Just got back from the Oregon Glass Guild’s field trip to Seattle; had a lovely time, very nice people. Special thanks to Robin Knoke for organizing the trip, which was amazingly inexpensive and very informative.

OGG chartered a bus to drive us all up to visit the Spectrum glass factory, stop in at Olympic Color Rods (which supplies a fair amount of stuff for my casting work) and then head over to the Tacoma Museum of Glass and the William Traver/Vetri gallery next door.

Highlights:

  • Lots of great discussion on the bus about glass and animation, so I was in hog heaven, of course.
  • Very nice (and knowledgeable) fellow at Spectrum, Hassan, served as our tour guide and spent a lot of time answering my (many) questions about their production lines and furnaces.
  • The ladling robot on Spectrum’s smaller glass furnace lines was probably worth the trip. Took care of my interest in robotics, gadgetry and glass in one go.
  • The Glass Museum’s hot shop is always fun and they had a reasonably interesting main exhibit showing the contrasts in glass. I do wish, though, that they’d get over this notion that glass must somehow be justified before it can be considered as an artistic medium. The exhibit discussed the neat-o differences in glass (it can be opaque, transparent, soft, hard, cold, hot, etc.) and I really wanted something more than “wow, it’s shiny.”
  • Never yet, though, been disappointed by William Traver and their current exhibits were fun. Ironically, they’re occupying the formerly abandoned building next to the museum that I photographed during the museum’s opening. The shot I took of the old, broken window (now part of the grand entrance) is still one of my favorites.

Anyway, most enjoyable trip. I’m glad I went.