Gallery Opening!

Tonight was my very first gallery opening outside of the school's gallery! To be honest it was just the opening for the graduating students, so it's still school related, but also still super fun!

There was tons of food, alcohol, and way too many people! It was noisy, hot and crowded, but I stayed for all three hours - and a note to anyone who has never attended a gallery opening, when you do, do not wear heels or a sweater.

The gallery is short short short, but if you happen to be in Toronto between April 18th and April 23rd, 2013, come stop by! A really cool thing that I think other graduating classes and mini-collectives should do, is host websites to go along with their gallery openings, it's kinda neat!

http://thiscouldwork.ca/

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Figure Battle: Winner!

The results are in and the sculpture that won the figure battle was Chris' strange hot sculpted glass man! To be honest I'm surprised that anyone voted for my bear sculpture at all, and even more surprised that 10 days only garnered 6 votes - ouch!

Chris' Man

Figure Battle
Bears 1 (16%)
Torso 2 (33%)
Man 3 (50%)

Apologies for posting late are in order! This week I was at school from as early as 8am every day, and I stayed there until 12 am, so I literally did not have the time to write this post! 

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Advertising with Postcards and E-vites

This is part shameless advertising, part good advice.

At Sheridan our annual glass show in the gallery is coming up, and the third years always have to design an image to go on the postcard/e-vite. I think this year we did spectacularly well compared to past years, but to be honest I have only seen a couple of old postcards.

Rather than an image of somebody's work (or slices of everybody's work so there's no fighting) we all agreed to do an edited picture of our digitry.

Personally I think this is more eye-catching than a picture of art because it's out of the ordinary, especially in a wing that's filled with nothing but art!

Do you have any interesting ideas for business cards or postcards for yourself? Do you think it's okay to represent a diverse show (40 students and faculty), with one piece of art?

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Battle End - Figures!

Whew, we've finally finished another Craft Battle, how exciting! Here are our three submitted pieces, on the left side of the page you can vote for your favorite!

Chris: Figure # 34
(Nikki speaking for Chris) This piece was sculpted while the studio was brainstorming work that could be donated to an art auction to support the homeless. Despite the easy-going sculpting techniques an intense feeling is being expressed through the chosen pose.

Nikki: Winter Family
The family in question is a mamma and baby polar bear with matching scarves. This is pretty hard to photograph, which I didn't expect. Somewhere in my room there is supposedly a bottle of white ink, and once I find it (or buy a new one) I'll be excited to see what my piece looks like when all the many creases are stained white.
The original piece was salvaged from a bargain store for 84 cents, because what a shame to let a perfectly good (albeit cheap) sculpture go to waste? I cast a silicone mold and made myself a positive wax from it. The idea that glass can give worth to an object that nobody wanted is pretty intriguing to me.

Jessie - Self Portrait from Memory
Made with sculpey original over a tin foil and masking tape armature. I wanted to use sculpey original because its more free flowing and I felt I could capture some "gesture" from it, that is also why I chose to sculpt from memory. That way I did not have to worry about all the small details.

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Marc Petrovic's Birds

Since we have been talking lately about different ways to educate the public about your working process, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to show off the crazy thing that Marc Petrovic does.

That is an amazingly realistic bird, sitting on top of the sheet of glass it was made from.

You can trust me when I say that creating that fused sheet of glass would be a lot of work. Too much work for me.

I still can't fathom how those wings become wings.

And for those who are interested, here's a 23 minute video of him making the bird (you can skim through it of course):

So, now that  you know what I'm talking about - I think displaying the fused sheet with the bird makes it that much more amazing, because you can start trying to imagine how he made it into a bird. If you have absolutely no idea how he did it you can just brush it off and walk away, but he's given you hints to get your mind going - ingenious!

Are there any other working processes that could maximize the finished piece by being politely displayed with it?

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What is Sand Casting?

I happened upon some first years trying out sand casting, and decided it would be the perfect opportunity (much to their dismay) to finally document the sand casting process via photos. Our wonderful models today are Charlotte and Fazil.

I didn't get a photo of just the sand mold, but when you scroll down to the bottom you'll see it. Basically, to sand cast you could just dig a hole in sand, and pour glass into it. It can be that simple!

First you have to get all suited up. Charlotte has her casting jacket on (a lot of people wear them backwards), as well as a mesh face mask, jeans, running shoes (I burned a hole in my favorite boots two weeks ago from stepping on hot glass), and gloves that you can't see.

Here you can see the giant kevlar glove on Charlotte's hand that is protecting her from a very hot furnace that's full of molten glass. I'll assume it's around 2000°C, but to be honest I always forget which furnace is which temperature (there's a second cooler one in the background for blowing).

After gathering your ladle, you pour out your molten glass! You want to do it as fast as you can, but without tipping your ladle past the 90° point. The inside of the ladle is lined with glass that has already cooled off a lot, so if you tip too far, all that 'cold' glass will fall out and make a mess.

Here's the final product from a different angle. Since this was one of her first pours the edges aren't that copacetic, but she'll get the hang of it after a few more tries.

That's all you need to know to understand the basics of sand casting! It can be an extremely technical and intricate form of glass art though. There's adding color, inclusions, different annealing programs, manipulating the hot glass, and more. We also mix the sand and water with different substances to cause different results, and we even mix different sand for different results!

... Kind of like professional sand sculptors on the beach, the reason they're so detailed and amazing is because they truck in different types of sand, with different properties.

Bet you didn't know all that about sand, did you?

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89 Days of Glass

Sound familiar?

Since lists and goals were working so well to keep the stress down and productivity up, and my 31 Days of Waxes in August was also really productive, and fun, I thought I'd do it again!

Technically the semester is 103 days (which is NOT a long time), but the first 7 days were stolen from me to work on a lighting project called SHED, and another 7 (or 9) days will be stolen from me over march break when I hopefully go on vacation with my Gran.

Day 1: It's really hard to cut tiny glass hearts, but I think they'll be okay after I fuse them!

So far so good. I made something today, and I cut up glass to make something tomorrow.. Only I'm struggling with the concept of voluntarily going into school before 9am to make sure I have time to set up the kiln. Aside from that though, I probably wouldn't have gotten around to doing tomorrow's project if not for the fact that I'm really scratching my head for 89 ideas! I think I have around 50 right now.

Day 2: There's clear strip glass in there that will make beautiful tree bowls! Trust me.

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There's A Trend Regarding Organization & Me

Over the past five months I really spent time working with the idea of motivation through organization. I find myself filling another sketch book up with specific art related goals and guidelines, to help me successfully survive the last semester of school. I was going to write about the new sketchbook, but then I realized something . . .

In August I goaled to create one wax mold a day, in preparation for school. (31 Days of Waxes)

In September I spent hours writing out all of my goals, then organizing them into long-term or short-term, work related goals. Then I created little cards so I could reorganize my priorities on the spot. (Organizing Your Goals)

In October I pondered the importance of working through 'silly' ideas, because wonderful creations come from unexpected places. (Silly Ideas)

In November I wrote about how I motivate myself to get up early in the morning, or work late at night, by asking myself whether or not I'll regret that small sacrifice in the future. (. . . In Twenty Years?)

In a flurry of frustration and stress in December I wrote an awful post trying to address the issue of prioritizing. (Crunch Time)

In December I also shared the next step of organizing myself, based off of September's organization ideas, but dedicated to the long-term instead of short-term. (Pushing the Business Plan Forward)

Either a strong trend about desiring to be dedicated to organization and motivation is emerging, or I just haven't had enough things to write about.

And if this blog did not exist, despite the fact that only a handful of people will see it, I would never have realized this extremely important habit that's emerging.

Have you ever realized that your hopeful new habits are working?

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Crafty Christmas Gifts

It's Christmas time, so the busy crafter has to make last minute crafts for gifts! Mine, unfortunately, didn't go perfectly because I used scrap glass and didn't know the melting points. These did make me realize though, that this would be a really fun workshop idea. In fact, while making them I recruited a first year who wanted to make some fused name plates for herself too!

Some need to be glued together because they came out in two pieces - oops!

For anyone interested, these fused name plates ultimately went to 810C for 15 minutes. This was more than enough for my white SY96 glass (and white is the hardest to melt). Whatever that stripey glass is, it's magically tough.

And in case Jessi reads this, please come back to me soon! I miss you on this blog! (She is so darn busy.)

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