You can take the girl out of the newsroom, but you can't take the newsroom out of the girl, it seems. No matter how many days/weeks/months/years I know in advance, I don't zoom into high gear until it's down to the wire deadline time. And so I've got four pieces due at the gallery by 11am this morning, and I will just exactly make it...with three.
The art of casting is also the art of spending money. I publish a little resource list (I think it's now six pages long) of where to buy all the stuff you need for casting. None of it's cheap and most of it's indispensable. Interestingly, though, there's also a bunch of stuff that's equally indispensable but can be had on the cheap. Here's my list of 18 cheap THINGS you should keep around a casting studio to make your life (and your bank account) easier. ...
Normally, I craft my mother molds out of plain old plaster of paris. It's cheap, relatively quick and the cleanup is easy. But the resulting shell is also heavy and brittle, hard to store and prone to chipping off in exactly the spot you need it to be whole. Smooth-on's Plasti-Paste promises to alleviate at least 75 percent of those problems but costs about $17; plaster costs about $3. To work, the Plasti-Paste shell needs to be VERY light, VERY rigid and VERY easy to get off the mold. So...here goes.
OK, really not going to get too awfully philosophical here but over the weekend a realization was slammed home that should have been obvious and somehow was not: Once you get art into your head, one way or another, it's gotta come out. ;-) ....
I’m back in Castuary (my term for that anxious period when the mold is in the kiln and you’re waiting to find out if you’ve just made heaven or hell in glass). As usual, it’s sending me into all kinds of odd musings. For example, I’ve run across two different perception phenomena during this Castuary. First is what’s called the [...]
Why is it that the simplest projects have the biggest potential to drive you up a tree? If you're a regular reader of this blog you might recall me mentioning talented sculptor Maria Wickwire Palensky. She approached me last spring about casting a transparent foot and ankle for one of her sculptures. Among other things, Maria interprets ancient mythologies surrounding [...]
First of all, I’ve never really thought of myself as sentimentalist. Sure, I sometimes sob at tearjerker chickflicks. And a cracking good animation or a sublimely elegant algorithm or hardware that really IS “plug and play” or somebody just being nice for no good reason or truly amazing or content-rich art invariably results in leaky optics. And maybe I get a little misty [...]
This week I have two great big thank yous: One to Bob Heath, who kindly loaned me the use of his kiln when mine croaked, and one to the guy that invented fiberglass. THANK YOU […]
Wow. THAT was fun. Spent the afternoon demonstrating pate de verre techniques at Portland’s Museum of Contemporary Craft, and enjoyed myself thoroughly. Part of the museum’s month of glass, it’s sponsored by the Oregon Glass Guild. Supercompetent Bob Heath (president of the Portland chapter), played assistant the whole time which made a LOT less work for me (thanks, Bob). [...]
Warning: VERY long post. Only read this if you're interested in pate de verre, because this is the length of a small book... Couple years ago a lovely artist named Cynthia (not me...Cynthia Oliver), organized a virtual artshow of warmglass artist self-portraits. It was a great deal of fun, and after seesawing back and forth on what to do, I did [...]
