiter go-cup: an ex lg house blend with an extra shot of espresso. Yep, back in my groove. "Standing in the Shadows of Love" by the Four Tops on iTunes. I have not yet received a check for the gallery order shipping to Canada so it will not be going out today. That gives me one more day of putzing and organizing in the studio before serious production begins again next week.

Yesterday I shopped. I went to Target, the Container Store and Sam's Club. I bought 15 qt plastic boxes from Target (24 of them) to store scrap glass. Then I went to the Container Store and bought an InterMetro four-shelf rack on sale for $99. Then on a whim I stopped by Sam's Club on the way home.

Shopping at Sam's Club is always hit and miss for me. If I go there looking for something, they will not have it or the price will only be okay. However if I go there with an open mind and wallet I can find extraordinary deals. Yesterday by some weird alignment of the stars I found both what I was looking for AND an incredible deal. For those of you familiar with it, the kind of shelving I bought at TCS comes in two grades: Home and Commercial. TCS carries both. The shelving I bought for $99 was home grade--less weight pre shelf and for the unit as a whole. At Sam's Club I found the chrome (more expensive than the black or white) commercial grade *6* shelf unit (as opposed to the 4 from TCS) for $79 (same height and width). It also comes with heavy-duty casters, adjustable leg posts, polypro shelf liners and all the hardware necessary to make 2 3-shelf units instead of 1 6-shelf one.

I bought two and I am going to go back today and get another two. These puppies are so heavy I cannot lift them by myself so I had to rip open the boxes in the car when I got home and build them in the drive. But boy oh boy are they beautiful! 600 lbs per shelf, 3600 lbs for the entire unit. I may Craig's list a bunch of old Home Depot shelving and replace it with this stuff: More in less space and prettier! What else could one want? Needless to say I will be going back to TCS to return the other shelf unit. It never even made it out of the car.

Sick Day

No coffee--DayQuil, "Marry Me" by The Drive By Truckers on iTunes. J has been dressed, fed and dropped at school and I have a piece slumping in the middle kiln. Now I post and then I go back to bed. Yep, yesterday's piddly little sniffle has turned into a full-blown viral cold. Everything aches, I didn't sleep well and I am the mother of all crabby. Thank everything that my schedule will permit a day of sleeping and loafing. Yesterday I did fix the colors on my blog so it looks better on the Mac. It is bluer on windows, but is not the god-awful funky mauve it was on the Mac before.

Off to bed. Back tomorrow.

So This is What Real Life Feels Like...

Coffee in the Los Angeles skyline mug, "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme" by ABBA on iTunes. Those two seem very appropriate with all the immigration furor of the past few days (now it's "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" by the Temptations... my iTunes clearly has a sense of irony). It's beautiful day outside. Days like this are why people live in south.

Today in the glass studio: Unpack the packing supplies from the minivan so I can get the carseat back in and the Sprout off to school. Not an issue yet as she is still sleeping. Dave brought home a miserable little cold from CNN and now J and I are beginning to succumb. Snot, blech. I discovered at the end of the day yesterday that I made the wrong color plate for my shipment to Canada and that changed my firing schedule completely. Before I was just behind, now... On the plus side they want to pre-pay with a check so I have a few days till it gets here and clears before I can be expected to ship. So now I am almost ahead!

Today I also contact the Publisher and say "Okay, what's going on, and where is my editor so I can get started?!?" That's right, I still have not even re-read the outline of the book I wrote in January much less started writing it. And wasn't this blog started as a way of chronicling the writing process? Final copy is still due 10/1, 152 days from now (I have a countdown clock widget set for it on the dashboard of Glacier--the iMac). My computers are always named after places in Montana, though I have finally had to realize that moving back to Montana is not going to make me Happy. A note on the iMac: I saw this blog for the first time last week on the iMac and boy is it UGLY! The colors are just not the same as they are on windows. Going to ahve to do something about that soon.

Maybe I can also actually finish the garage to studio transformation today. That would be sweet. Okay, enough talking/writing about it. Time to do it.

NAFTA, Oy

Today I begin the process of figuring out the paperwork necessary to ship my first international gallery order. While it sounds exotic it only going to Canada. In fact the gallery is closer to where I started my studio in Missoula, Montana than I am right now (it's in Banff, Alberta). Nonetheless, it might as well be Mars. Even doing the forms online with UPS holding my hand and telling me what forms and what info, I have to know VAT and Tax numbers, tariff codes unit something or rathers. My brain is full. When I finish this post, I am going down into the studio to make some glass.

Oh, and before I get too far, there is no coffee as it is after lunch for me and I am a morning-only coffee drinker. There is music on the Pod--"Lose Yourself" by Eminem from 8 Mile. Yeah, my no-longer-secret shame.

As it is Monday the day started with Ikebana and moved on to a packing material pick-up from ULine. Those supplies came just in time as I have a 16X24 hanging panel to pack and drop-ship for a gallery in Iowa this afternoon. On the dream-realization front I bought the styrofoam peanut dispenser (whoo hoo!). When I get ready to ship this monster order to Canada I will have the tools to make it fly. And of course all my peanuts are recycled or re-used. I like that the new recycled ones are literally GREEN. Now I just have to figure out how to mount it to the garage ceiling...

The rest of the day (what little there is left of it) will be filled with a slump load, a fuse load in the medium kiln, and more garage/studio set-up (shippers R us). Oh yes, and today's tarot card is the Heirophant. I always felt this card was a bit stuffy and pedantic, but maybe that's what Mondays are all about.

Motivation

Coffee in the Austin Skyline mug--second 20 oz cup of the day--"Are you Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz on iTunes. It is Sunday, but I am posting (and working) anyway as I have been suffering for a serious lack of motivation and drive during the past couple of weeks. If there existed "ahead" and "behind" in life as more than an artificial construct inculcated in us by our upbringings (mine had strong Protestant Work Ethic components) then I would have to say I am "behind". I am not actually behind: all tangible scheduled deliverables save one have been met and that one has been reasonably postponed. But I think I am behind, therefore I am. So it is Sunday and I work.

The work today is mostly meta-studio: I am finishing off the new garage space including purchasing new shelving and designing a shipping area (maybe even with one of those styrofoam peanut dispensers hanging from the ceiling... I can dream). I will also turn my Eye on the studio and divine her faults and limitations with the goal of possible rearranging now that I have more space. The additional garage space is no small addition: it is a two-car + garage and I was only using about a third of it prior to now.

Now to digress. Part of learning about the new iMac has been experimenting with its components. One of the components of the iMac is the dashboard--a set of widgets that do everything from convert currency, translate from one language to another,and show the time in binary (deeply geeky), to provide a fortune from a digital cookie, tell you your horoscope, show you your biorhythm chart and present the tarot card of the day (based on the date). In doing Mac diligence (aka putzing, ditzing and wasting time) I installed a bunch of new widgets. This is how my life has been: my biorhythms are ALL tanked, the tarot card of the day for the past three days has been death, and my horoscope has been telling me to hide under the bed. Okay, that last one was an exaggeration, but the rest are true.

Today the biorhythms are on the rise, the tarot card of the day is The Lovers, and the horoscope says I am in the mood to take on a project and I should do it as I will have fun. Not that I place any stock in the digital presentation of these arcane mystical forecasts... (Did I mention my fortune from the cookie was "If it's not in the computer it doesn't exist"?)

When the Going...

Coffee in the New York Skyline mug, "Something Wild" by John Hiatt on iTunes--still not the iPod, but I had to have music this morning. The floral journeymanpiece at right is this week's Ikebana arrangement of maple, flax and alstroemaria. Ikebana is my Monday guilty pleasure.

This post is brought to you via iMac. Yep, we finally broke down and acquired a Mac. It is not the Mac laptop for which I have been lusting, it is the whole family/business Mac which lives in the office. More on it--the whyfors and coolnesses--in the appropriate venue (Stranded in the South).

I didn't make it into the studio yesterday. I am now a day behind on shipping one order and firing another. I may be able to make up time this weekend on firing the one and I will definitely ship today on the other.

Yesterday I spent all day in the office. I sorted and organized and pseudo-filed. Pseudo-filing is when papers to be filed make it into a basket of the correct category, e.g., Griffith Family or Siyeh Studio. This is one step closer to the ultimate goal of the filing cabinet (or the shredder if they become obsolete before actual filing). The outcome of the day is that I now know the location of every piece of paper which is waiting for action from me, and eventually I will address them all. I did take care of doing, faxing/mailing the urgent must-go-out-yesterday pieces so I am caught up there.

Off to kilnform (and unload last week's delivery before it gets rained on... again)!

Oy!

Coffee in the Alaska mug this morning, no music as the iPod is still down in the studio. Glad it is, because I sure haven't been lately! The only glass artsist "stuff" I have been on top of recently has been my firing schedule--and that probably only because I had three days of slush built in. Slush, I might add, which has now all melted away. Today I ship, and I ship again Monday. And that takes cares of all gallery orders till July with only two more to complete this year from my Buyer's Market orders from February ( I say "this year" because I actually had a gallery place a good sized order on 2/19/06 for delivery 1/10/07). It is good to be done as there is another Buyer's Market coming up mid July and at least one part of me hopes to get many more orders there! Another part of me is lost in landscape design (mine and others) and pond building. No, the construction has not yet begun on the pond, but it is all coming together. When it does happen, it will be over in a weekend and photos will be posted on Stranded in the South.

So today I ship (all Cosmos Morceaux de Verre), and I do a huge load of paisley pieces for a gallery in Canada. I also simply MUST get the final art fair apps and other paperwork done and sent off. If there is any time left, I will continue asserting my will on the contents of the garage and the shed. Time and space being what they are I predict they will both be left to gather dust for another day (or five).

Some Days I Need Blinders

Coffee in the Los Angeles Skyline mug (eBay, oh eBay, what would I do without you?) no music as the iPod is still down in the studio. Today I resolve to Keep Focused. Days when you do not have enough you must do to fill the day are bad because they lead to flailing and dithering (in me at least). Yesterday I had so little I had to get done that I could have done it all by noon and taken the rest of the day off. That's actually what I planned to do, but instead of making a conscious decision of what I wanted to do with the free time and following through, I got my firing in and spent the rest of the day doing a little paper work and ditzing around on the computer reading a bunch of stuff. And so the day got pissed away and I was left feeling very off-center and unsatisfied. If I had decided to spend the day reading, thinking and worrying about what other sentient humans were thinking and worrying about that would have been okay. Instead I got sucked in and lost control of my life. Not going to happen today. Though I am going to have to deal with all the mental fallout from yesterday and that will make up the next few posts on Stranded in the South.

Today the glass artist fuses another load of gallery orders, fills out and mails in the last art fair apps (really), makes a lot more progress cleaning out the garage and making it into extended studio, and unpacks the Bullseye delivery. It will be exciting in the early part of the day as I head off in 10 minutes to have my eyes dilated. Last week at my eye appointment they didn't do it as I opted to be fitted for bi-focal contacts. At the end of a week experimenting with them I have decided that my eyes aren't all that bad for either distance or close-in, and I am just a whiner. Nice to know, now on to get a mammogram appointment. Glad there's nothing to test-drive for that.

Chug, Chug, Chug

Coffee in the New York mug, music from J banging on the piano. Got to run put her hair up and get her to school then back to finish this post. Yesterday's fuse was all "Cosmos" all the time--with the exception of one little "Earth" sample tile that I need to drop in the mail today.

________

Back from school--and back and back again: someone was not feeling well and is now watching Hercules from the couch. It will make getting in today's firing a bit more interesting, but not too. Luckily J is now at the age where she is self-entertaining and essentially independent. That doesn't mean I am going to chuck her out to fend for herself anytime soon, but it means I have a bit more latitude to do my stuff.

Today's "stuff" is a slump of yesterday's fuse and a lot of paperwork: I have not reconciled the financials since I had to do it for taxes. Not surprisingly I have been very able to continuously find more interesting (and necessary) things to do instead. Today with J home sick, no excuses.

The Glass is Here! The Glass is Here!

Today began with a delivery of 1000 lbs of glass. Coffee was in the New York Skyline mug (I eagerly await the Los Angeles mug which should arrive this week) and there was no music on the iPod. This afternoon I will get the fuse load in the kiln which I cut and prepared yesterday, and I will unload the delivery from Bullseye and put everything away. This will be the first official use of the new glass storage area in the garage. I am so excited I may even sweep the floor!

I don't know how it happened, but I am now three days ahead on my firing schedule: If I keep to the schedule I will have the next two gallery orders ready to ship three days ahead of when they are scheduled to go out. I am pretty excited about this as it means there is now room in the schedule for experimentation... and cleaning and writing... whatever.

I may even have a personal use for this time--I have decided to do a mosaic wall along one side of the pond and use up a lot of glass that I otherwise don't use anymore (mostly bought for Tiffany-style lamps which cost more to make than to purchase from Home Depot Expo made in China). Using it there will have the double positive effect of clearing out the studio and providing something beautiful for our home that does not need to be moved when we move.

So off to grab a quick lunch and get fusing! Tomorrow a picture of the kiln load from today (this site needs a bit of color).

Back on Schedule

Coffee and music on the radio were both in the car this morning taking J to school and heading on to Ikebana on the north side. Now it is already almost 12:30 and I am just beginning the day in the studio. Last Thursday and Friday were rough days comprised of a solid blend of real life (and death) and work. This week things are back to a more traditional work/life time split, and I am back to daily blogging.

It's good to be back to a schedule and done with traveling and shows for a month and a half. I have two more gallery orders to get out by the end of the month--one a HUGE one to a gallery in Calgary, Alberta Canada (my first international gallery!). In a week or so I need to start figuring out the customs forms. And I have the art fair apps for the fall shows to get out this week. Other than that, I am just clearing the decks to start on the book (no editor assigned yet so I have not begun). Part of the deck clearing is getting all non-glass STUFF moved to the new shed and the garage cleaned out to officially become a full-size studio extension.

It's about time to post more pics here, and I will do so of the new studio layout when it is complete. It will be a truly enviable set-up. Now off to get a full fuse-load in.

Hump Day in "Real" Life

Coffee in the Atlanta Botanical Gardens travel mug--just got back from taking J to school. Nothing random on the Pod--needed comfort music ("Stay with Me Tonight" by Jeffrey Osborne). More about that on Stranded in the South. This here is about glass, and I need to get focused.

I haven't seen yesterday's firing yet, but I think it will be a good one. The shed is being built as I write and should be done by the end of the day. I am going to christen it tonight with the tent and display materials which are still packed in the minivan awaiting space to get down the drive and unload.

Much of real life is spilling into and mixing with glass this week, and the way to look at it is that that is the way life should be. Instead of the artificial schedule imposed by jobs and schools and the institutions of our lives, "work" should co-mingle with "life" and the priorities of one should be weighed and scheduled along with the priorities of the other. In theory this makes for a more balanced, less stressful life. Now if I can just take a few things out of both and SLOW DOWN I will be set. That's the trick, isn't it?

Today sees another fuse load, some cutting, grinding and polishing of yesterday’s pieces before slumping tomorrow, a whole mess of paperwork, cat and ferret litter boxes to clean, dogs to be brushed before their grooming appointments tomorrow, and spring garden clean-up to plan. Maybe I'll even get around to setting up an appointment for my long overdue mammogram, but I bet scheduling the gravel and mulch delivery will take precedence.

Closer to Fine

Coffee in the Austin Skyline mug--yep, read that right: AUSTIN. I finally got one (eBay, of course--and reasonably priced too). "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls on the iPod. And by glory I am closer to fine today. It has been a rough three weeks. Yesterday I was so tired and so low. I did fire a load, ship a commission, call in all my credit card charges from the Dogwood, prepare the area for the shed materials delivery, critique the beta layout for my new website, and put in two orders with suppliers. But it took all I had. One ray of sunshine in the day was a package from Bridget in L.A. A gem of a little book called "The Gift of a Year". I think the package actually arrived sometime in the past 2-3 weeks and I just got around to opening the mail from that time period yesterday--a strong indicator as to over-extendedness.

The Dogwood was a very good show with one of the most hellacious breakdowns I have ever done. By the time I got everything in the van it was full dark and I think I left a couple of my tent bungees there. And I was one of the first ones to get to load thanks to the extraordinary help of a friend here who traded glass for muscles. Next year I will see if we can load out on Monday morning. Most of the artists are not local so there would probably only be a few of us wanting to do it and it would be *much* less painful.

Today, today, today is a bright and shiny NEW day. I rose at 7:30 to the doorbell and the builder for the shed. We reconnoitered the area and decided it would be better for him to come back tomorrow after I have the tree branches hanging in the middle of where the shed will go trimmed up. *Blush* I agonized for a week over the placement of the shed and paced and measured and paced and measured. But the one thing I didn't do was look up. I didn't see the tree for the ground... nope. (Hmmm I am not sure that was the idiomatic expression I was looking for...)

A little digression about search engines and sponsored results. Every now and again a word or phrase comes to mind that I feel the need to check before I use it (see "The Princess Bride": "Inconceiveable!" "You keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means.") (Ren takes this activity to a new level). I wanted to verify "idiom" or "idiomatic expression" as an appropriate definition of the phrase "see the forest for the trees". It didn't feel like a metaphor, and it isn't an analogy. So I looked on dictionary.com for "idiom". Nothing. "Idiomatic expression" also brought nothing. But under each there was a 'search the web' button which produced the following:

Search results for idiomatic expression.

Sponsored Links:

Idiomatic Expressions Looking for Idiomatic Expressions? Find exactly what you want today. www.eBay.com

I had heard you could buy anything on eBay, but I was not expecting Chinese idiomatic expressions...


So the day began with a builder and continued with shipping an order and a purchase from the Dogwood, getting J off to school, chatting with the woman who owns the garden rescue service (that's not actually what it is called, but it is an accurate name for us as they are going to do an intervention and stop my cycle of destructive avoidance of garden maintenance tasks) and setting up an appointment for her to evaluate our mess, and begging a new groomer to take on the dogs. I have let EVERYTHING slide in the past few months (years?). I have so many balls in the air right now that I will be lucky if their falling does not cause some poor marginalized species to go extinct. Or maybe they won't fall. I could be that lucky...

What does this all have to do with glass? Well, when two straight weeks are taken up with glass--evenings and weekends included--the rest of life has to be slotted in where it can and this slot happens to be TUESDAY. Which is not to say there won't be glass today. There will. The firing schedule is tight with a gallery order a week going out for the next three weeks, and the first order from the Art Institute of Chicago coming in over the weekend at 70 pieces instead of 50. (Whooppee!) And 35 more to be made and held here in case they need them... They don't need to be there till the end of July, but I am already scheduling.

And I am being so proactive about my firing because there is a book contract and in the next couple of weeks I expect to have an editor who will be giving me deadlines and cracking a whip over my head about output. I haven't even reviewed the outline I wrote back in January for them. I have no idea what I am going to write.

On the plus side, I don't have another festival scheduled until Memorial Day weekend in Chicago. Then a solo gallery trunk show here in June and the next Buyer's Market in Philadelphia in July after which we all flee to Montana for a couple of weeks of R & R (and probably writing for me).

Now I'm off to get the load in the kiln, dig up a couple of hostas to move out of the way of the shed, and I will relax this afternoon with garden and pond planning and financial paperwork. It's so good to be home!

April Showers

A quick post before I head off to the Dogwood Festival for the day. No coffee yet, and the music is the sound of the rain, birdsong, and occasional thunder. I have a feeling I won't get a lot of traffic today--I just hope after last night's storm my tent is still standing. I am pretty sure it is, but I also won't be surprised if some people lost theirs. I woke at 4:17 to the howl of some pretty serious wind.

Fortunately yesterday was a good day for me. I should have planned better and already had the postcards printed up for the solo glass show I am doing at Creative Spirit for the Third Thursday Gallery Tour in June. As this is a local show, if I were a savvy marketer, I would have publicity for my next local event with me. But it really was all I could do to get eight additional pieces done for the show. Maybe I will print some up today. I have electricity in the tent, and I will probably have time.

OK, off to the show!

I Got the Call, I Answered the Call

Coffee in the Alaska Skyline mug, Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On" on the iPod. Random shuffle actually put up Tom Jones doing "The Green, Green Grass of Home", but while appropriate, it was not listenable. The next random choice was Marvin and I can live with that--it's also appropriate! I have already dropped the J at school--made her lunch and everything today--and left a panel at Dixie Glass Hoppers to be drilled. I hope I will need it this weekend at the DOGWOOD FESTIVAL. Yup. I got the call yesterday afternoon at 4:20 and immediately went and set up the tent and unloaded everything into it. It pays to be lazy (the car was still loaded from Austin).

When I got home, we had dinner and sangria from Billy Goat Cantina (which has been renamed My Cow Cantina for some inexplicable reason--I keep thinking it's Mad Cow Cantina... not good marketing on someone's part) and piled into the convertible (Sebring with a car seat for Jessie in the backseat) to go to the drive-in for The Inside Man. J watched Ice Age 2 on the next screen over. If we had thought and brought another radio, she could have watched and heard the sound too. The Starlight Six six screen drive-in which shows double-feature first runs five minutes from our house is one of the best things about living here. Next week we will see Ice Age 2 and the following week V for Vendetta.

But back to actual glass-related stuff. Since the festival doesn't start till tomorrow at noon I am WAY ahead of the game as far as set-up. Which is good as today I still have to read, sign and send the book contract, send the font and pics to the web developers, measure for and order the shed, fuse a full load of display pieces (so I have some new work for the show), prepare the replacement pieces for the gallery which broke in shipping last week, and firepolish a display piece I sold in Austin which had a couple of rough spots ground out and never polished.

The show is noon to 8:00 tomorrow, 10:00-8:00 Saturday and noon-7:00 Sunday. I just read their schedule on the web and the music goes till 8:00 on Sunday so they won't be letting artists' vehicles in to load up until after the people clear--likely well after 8:00 pm. Load-in was a breeze for me yesterday: I was the only one at check-in, there was one other vehicle on the road unloading (which is good as there is no room to pass), and there was plenty of room for my minivan to park in the neighboring as yet unoccupied spaces so I could unload it at my leisure. Load-out is obviously not going to be so nice and I need to be prepared for a late night--maybe even having dinner in midtown after breaking down while waiting for the biggest traffic push to clear out.

Whoever thought being an artist and doing art festivals was a relaxing easy life was just dead wrong. At least the weather looks like it will be perfect for the weekend! (I wrote too soon: I just checked the forecast and scattered strong thunderstorms and high winds are predicted for Friday evening through Saturday evening. Great. Going to hunt up the galoshes now.)

Home at Last!

Coffee is an extra large Jupiter Coffee house blend with an extra shot of espresso... I notice a trend here. There is no music as the iPod has been temporarily re-purposed. more on that in a minute.

I took two days to drive from Austin back to Atlanta this time. It turns out that four hours of sleep after a two-day festival in the heat (and breaking down at the end of the second day) is not enough anymore to fuel this 44 year-old bod to drive 1000 miles in one day. Today is the first day of set-up for the Dogwood festival here in Atlanta. I am the first glass artist on the wait-list so I gave them a quick call to see if there is a spot for me before I unload the car. I left a message on their machine and now have an excuse to leave the car packed until tomorrow.

After the five am anxiety attack about all the things I need to do today, the rest of the morning started very slowly for me. I finally got Jessie to school by 11:00, and now I am preparing for a busy day of electronic paper pushing. I have to phone in all my credit card charges from Austin, sign and mail back the book contract, enter all my sales and expenses for the show into a spreadsheet, update my studio inventory, send font and more pictures to my website developers, update the gallery inventory for the work I left at Taylor Kinzel and send it to them, prepare an order for Bullseye, pay bills, invoice clients, return gallery calls from the past week, and sort through the mound of *stuff* on my desk. My question at the end of all this is, if I am a glass artist, how come I spend so much of my time with my hands on paper?

All I really want to do is curl up in the Sky Chair on the front porch and listen to the book from Audible that I downloaded to my iPod. Audio books, I am now hooked. I didn't even notice the drive yesterday--I listened to over five hours of a 10-hour book and could have kept driving to the coast. I feel like I could actually drive to Montana this summer with audio books. And they play through the car's speakers on the iPod. Is this a great century or what?

But there are papers to push so I had better get to it. Maybe I will be able to treat myself late this afternoon.

Why do I do Art Fairs?

The answer to the question above: To be exposed to new, cool technology! This festival's current leader is TiddlyWiki (thank you Bryon Jacob). Okay, I just recently started blogging (an admittedly linear exercise). And now I find out about blogging for the ADHD in 3D: Short and non-linear. I am not sure I buy the premise that "Human minds are not built to take in long passages of information very well; we're a lot better at taking information in little tiny chunks." For me, little chunks are as likely as not to get lost in the white noise of the day to day whereas a large chunk of data that I can visualize is easier to contextualize and remember. However there are places where tiny chunks are perfect, and I am a big fan of non-linear.

So what does this have to do with glass? Everything! Artist collaboration possibilities, tutorials, FAQ's help with problems. Think of warmglass.com. Its is a GREAT site and it used to be a great resource (keep the flamethrowers pointed to the ground until I finish this thread and duck). But it is linearly structured and HUGE. The overwhelming winner in the 'most frequent phrase written in posts on warmglass.com' contest is "Someone has already written a lot about that, look in the archives". And as someone who has tried to find useful information in the archives, I can confidently say... no I can't. I don't use words like that in print. There is just too much information there to have to sift through it to find the relevant bits.

So what is a wiki and why would this be better? Because instead of having (100 million) individual posts which are not ranked for relevance show up in a search on, say, "kiln wash", you can have one editable entry on kiln wash that all members of the community can update or even multiple related entries on kiln wash (like multiple encyclopedia entries for a word).

The limitation of discussion groups is that they are too linear and searching the archives of a large one is at best difficult and time-consuming, at worst a complete waste of time. The limitation of a traditional website is that it is designed as a one-way flow of information and keeping it current for an audience like the warmglass group is too time-consuming even for a dedicated team of people. With a wiki, everyone who has a stake in the community shares in the responsibility of keeping the information current, and it is well-organized and accessible to new members.

Will I do anything with this new technology? I don't know. My plate is pretty full right now. Maybe the best I can do is offer it up to the new generation of kilnformed glass artists and say "Hey! You grew up with computers. Why don't you build a cool wiki for us old folks?"

Live from the Austin Fine Arts Festival!

I love Austin. Free wireless almost anywhere you go. So here I sit in my booth at the Austin Fine Arts Festival and I am connected. Life is good. It should be the end of the first day of the festival, but some genius thought it would be a good idea to have a special patron's event tonight from 7-10. And while evening events can be okay, there are two strikes against this one: 1) the show has already been open to the public all day so the idea of getting a first preview of the art for collectors does not apply, and 2) after being open from 10-5 today we were required to close our booths and cool our heels for two hours till the evening event begins. The idea was that we could go get dinner, but it does not take into account the crash that comes when you stop moving after a big festival day. So I am in my booth, I have already crashed, and I have to open back up again in 15 minutes... Bad plan. It is also quite windy tonight and I am dreading opening the front of the tent for the full gale force.

Now that I have the negative comments out of the way I can say that this has been a very good show for me so far. I came a bit light and as I usually overload and schlep far more than I ever sell, it is doubly disconcerting to look in the boxes and see nothing to replace the work which has sold. I am almost to the point where I have to move things around in my display to fill the holes where pieces have sold. That has NEVER happened before: I always have more in the back.

And my mother-in-law offered up a genius suggestion for my lighting dilemma: instead of shelling out the big bucks on halogen track lighting, just get some of the aluminum-domed contractor clamp-on lights. I got six and sprang for halogen bulbs for them and they are great (and cheap!).

I have also had several inquiries about large panel commissions. This is a first for my Austin market too. I am accustomed to getting good commissions from my Chicago shows, it would be great if I could do the same here.

So five minutes to show time. I hope it's worth staying, but even if it isn't I will count the day an overall win.

__________________________________

So I love Austin and the free wireless, but the electrical sucks: The breaker has blown on our row every five minutes for the past half an hour and it turns out it was my fault! I am pulling 600 watts for my six lights and I have just found out I was only to have 200... A night show with only 200 watts per booth?!? Are they high? The elctrician's recommendation was that I use the same full-spectrum daylight bulbs the artist across the street has. Her booth is as bright as it can be and each bulb only pulls 27 watts. They cost $18 per light and she has 12 of them. Hmmm, my math says that is still more than the 300 watts I am currently pulling having turned off three of my 100 watt lights... and $18 a bulb? I don't think so.

On the plus side, I am no longer tired!