June Newsletter...

*

Calyx Glass “What’s in the Kiln?” June 2010 Newsletter

Headed back to the hot shop!

Upcoming Classes (Refer a friend and receive a 10% discount on classes offered in my studio. Make sure your friend mentions your name when they sign up!) * Kiln Casting Class - Build your own sculptural art glass piece with translucent glass. Wednesdays, July 14, 21, 28, and August 4; 6pm-9pm * Fused Glass Sun Catcher for Parent and Child - This is a perfect class for kids to make a personalized gift, or just to learn to (carefully) play with glass while spending some quality time with mom or dad. Saturday, June 25 10am-12pm Saturday, July 10 10am-12pm Sunday, July 25 10am-12pm * Sampler Platter Class - Explore different materials used in glass fusing including dichroic glass, glass paints, fusible paper, powders, frits, stringers in this new class being offered at the LUX Center for the Arts this fall! (Schedule coming soon.)

Upcoming Exhibition A to Z Printing Show Opening Reception: Thursday, July 8, 5:30-7:30pm Show runs July-August 2010 This is the 90th anniversary show of the Lincoln Artists’ Guild, which I recently joined in April of 2010. Refreshments will be served during the show opening at A to Z Printing, so come out and support your Lincoln artists! Here’s a little preview of what I’ve got in store... “Patchwork Platter,” 9.25" x 5.5" This is a fused glass plate that I’ve just recently put together, but I’ve had the parts for quite awhile. There’s a lot of texture and color going on in this one and you’ll have to come to see it to truly appreciate it! “Ode to Kim Peters Brill,” detail There are so many talented glass artists out there and one in particular was the inspiration for this in-progress piece. Check out Kim Peters Brill’s website and see why I was so inspired! I’m still adding a few elements to this piece to make it truly my own. So, it will be unveiled at the show opening!

Don’t know if you noticed that little picture of me smiling and happy in beautiful Napa, California in my hot glass gear up at the top of this newsletter, but...

I’m headed back to the hot shop! Or rather, the Hot Shops Art Center up in Omaha. I’m going to be playing with hot glass again!!!! It’s been months since I’ve been able to travel to a studio with a glory hole and all the equipment necessary to blow glass. It’s an expensive art form, but it’s so worth it!

If you ever get an itch to try it, check out the classes Ed Fennel offers at the Crystal Forge.

---

Cooking up some Bourbon in the Maker’s Mark kitchen!

My husband and I just got back from a week long trip to Kentucky! We had a great time sight seeing, checking out the Bourbon Trail (and learning the proper way to taste Bourbon), and enjoying the local restaurants. BUT, the reason we went was for the 2010 Glass Art Society conference. It did not disappoint!

I have never been before, and on a whim I signed up when I saw a call for more conference volunteers on Facebook. With the reduced conference fee that work exchange offered, I was actually able to consider the trip, and thus was born our spontaneous trip to Lousiville!

Louisville is home of Churchill Downs,
thus their public art pieces are horses.

The conference organizers did a fabulous job of getting the town on track for hosting an international glass convention as all the museums and galleries in town highlighted glass art. There was no way I was able to see all that there was on offer, but what I did see was incredible! Three different hot glass centers with renowned glass artists such as Lino Tagliapietra (Italian master blower), Paul Stankard (instantly recognizable flowerscapes), Amy Rueffert (gorgeous hot glass “collages”), and too many more to even begin to name hosted demos. The lectures at the conference center were informative and engaging (Who knew you could bond glass at room temperature with no glue?!?). As a bonus, I even made a bunch of new contacts and friends! I’ve decided that I will be going to this conference every year!

Downtown Louisville is incredibly charming with public art dotting the scenery everywhere! I’ll leave you with this spattering of public art bike racks...

*

*

*

*

*

Thanks for reading and feel free to forward this on to your friends!

Carrie Strope

Sale for this month: Receive a 10% discount on any purchase from my Etsy shop. Purchase the item making sure to mention “June Newsletter” in notes to seller. Then, wait to receive a revised invoice by email. Pay as usual (through PayPal), and I will send your item as soon as payment posts!

Fused and Slumped Sampler Platters

The Sampler Platter fused glass class is officially over and it was incredibly successful! I'm so happy with the plates that my students put together!


This is a detail shot of one of the plates. You can see the blue tile in the middle that was made during the frit, powder and stringer session has been capped with clear glass and accented with a tea light flame worked star-shaped stringer. As always, the dichro bits just don't photograph as strikingly as they appear in person.

This plate makes me think outer space, galaxy, the next frontier...Cool, huh? Great job, Alycia!


My plate was not as successful...Don't get me wrong, it showcased every possible technique I could think of for a beginners' class, to a fault! Unfortunately, some incompatible glass found it's way into my scrap bin. What?!? How the heck did that get there?!?

So, how do you tell it's incompatible? Well, if you've been following me for long, then you know I've run into this problem before...and thankfully, it's only MY plate that's ever affected! So, as soon as this plate made it's way out of the kiln, I knew something was amiss...

If you look closely at this photo, you can see the hairline fractures at the edge of the two blue squares. See that? That's incompatibility. The crack follows those blue pieces too well to be anything else! And guess what else? When I scored my plate to free the pieces, the knocks with the hammer (gentle taps on the underside of the score) broke those pieces out almost perfectly! So, after removing the blue glass, I refilled the voids with some aventurine green scrap pieces to melt back down into one. It's currently in the kiln, and with any luck will be a slumped platter within 24 hours!

Here is the other platter from the class that is awaiting a slump firing. It is also currently in the kiln. My new-ish Paragon Pearl-22 and I are still getting to know each other. The first firing just didn't fire hot enough or long enough and I wasn't happy with the fact that you could feel the seam between pieces on the underside of the plate. With Pooja's permission, I also drilled a little hole in the middle to see if I could squeeze the biggest bubble out. We'll soon see how well that turned out!