Glass Incarnate

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

It is Valentine's Day, and I just gave Jessie the present I bought for her back in December. It's a blue jade and silver bead bracelet with a silver heart medallion hanging from it. On the medallion I had engraved "Anything Can Be" from the poem above. When she opened it, I had a misty-eyed, uplifting moment and thought how everything would be all right for the show, it would all work out--after all, anything can be. And then I thought of all the disasters that "anything can be" could also bring to life...

Who pissed in my bean curd this morning, you might ask. The new work for the show--of course all left for last and for the last minute--has been kicking my butt and not even bothering to take my name. The night before last I was in the studio till after 1:00 am loading the kiln with the glass for the 1/2" cast glass disks on copper rods for the new sculptural pieces. When I went back yesterday morning at 9:30 am, that kiln was still annealing--not a good omen for the prospects of getting yesterday's kiln load in (though perfectly predictable had I done the math on how long the firing would take). Not having an extra day to just walk away and let it cool, I pushed it and cracked the lid (1/4") at 350 degrees (about 5:00 pm).

Thick pieces, dammed with steel molds and on mullite shelves. I knew I was risking it, but there were no good choices. I also knew that though thermocouple read 350 degrees, that was the air temp in the kiln and the glass was significantly hotter. Finally about 9:00 pm I took the pieces--still in the steel molds and on the shelves--out of the kiln. The temperature--lid fully open--read 171 degrees. Had I stopped there, I think I would have been fine, but I needed the shelves and molds from the 9" circle pieces to do another set. So I slipped the molds off and stacked the glass circles (now THAT was a stupid move--all I can say is, I was tired and thought the stack would preserve the heat better and allow them to cool more slowly). A few minutes later I heard the first, distinctive prack (a combination of a ping and a crack) and, sure enough, The lime green circle cracked starting at the exit point of one copper rod and running right through. Eventually it made it all the way across and I discovered that my discs are 5/8" thick--not 1/2". A couple of minutes later I heard another one go. It was the turquoise one. Another one, yellow, did not crack, but I didn't have the mold centered on the fiber paper so the bottom is not flat and I had to remake it too.

Now it's Tuesday morning, and I know that the pieces I put in last night--I finished just after midnight--won't be cool enough to coldwork today at all. I'm not even going to unload them from the kiln till tomorrow morning. Then I'll need to coldwork and pack them before hitting the road and driving to Philadelphia with Mom and J in tow. (No, I'm not really towing them along behind. I'll let them ride in the car--if there's enough room.)

If I'm lucky, tomorrow's post title will be "It's A Mystery". Right now it feels like more Princess Bride:

Inigo: We're in a terrible rush.

Miracle Max: Don't rush me, sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.

It has been awhile since I posted as it's been awhile since I had time to post. Arguably my time right now could be better spent on something else--like getting ready for the Buyer's Market of American Craft in Philadelphia this week. but I am taking a minute (or 20) to post anyway.

Since I last wrote on the horrificness of January, life, as it will do, has settled back down to normal. Dave did his monthly stint in Austin. Jessie is on winter break. It was briefly spring, now it's winter again. The sun rises and sets. The birds quarrel over seed and prime bathing spots at the pond. The magnolias, early prunus, quince, camellias, daffodils, hyacinth, and forsythia determinedly bloom in spite of the vagaries of the weather. As for me, well I spend a lot of time in the studio.

In hindsight, it was probably not the right timing to add a completely separate 10X10 booth with all new work to the 10X20 booth I already need to fill with current work for the Buyer's Market. But Bill and Elaine (Black Cat ArtWorks) and I came up with some great ideas for new directions in our work together, and we committed to them before life came along with its big teeth-kicking boots. It took until last Thursday before I finally had a complete list of all the pieces I need for the show. I began firing everything Friday. Now it's Sunday, and I have so far managed not to have to drive up to Lori's studio in Dunwoody to borrow her kilns. Fingers crossed my luck holds today.

As I review what's come out of the kilns so far, I realize that the new work has two different styles/feels, and I'm wondering how it's going to blend in one booth. I am also not thrilled with the display we have determined for that booth which is based on the materials we have--white walls, white pedestals and purple carpet. It matches the black steel and bright glass of half of the new work (similar in feel to our current pieces) just fine. But we also have a french vanilla and french vanilla and dense white series of fused and sandblast-carved pieces that I just don't think is going to work there. Maybe I need to think about setting up a niche with soft grey walls and black carpet for those pieces... Oh I need at least another week to do this right, and I don't have it!

The other new work--the pieces similar in flavor to what we already do) is large (six-foot tall), three-dimensional, kinetic, and sculptural. The glass is thick (1/2 inch) and cast around copper rods so that it moves freely in the black steel frames. I am still playing with the colors and technique I want to use for the castings even though the final firing of all the pieces must happen today. This work is an interesting contrast to my other morceaux de verre pieces created from sheet, chunk and frit. When I create those pieces, I turn up the music and let the  glass fly. Tadashi watched me make a couple of pieces last night, and he said it looked like I was painting with frit. It's a very free and fluid style. I think the major difficulty I am having with the new pieces is that I am trying to be as free and fluid when I create them, but I have to carefully weigh the glass I use and balance them to make sure they'll float in the steel, moving freely.

Okay, time for posting is up, and I need to head to the studio to wrangle two new employees in their first solo flights (Linda is in for Judy who has the day off, and Fawn is teaching her first kiln-forming date). Pics and more tomorrow--time permitting.

I wasn't going to write about what a horrible week I had last week because I looked at it as focusing on the negative and the past instead of looking to the future. But I realized this morning (as I read Dee's comment on the post from yesterday) that I would be leaving behind a couple of pretty important things that deserve acknowledgement, and, in one case, thanks. The first and most important of those is the passing of Ernie Monstrocat.

Last weekend it looked like he had a cold so we took him to the vet on Monday. The diagnosis was a sinus infection transmitted from his mouth. They gave him liquid antibiotics and a pill-form decongestant, and said he should probably have his teeth cleaned the following Monday. Because of his advanced age, they did some lab work to see if he could tolerate the general anesthetic for the cleaning, and promised to call with the results on Tuesday.

When they called Tuesday it was with the information that the lab results revealed he had incurable, advanced kidney disease. They recommended we bring him in for a few days of hospitalization with IV fluids to flush out his kidneys so that he might be able to feel better and live a bit longer. I was very nervous when I took him in Tuesday because we had already been through a month-long hospitalization with Jester that ended with putting him to sleep and horrible guilt for having put him through it all on the first place. So before leaving Ernie to several days in a cage, needles and strangers, I asked to speak to our regular vet--who had not seen Ernie the previous day.

She did a physical exam and was concerned at the 6-lb weight loss in conjunction with the kidney disease and sinus infection. She looked at his teeth and said they weren't as bad as she would have expected given the sinuses. She recommended taking a couple of x-rays before going through the IV fluids and hospitalization route because if he had another more serious issue--large, cancerous masses hidden by his still substantial bulk, e.g.--then putting him through the IV fluids and hospital stay would probably not be the best choice for him. The x-rays did not reveal any large masses, instead they showed a complete lack of right hip joint and areas on his spine and ribs that looked like bone cancer. The kidneys and liver also both looked abnormal, and everything together led our vet to believe metastatic bone cancer and nothing to be done but let him go. And the world crashed to a halt.

It was only Tuesday afternoon. Dave was having a very stressful time with his work, Jessie was dealing with serious issues at school, and Mom was coping with the one-year anniversary of my Dad's death. I had already had to deal with the Siyeh Glass website being hacked and shut down by our ISP--right as we had new classes listed and a newsletter to get out, the hard drive on my laptop becoming corrupt and needing repaired (with no back-up of the 483 gigs of data on it), and the glass furnace going out in the hotshop with multiple failure points (not just elements or relays or thermocouple, but ALL of them) necessitating in canceling the Sunday glass dates in the studio. In a larger context, it was two weeks before the Buyer's Market show in Philadelphia where I have not one but TWO booths to fill with work (as yet undone), and also two weeks before the first 30 pages of my book (as yet unwritten) are due. And that's all I'm going to write about the trials of the week. Everyone in the house was having to deal with their own bad crap at the same time I was buried in the poop so it was REALLY lousy for all of us.

Now on to the thanks. On Monday I posted on Facebook how horribly the week was going and stated that I needed chocolate. There were many, many notes of encouragement and support (and one even contained a virtual chocolate cake!), and I was comforted. But my friends went even farther than that. The next afternoon--within an hour of putting Ernie to sleep and before anyone knew about his passing--Becky the Bookkeeper showed up at the studio with a bottle of wine and a couple of big Scharffen Berger chocolate bars and she also brought in a basket from Morganica that had just been delivered. I cannot adequately describe how very cherished and loved I felt at that moment as I sat crying over Ernie and in despair of the week.
That night when I got home I nibbled on caramel corn, Godiva chocolate, honey roasted peanuts, and white chocolate lime cookies accompanied by a lovely Malbec--all before dinner. And I raised a glass to Ernie and to friends. We'll get through somehow.

It's Saturday morning--at least for another hour--and an incredibly horrible week looks to be behind me. Instead of re-hashing it here, I am am going to take this time to look ahead at what's coming up in the next couple of weeks. The agenda is scary, but doable. I hope. Getting all the work done for the Buyer's Market is the top line item, closely followed by writing 30 pages of the book. I don't foresee any problem doing the work, but the writing is a bit scary. I should also get the Siyeh Studio and FeSiO websites up, the work photographed, a postcard mailing put together, and a host of other promotional tasks done. At this point they all appear to be beyond a stretch goal, which is not good as doing a show without promoting  it--especially the new FeSiO work--risks throwing a lot of money down the toilet. However, right now it's a choice between money and time, and the money I will make from orders at the show exists as potential (a bird in the bush) and the time I have to prepare for the show (and accomplish everything else I have scheduled) has an exact, small quantity (the bird that pooped in my hand).

Today I need to take apart the pressure pot for my sandblast cabinet, figure out why it isn't working well, and rebuild it. I also need to make a list of the pieces I want to take to the show of my current work, and fire a couple of pieces of the new work. Finally, need to try to sandblast some steel from Bill to see how I like the look for a new wall piece. Tomorrow is for writing. Wish me luck.

The world is silent and dark at 5:00 am, with only a little orange light from the early morning fog-haloed street lights shining in the living room windows. Baxter and Ernie greet me drowsily from their beds next to each other on the floor, and, after I nestle into the recliner with an afghan to keep me warm against the winter morning chill, Ernie climbs into my lap (displacing my laptop as only a 20-lb cat can do). His purr and the refrigerator's intermittent rattling provide the music in the otherwise slumbering house. Why am I awake? Oh let me count the ways...

The Buyer's Market is three weeks away and I have not even begun the piece-list for the work I am taking for my primary booth. I say primary booth as, over-achiever that I am, I have two booths this year--a 10X10 and a 10X20. The 10X20 is for my current work in Morceaux de Verre, Todd's wire work with my glass, some small studio blown pieces, maybe the roll-ups, and my current line of pieces in steel stands from Black Cat (Bill and Elaine). I have been playing in my head with an idea for a new colorway, but I haven't progressed any further on it. The other 10X10 is a completely new direction in collaborative work with Black Cat: Kinetic glass and metal sculpture. The glass is a new thicker, cast design that is much more subtle and requires extensive cold-working (polishing, sandblast carving and etching). I have been working on those pieces, but am still (of course) behind.

Beyond creating the pieces for the Buyer's Market, I need to do all the marketing and support materials work. I still don't have the website for Siyeh Studio back up since it got hacked two (three?) years ago. I need a website for the new work (debuting under the name FeSiO--fay-zee-oh--a union of steel and glass) and I need photos and advertising (a pre-show mailing) for both. Need, need, need, it's all about need.

The manuscript for Book Deux is due May 1, though my editor has kindly offered me an extension to June 1. You might think the book could be finished any time, but as with other forms of entertainment, there are very precise seasons for new releases. Think of the summer block-buster movies. They aren't the March blockbusters. A studio saves the best of a certain genre of films (My Dinner With Andre would not be an example of such a film) for release starting Memorial Day weekend and going through the 4th of July. Likewise, spring is the best publishing season for how-to books, and, with a May release, I am already at the tail end of it. Note that I am talking about a May 2013 release if I turn in the completed manuscript by May 1, 2012.

Finally, I have a retail and teaching studio that continues expanding daily. Yesterday I officially hired two new staff members--Fawn Lowery and Linda Queen. Both have glass backgrounds, and both are uber-excited about working in a glass studio. Fawn will be teaching some of the Intro to Kiln-Forming classes on Sundays (expanded the hours again this year) and Linda is the second studio elf. Judy will be out for several weeks this spring, and Linda will be filling in for her. She will also take over management of the retail side of the house--cutting glass, managing inventory, supervising open studio, etc. Though I am *thrilled* to have new people long-term, short-term I have a whole lotta paperwork, electronic access and permissions to set-up.

Even with the new help there are responsibilities which are solely mine. The on-line class sign-up is not done. The new class descriptions are not on the website (for classes being offered February 4-5), I still don't have a retail POS system and the paper receipt books we have been using in lieu of computerized POS are just not adequate. If I didn't have enough to do, the February newsletter needs to go out by the end of the weekend.

The frosting on the cake of incompletes is tied, somewhat ironically, to Becky who does my books as best I let her (somewhat ironically as she makes incredible cakes too). I have 2011 business administration including W-2's, 1099's, sales tax, corporate tax annual filing, business license filing, income tax prep, and annual inventory all to get done by the end of the month--and I haven't even mailed in my payroll tax forms yet from earlier this month! I would also like a wee small idea of how I did last year that would come from up-to-date bookkeeping, but, honestly, who has time? Clearly not me as I haven't even been good at blogging recently!

Yesterday's post was called Cheating Again as I discovered I had neither finished nor posted it when I logged in to Blogger tonight. However I did have the photo up and most of it done so I threw a quick ending on it, and, voila! Two posts in one day!

Today's post is going to be even quicker as most of my computer time since this morning has been spent honing my Joomla skills and putting up the Where We Got Our Name page on the Siyeh Glass website. There is a nice slideshow on the page, and I managed to figure out how to embed a scroll bar within an article. Now I just need my spouse to tell me if that is something I *can* do, but shouldn't, or if it is OK design. But he can tell me later. Now it's time to skitter off to bed to dream about a more productive day tomorrow!

Coffee in a white ceramic mug, the sound of lots and LOTS of noisy children and other people for my background music. I wait for my biscuits and gravy with over easy eggs and crispy bacon at Radial Cafe--it's a busy day today for a Monday. Guess it's because it's the MLK holiday. Jessie and her girl scout troop, along with several other local troops, are preparing sandwiches for 400 Decatur volunteers who are rehabbing residences for the elderly today. I am writing today, and doing a little bookkeeping (ugh).

Saturday morning was my first class of the new year in the new classroom space and it was AWESOME (to borrow J's favorite word). The participants all had a good time--and stayed an extra hour working on their pieces (very detailed first works). It was the first Intro to Kiln-forming 1 class and though I did end up talking a bit more about the science of the process than I had planned, it went well.

I am still putzing around with my cold so I am drinking lots of hot water and hot herb tea and getting plenty of rest. I have great hopes that it will be gone by the weekend if I continue to take care of myself. Once I am physically 100%, it's time to jump on the BMAC work. I have about 30 new pieces to do in the new style--kiln-cast, heavily cold-worked (ground, polished, sandblast etched, some pieces also carved and/or engraved. I designed these pieces under the assumption that there is truth in the title of Johnathon Schmuck's book "The Joy Of Coldworking". Now we shall see if I am right, or I am dead.

Nothing to sip as I post, the sound of J taking a shower and the wind gusting outside for my nighttime music. The day started with a drive to Commerce to meet Bill and Elaine to finalize our new designs for the Buyer's Market show. I left at 7:40 this morning and got back just after 3:00 pm. The rest of the day in the studio was spent pulling, packing and shipping a supplies order for a new KGRC customer in Ohio, talking to Amy at Bullseye, and... And that's about it! It amazes me how little I can get done in so much time anymore.

Dave also left at dawn's first light this morning for a meeting in Alpharetta and he didn't get home till a little after 9:00--stopping at Publix to get fresh lettuce and carrots for the bunnies on his way home. I did the dinner, cello and homework thing. Mom took J to school and picked her up today and let the cleaning people in. Why, you might ask am I listing a whole bunch of non-glass things that made up today in my post on Glass Incarnate? I list them because more and more I am woven into the web of life and can no longer separate--not only the strands of work and home, but also the strands of me and the others in my household. We seem to be all becoming one entity with intertwining yet not necessarily complementary strands of needing and doing.

Right now I am having a hard time even remembering what it felt like before Dave and Jessie and a house and a business. Back then I had a job and a condo (with an on-property maintenance man). I ate whatever I ate wherever I was when I was ready to eat, and it was just me--or maybe me and my bird or me and my dog and my bird. When I had a project to do,  I immersed myself for days on end during every non-working, waking hour. I could focus and power through massive projects in short amounts of time. Now it's seems to take all my time just to live a normal day. Face time with every member of my household on a daily basis is very important to everyone's (mine included) well-being and happiness. Time for hugs, time for snuggles, time to teach a little piano, play a little Race for the Galaxy, watch an old episode of The Greatest American Hero, play with the bunnies--all this time is no longer optional: It's life, it's now, it's every day, and it takes time--a surprising lot of time.

Am I whining? Complaining? Wishing things were different? Not a bit, well, not much. Sometimes I do look back on the Other Life with nostalgia, but it's nostalgia like you get for the 50's watching Happy Days (I think Dave just went "Nyah!" and stuck a fork in his eye--not a fan of Happy Days is our Dave.) The 50's weren't really like that--nor was high school (my turn for a Nyah! moment). Nor, if I am honest, was my earlier, simpler life. Simpler lives are for lesser women.*

(*Though I would like to end the post on that seemingly infinitely wise pronouncement, I have to give credit where credit is due: The original phrase is "Simpler wives are for lesser husbands", said by my spouse about me. :-)

A glass of some red wine in a stemless Riedel white wine glass (most of the red ones are broken), the sounds of Jessie practicing cello upstairs in her room with the door closed (she doesn't like anyone to hear her) for my background music. I allowed myself a glass of wine (or two) tonight as my cold is *finally* on the downswing. No, I didn't go to the doctor. It was a cold. Horrible, but a cold. No fever. I am done talking about the cold.

Today was the first day of my jewelry-making class and I was reminded both of why I like to take classes, and why I would rather learn from a book. I like taking classes in a well-equipped space because they have all the best tools. I like taking classes because the instructor always gives cool little tips that only come after a bezillion times of doing something. I like learning from books as the content covered in the first three-hour class is what I would do in the first 20 minutes on my own. Though I am very excited about my class, we spent today introducing ourselves, going over the syllabus, learning to light the torch, learning to move the torch back and forth with one hand while picking up small objects in tweezers with the other, and, finally, moving the flame back and forth over the metal at a consistent height for a minute and then quenching the metal in water at the end. Total time on torch/task: 10 minutes. I am not criticizing the instructor, the syllabus, ANYTHING. It is a reality of life that a class situation must move at the pace of the slowest possible participant, and, on the first day, the instructor has to assume we're ALL the slowest possible person.

What I most got out of the class--and it was so appropriate for my current overwhelming life topic of the book that it looks like I made it up--is the incredible, invisible potential overlap between disciplines in tools, materials and techniques. Because each discipline uses its own esoteric lexicon, the potential for cross-discipline usage is often overlooked. For example, my instructor in class today was surprised to hear that the company that makes chemicals for use on copper jewelry (JAX) also makes a copper patina for the stained glass industry. Is it usable on jewelry too? Interesting question. Maybe other jewelers are familiar with it, but she was not.

And speaking of the book, I stopped at Daven's today to pick up several ceramic tools and chemicals that I want to try using with glass. The experiments begin tomorrow! I might even get to making the traganth-gum pastels.... Oooh!!!!

India Spice Tea in the Pike's Place Seattle mug, the cozy cream-colored, knitted afghan that Dave started and his mother finished on my lap, Ernie cuddled by my side, and the sound of lots and LOTS of fire engines going down Memorial for my music. I start this post the old-fashioned way as I am posting today for the same reason I initially started blogging: I have writer's block. And it's not even writer's block for a big, daunting project like the book. Nope. I have writer's block on a 100-word description of Siyeh Glass for the Atlanta Art Craft Council (ACC) Show publicity materials. One hundred words... I should be able to whip that out in a matter of minutes. Heck, I've only been working on this post for as long as it took me to type the words (everything just flowed with essentially no pauses) and it's already 152 words. My brain is still woolly from my cold.

Yesterday I had to both cancel my meeting to go over new BMAC designs with Elaine and Bill in Commerce at 8:30 am and beg Lori to take my 4:30 glass date as I was just too sick. I've been up for half an hour now sitting on the couch with the aforementioned afghan and cat, and I'm just about ready to go back to bad to sleep some more. Thank heavens I don't have to teach today--nothing for me a kiln-forming glass date tomorrow afternoon.

But back to the writing thing. I keep going back and forth between first person plural (we) and third person singular (it and Brenda). Why, you might ask, if they're so short, don't I just write one of each and see which I like better? Because that's not the way writer's block works! There must be angst and a total inability to write anything. The words just don't flow beyond "Siyeh Glass is an intimate urban studio in the heart of the East Lake Neighborhood of Atlanta." That's 17 words. Hmmm. Maybe this isn't so hard after all. That one sentence is almost 20% of my text. And as easily as that, my block is broken!