The Glass Art Society convention held in Asheville in May will go down in the history of GAS as one of the most successful and the highest attended GAS conference ever. Over 800 artists, collectors, and retailers participated in the various events over three days. There were studio tours, gallery shows, slide presentations, technical displays, and a day at Penland school where the new hot shop was fired up for demos by Lino Tagliapietra and Gene Koss. Likewise the new lampworking studio was up and running just in time for the day of demos by Roger Parramore, Lewis Wilson, Ricky Dodson, Emelio Santini, and myself. There were too many exciting events to possibly describe in this small space so I will try to just touch upon a few of them. Shelia and I got a taste of what was to come the first night we were there. We went for a walk and ran into Brain Kerkvliet, Emelio Santini and Peter Minson from Australia. We went to the parking lot behind the Hilton and Emelio held a little mini-show for us out of the back of his compact car. He kept pulling these amazing and delicate goblets out of boxes and we wondered how in the world he got them all packed into that tiny space. It was a real treat and sort of set the stage for all of us for the next three days.
Among the highlights were the exhibitions held at the Blue Spiral Gallery and the Asheville Museum of Art, both of which coincided with the conference and featured some of the finest glass artists in the southeast. The Blue Spiral is a beautiful place, with three floors of display space, all impeccably laid out. On exhibit were some of the finest works by mostly local glass artists, that I have ever seen. On the third floor was a series of lighted cases containing the work of prominent lampworkers including Roger Parramore, Shane Fero, Emelio Santini, and me. But the most exciting thing in the whole place was what I called "Shane's Shrine". This was a small room completely dedicated to the recent work of my good friend Shane Fero. The effect of so many fine pieces in one place was stunning! There were at least ten of his remarkable figurative sculptures that feature his distinctive style, mixing images taken from egyptology, mythology, and various animals and figures both fantastic and imaginative. In addition to those works were five of his shadow boxes, mixed-media pieces using lampworking and painted images in the context of a recessed framework. I kidded Shane about his "shrine", but in fact was deeply impressed. He is without a doubt one of the most talented and innovative lampworkers in the country. On the lower level was the student exhibition. This was an impressive show that featured some of the finest up and coming talent in the country. The piece I remember the most was by a student from Korea named Jun Suk Kim. It had five faucets, each with a blob of molten glass dripping out of it like frozen water, suspended over a pool of "water" made of cast glass. The illusion was very convincing and reminded me of stop-motion photography. Coincidentally, Jun Suk signed up for my class at Pilchuck in June. The rest of the student exhibition had every known medium of glass, hot, cast, pate-de-verre, lampworked, and flat.It was a fine tribute to both the depth of talent of the student artists and the institutions that train them.
The second floor of the Blue Spiral had a collection of works by artists who reside in the area. Richard Ritter, Mark Peiser, Harvey Littleton, Kate Vogel and John Littleton, Richard Jolly, Kenny Carder, and many more were featured prominently. All in all, the Blue Spiral put on a great show for the conference attendees. Great job John and Andrew! The Asheville Art Museum is located in the main town square where the opening ceremonies were held and the official opening was scheduled immediately after the speeches and other honoraria. This is another multi-level exhibition space with many rooms, each devoted to a particular artists, medium, or subject matter. During the conference, the Museum hosted an exhibit of Southeastern Artists. This was a juried exhibition and participation was highly coveted. I had the remarkable good fortune to be included in it, and sent two pieces for the show. But one of them broke in shipping. The unfortunate thing about that was that it broke in such a way that no one noticed the missing part until after it had already been photographed for the catalogue! When I saw the catalogue there it was, without the centerpiece! I was just a bit disconcerted about that, but assured Frank Thomson that it could be repaired and made arrangements to take it up to Penland during Penland day (where I was to demo anyway) to fix it. But that did not solve the problem for the opening and so I had only one piece there for the big night, and an incomplete one in the catalogue! The show went on and was a great success anyway. Several friends and acquaintances had work there including Loretta Eby, Shane (of course), Neil Duman, Gene Koss, Robert Levin, and Joan Vogel. The show also included work by Gary Beecham, Billy Bernstein, Curtiss Brock, Rick Eckerd, Richard Jolley, John Littleton and Kate Vogel, John Nygren, Mark Peiser, Richard Ritter, Sally Rogers, Yaffa and Jeff Sikorsky-Todd, and Robert Stephen. It was an impressive collection viewed by a distinguished crowd. What could be more exciting than that?
Well, maybe Penland day was. Penland is a lovely place, nestled up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, about an hour northeast of Asheville. Shelia and I drove up with Don Niblack and Ricky Dodson riding along. Ricky kept us entertained with his strange stories and an impromptu concert with his harmonica. The guy is a virtuoso harp player and really blew our minds! Upon our arrival, we went immediately to the new hot shop to check out the facility. It is really nice, a far cry from the cramped and stuffy old studio. The lampworking studio had just been completed in time for the conference and was a bit sparse, but had plenty of room and was spanking clean (which everyone knows is against the nature of lampworkers). Remember murphy's law of demos? Well, my demo was a perfect case in point. I deliberately kept it simple, planning to build a colored bottle with a lizard stopper. I made an example beforehand to show the audience what I was building and even prepared one of the more time-consuming parts in advance, just so I would be sure to get the piece finished within my time slot. Lampworking demos can be tough to do because of the tedious nature of so many of the procedures. I thought I had all my bases covered, but I managed to nearly lose the colored bottle in front of over 75 people! I missed the neck move, something that I do almost every day routinely! Something, perhaps an ill timed question, distracted me and I lost my rhythm for a split second. But it was enough to pull the neck too thin and it started to collapse! I recovered, but the neck remained so thin that the finished piece was not acceptable, and this piece was supposed to go to the auction! Luckily, I had the sample I had brought along so I substituted that and so everything was ok. I had my bases covered after all.
I suppose I should have been thankful that anyone was watching at all. Lino Tagliapietra was demoing in the hot shop at the same time and I was amazed that so many would prefer to watch me. In fact, all the lampworking demos drew good crowds which is a testimony to the tremendous current interest in lampworking. Roger's demo was right after mine and his, of course, went flawlessly (He has probably never heard of murphy's law of demos). In the old lampworking studio, Ricky Dodson was demoing at the same time as me and he was followed by Emelio Santini doing one of his unique fertility goblets. Emelio had the foresight to place a couple of pieces of his work on the bench during his demo and managed to sell one to none other than Paul Stankard! Lewis Wilson followed Roger in the new studio and built one of his monster beads with dragons. I noticed that he talked less than normal during his demo and wondered why. Later, I found out he was coming down with the flu that night, an illness that laid him up for ten days after the conference and forced him to cancel his trip to Seattle later in June. In the old shop, when Emelio was done, there were some unscheduled demos by Peter Minson and Sally Prasch. In between them, I managed to take five minutes to repair that broken piece for the Art Museum.
In the hot shop, the most exciting demo of the day was put on by Gene Koss and his band of merry casters and their strange machines. I had been telling Shelia for weeks about Gene and the demos he had done at Pilchuck the previous summer and she was very excited to see them. She repeatedly went up to Gene and asked him when he was going to do his demo, "when Gene, WHEN?", and he got quite a kick out of that. I helped her to get a front-row position so she could videotape the whole thing. It took every bit of two hours and he did three pieces. It is glass casting as performance art! Gene and his helpers ran around in their heavy leather jackets, boots, faceshields, and heavy gloves, and scooped ladle after ladle of molten glass into these outrageous contraptions. Gene shouted orders, the torches roared, and his assistants ran around slinging hot glass everywhere. When Gene gave the order his assistants released the forest of vice-grips that held the machine together and it clanked and fell apart revealing the shape within. Then, a guy in a heat suit picked it up and ran it to the annealer and everyone applauded wildly. Afterward, Gene told us that he didn't know how much longer he would be doing these kinds of demos. Tell us it ain't so, Gene! If you get a chance to catch one of his demos, don't pass it up!
So I know you are all dying to know how our presentation went! Well, to give you an idea, Shane and I were in our hotel rooms, less than two hours before it was to start, selecting and loading slides into carrousels! While everyone else was out having fun with conference activities, we were arguing about whose slides to use, which ones to put where, who should follow who and how to possibly keep track of it all! We got the carrousels loaded and planned how to deliver the text outside of the conference room ten minutes before we were to go on! Talk about skating on the edge! But the presentation went fine. Unfortunately, we did not get a chance to take it once from the top to get our timing down so we had to rush the last 50 or so slides. But judging from the reaction of those who spoke to us afterward, it was a success and left an impression on all who saw it. It left an impression on Shane and I as well. Believe it or not, the presentation itself was the first time either of us had seen all the slides together at the same time! The depth and variety of the work was breathtaking and inspirational. Lampworking is truly in the midst of a renaissance, and this is only the beginning! We have resolved to continue collecting slides and updating this presentation. We have made copies for each of us and plan to show this presentation whenever we get the opportunity. It is already pretty long, but I think it can be edited as it grows to keep it from getting too large. The text and a sampling of slides will be published in the GAS journal and also in the next issue of Glass Art as part of an article on lampworking by editor Shawn Waggoner.
For the second time in two summers, I taught a class on lampworking at the Pilchuck Glass School north of Seattle. This year, I experienced none of the stark terror I went through last year, mostly because I now know what to expect from the place. Like last year, they really knocked themselves out to accommodate me and my needs and so teaching the class was all I really had to be concerned with. Believe me, it was enough!
For one thing, I discovered the night before I left that my class had ballooned from ten to twelve students. I had eleven last year and thought that was the absolute maximum I could handle, so I was just a bit concerned about having twelve. But it turned out the twelfth student was Patty Green, a longtime Pilchucker who had been Susan Plum's TA during the previous session. Patty turned out to be a tremendous asset to the class and helped out Alison with the TA duties whenever she could. Thanks for everything, Patty! Patty also works for Billy Morris and lives in a cottage on his property near the school, so we got a tour of Billy's barn where he does his shipping and keeps a couple of dozen pieces on display upstairs. It was just like a gallery exhibition of Billy's work with all his hanging artifacts, skulls, animal heads, ancient weapons, and cave drawings on display at their finest. The class wandered around in awe, snapping pictures and speculating on how some of these remarkable pieces were made. Billy was on a vacation in the Caribbean so we could not ask him but Patty filled us in wherever she could.
One of the highlights of the session was our day trip to Seattle during which we visited Dale Chihuly's studio, otherwise known as the Boathouse. It took a few tries to set up the visit since we had to have an appointment, but eventually they fit us in on the second Tuesday of the session. Alise, who handles public relations and was our tour guide, set us up perfectly by starting us off in the lower conference rooms which were adorned with Chihuly's paintings, and leading us through a labyrinth of rooms set up like mini-galleries full of his baskets, persians, macchios, venetians, seaforms, and floats. Many of these pieces were absolutely enormous and really impressive to look at and realize that they were all blown by hand, or rather many hands. Just when we were beginning to experience a little sensory overload, Alise lead us into the pool room.
Our jaws dropped to the ground. We were standing in a concrete room over 75 feet long and 25 or 30 feet wide with 20 foot ceilings! There was no external light.The room was illuminated solely by the enormous chandeliers hanging at each end of the pool. One was deep blue and the other bright gold. The combination of colored light created an atmosphere perfect for the opulence of the pool itself. It was maybe 50 feet long and 20 feet wide and of uniform depth. In the middle was a rectangular depression nearly 18 feet long and 12 feet wide and maybe 3 feet deep that was completely filled with blown glass, persians, macchios, baskets, and seaforms of every conceivable color brightly lit from beneath so that they seemed to glow! As we stood there in stunned silence I tried to imagine Dale, swimming around buck naked in there, laughing at the world. Just then, I caught Alise's eye. She winked at me and said, "How's that for the best revenge?"
After a few more minutes wasted trying, probably in vain, to photograph the pool, we proceeded to the hot shop where Brian Rubino and the rest of the team were blowing some persians. This was very entertaining to watch and they blew out first a couple of smaller ones, and then a large one with a four foot diameter! The radiated heat was tremendous! The back of Brian's hand was covered with burns but he seemed to pay no attention, working within inches of this huge ball of hot glass. Good glassblowers are incredible to watch, far more entertaining than lampworkers could ever be I am afraid.
And then it was time to go. Alise had caterers coming in an hour and she hustled us out of there fast. But not before we paid a brief visit to the main dining room where we were treated to another of Dale's mind blowing wonders. The room was probably at least 100 feet long and took up most of the waterfront end of the boathouse. There was one table in the room. Made from a single log, and cut from the heart of the tree, was the largest single piece of wood I have ever seen, and may well be in the world. It was 85 feet long, 6 feet across, and 6 inches thick! I estimated that over 100 people could sit at that table at one time with plenty of elbow room! Conferences might be a bit difficult because, without loudspeakers, someone at the head of the table would never be able to make himself heard at the other end. But I bet some great parties happen in there!
Two columns ago I mentioned an additive for propane that had remarkable effects on the temperature of a propane and oxygen flame. I felt that this product might have a profound impact on the lampworking industry. Since that writing, Ricky Dodson has negotiated distribution rights nationwide and is now taking orders for Chem-o-lene. I have gotten some and can now give you a preliminary report.
Yes, it does work. But how well it works is a more complicated matter. I notice the difference most in situations where I am usually straining to get more heat out of my Carlisle CC bench burner. When working with large diameter tubing, the additional heat enables me to work even larger. For instance, I had struggled to blow a flare that was 8" across for more than a year. Try as I would, I just could not pop the lip out any wider. I could get to 7 3/4" consistently, but just did not have the heat to go any larger. The first time I tried with the additive, I blew one out to 8 3/4", and felt like I could have gone bigger! Likewise, when working large diameter rods, the treated propane flame enables me to hold and work the glass at a higher temperature and therefore I am able to work faster and keep the glass in the molten state longer.
But flames are complex beasts. When doing smaller work, the difference is less dramatic. Part of the reason is because the flame itself looks exactly like and behaves exactly like a normal propane and oxygen flame. The only evidence that the additive works is how the glass heats up. Once you get used to it, which happens very quickly, you may find yourself wondering if there is any difference at all. Lampworkers automatically adjust their flames to the task at hand, so if a certain amount of heat is needed, that is what he will demand from his torch. The result then, would be that a slightly smaller flame would be required since the flame itself is hotter. This would mean that a given procedure would take the same amount of time, but would require less gas. This is a more difficult effect to measure and to use to justify the expense of the additive and blender.
Another factor has to do with the physical properties of glass itself. Glass is an insulator and will only absorb heat so fast, regardless of the temperature of the flame. In a benchmark test that I tried, I set up two national torches, one with the additive and one without, and dialed in identical flames. I then burned apart a cold 1" rod in each one and timed it. Without the additive, I was able to burn the rod apart in 70 seconds. With the additive, it took 60. But the glass got much hotter at the surface using the additive. This indicates that there are certain procedures that will see a significant effect and others where the effect will be less dramatic. Some of the benefit will show up in hotter glass and quicker procedures, and some benefit will show up as gas savings. Much of the benefit in a given procedure will probably be a combination of both.
Still another consideration is the effect the greater heat has on tools. I think it is undeniable that there will be greater wear and tear on things like torch tips, graphite tools, and any other tool that comes into frequent contact with the heat. This is a cost that is difficult to measure. For me however, it has not been significant so far. I have not noticed any discernable wear on my torch tips and am careful to keep my tools out of the flame. Still, I think it would be wise to withhold judgement on this issue until I have used Chem-o-lene for at least a year.
So the real issue becomes one of cost. The initial purchase of the blender filled with a gallon of the chemical will set you back about $300 with shipping. The blender is a one-time purchase. Refills will then cost $225. At that price, is this product cost effective? The jury is still out. I had an accidental spill with my first batch and lost a significant amount, but the bottle was still empty after only two weeks. I called Ricky and he discovered to his horror that the bottle he had was empty too after only three months! A full blender is supposed to treat 600 pounds of propane, a nine month's supply for me, which would then make it acceptably cost effective. But this was not our initial experience. It turned out that any new system has bugs and we had stumbled upon one. There are two kinds of Chem-o-lene, one for natural gas and one for propane. We had inadvertently been shipped the wrong kind! The problem is now corrected. I received a free refill and will let you know how long it lasts. To help me monitor its use, I weighed the empty blender (12.2 lbs) and then the full one (18.8 lbs.). I will weigh it periodically and keep track for my next column.
The blender itself is a modified 5 lb. propane bottle. They have added some stuff inside and another faucet-like valve to the outside. The contents are not under any pressure nor does it generate any pressure of its own. This means that refilling the blender requires a simple reservoir to valve adapter and just drains into the open tank. The chemical is flammable and mildly toxic according to the MSDS I received, but it is not so nasty that it cannot be shipped by UPS ground. It is water-clear and smells for all the world like paint thinner. In fact, it did a fairly good job of stripping the gold paint off the filler adapter they sent me. I would avoid drinking it.
It is very easy to hook up. Your gas source plugs into the standard valve at the top of the tank using an adapter they will supply. The hose to your torch is connected to the faucet-like valve welded off to the side. That's it. Open both valves, turn on your gas and light 'er up. When you are done working, make sure that you not only shut off your main gas source, but also close both valves on the blender as well. The line pressure stays in the blender and, if you then bleed the pressure off your lines without closing the valves on the blender (the way I did the first time I used it), the chemical can be forced back into your gas lines, creating a real mess. When I taught my class at Pilchuck, I had been using the Chem-o-lene for two weeks. Then, I had to work without it for three. It was like having lead weights strapped to my feet. There is no doubt that this product does what the manufacturer claims it will do. Already, several prominent lampworkers are trying it including Paul Trautman, Milon Townsend, and Shane Fero. If you have any questions about it, I suggest calling one of them or Ricky or myself. You can order Chem-o-lene by calling Ricky Dodson at 1-800-670-GLAS.
I would like to end this column by touting my home page on the World Wide Web on the internet. The address is http://www.websharx.com/~kahuna. That page has links to other pages based on my interests in surfing, computer graphics, and glass. Browse around, download the images, check out the other linked sites, and have fun! You can also leave me email there or at my usual email addresses ram@iu.net and 71042,751 on Compuserve. Check it out!