to the beach..

St. George Island was intact and simply beautiful for the ten days we visited. The expected oil was nowhere to be found though the thought, and conversations about it, were ever present. Long stretches of some type of barrier were being put into place to prepare for the eventual arrival.

The sand was clean and the air fresh – the water was mostly clear and bathtub warm but lots of sea-grass was churned about by tropical storm Bonnie while we were there. The last day the seas calmed down enough to really enjoy the water.  Only one day of thunder, lightening and rain but we enjoyed watching that too. Our beachfront house sat 4 stories high and we camped out on the balcony to watch the dolphins jump and play as they fed.  They entertained us for about an hour each day as they passed on their regular feeding route. No one commented on the dolphins other than how much fun they were to watch but from my own knowledge of them, they were much closer to shore that I expected. If that was a function of  the storm or the fouled waters further out driving them toward shore, I can only guess.

This trip was for my Aunt and Uncle’s retirement. They love the beach as much as us and we waited impatiently to plan this trip and time away with them. Peter spent countless hours tracking down this area and house we rented. While the trip from Illinois was excruciatingly long for me, it was well worth it. We simply had a blast! My Aunt is never called “aunt” because she has too many roles to be pigeon-holed with a label. As my Mom’s youngest sister, we are fairly close in age. I was even her chaperoned on her first drive-in date with her husband.  With over 50 years of history between us, we never lack for anything to talk about. She alternates between aunt, mom, sister, and best friend to me – depending on the need. Mostly we laugh – hysterically. For no reason. When my Mom was living it drove her crazy when the two of us would launch into those spontaneous laughing/crying episodes. In my mind, I can see her now – rolling her eyes at us as if to say “there they go again”. We pretty much can’t be trusted together in public without embarrassing ourselves or the unfortunate people in our group. It’s all good.

One of my old friends and co-workers from Gainesville drove up with her husband. It’s been 12 long years since we set eyes on each other. Thanks to Facebook we hooked up again. She’s still a delicate lil blond Barbie. Her husband, Jerry had real trepidation about going off with strangers but I think within 5 minutes he was at ease.  He fit right in and kept us laughing and having fun the whole time.  My Aunt and I cooked tons of real Southern food and carried it along.  We were both thrilled that he had an appetite to go along with his sense of humor. We loved every minute they were there. Yes I got a little misty-eyed when they left because the thought popped in my head that 12 years between good friends is simply too long.

Ahhh the food… fried grouper, fresh-from-the-sea shrimp. Though Pete has a propensity toward sea-sickness, he manned-up and booked us on a fishing trip. Hot day. Oh so hot day when we set off with the captain. Just the three of us chasing about the bay in a decent sized boat. Immediate bite – and catch for a sea trout on the first stop – then lady fish and catfish abound – plus one shark. Oh, P brought in a clump of edible oysters with a hermit crab hitchhiker. After 8 or 10 different locations we ended up with 3 beautiful sea trout, cleaned and frozen for travel. By our estimation we could be eating the finest caviar for the price we paid for 3 fish. The outing and the adventure… priceless… Thank you P for not losing your lunch.

On the last day the sea-grapes cleared out of the water and the dorkie yorkies got in for a swim. Each have their own life-vests for safety and we started them out wearing them. Our porkie yorkie, Milo has as much flotation around his belly as the vest so he tended to capsize. After we took off his vest he swam and swam like a champion. The waves would wash him in to shore and he’d turn back out to deep water. Rawlph’s long fur coat floated out around him like some exotic sea creature. He swam fine but really didn’t care much for it. Cricket cracked me up – she didn’t exactly invest all her legs in to the mix… if you lifted her from the water she only had one front paw paddling like mad. No idea how she stayed afloat.

While swimming is not her forte, she’s an intrepid hunter. At home no frog dares to enter her domain. No ground mole run goes undug.  She may have met her match when she went muzzle to claw with a crab nearly her size. She chased him under the house. Mr Crab ran amok for a bit searching for a burrow. Finding none, he turned to do battle.   Pete grabbed her just in time. The running ghost crabs at night made for great adventure, too.

We celebrated P’s birthday there. Unlike his 40th, when he asked for a weed-whacker,  he had no special requests. We decided on an island birthday, and searched the local gifts shops for fun things. I so regret not picking up the bobble hula girl for the dash of his truck. Jerry took the crew out for dinner. Another great seafood meal at “That Place off 98″. Neither the island nor Apalachicola had a birthday cake to be found so we settled for a frozen Sara Lee chocolate silk pie. That worked fine and we used a flashlight as a pretend candle.

Sigh.. I only have the sunset photos and pix of seabirds and footprints and people.. but now I’m back to work.  Spirits restored – creative energies flowing…

These flat panels are actually one and the same. Taken prior to the last firing in case something untoward should happen in the heat. That sun pot-melt was suspect and is being treated with caution.

Now it is slumped into a deep wave and on my mantel to remind me of a happy trip with wonderful people.

 

Cautionary Tale of Mold Releases

The project is/was intended as a mixed media woven glass wall-hanging. The weave-y noodles are BE Aventurine Blue and Salmon Pink. They are shaped over a high quality 316SS custom mold, designed not to spall or flake up to 1600 degrees. This particular  mold has been used about 10 times and has a lovely oxidation but otherwise perfect condition.

NOTE: Fired in Denver CS60 with mold sitting directly on Dyson shelf. My standard schedule is ramping up at 350 dph to 1380, hold 5 and allow to cool to RT. No scheduled anneal is necessary on this first step because the Denver cools so slowly.

Each time I used SLIDE HI-TEMP 1800 mold release, and as the name states can be used up to 1800. Between runs, the molds are vacuumed and then wiped clean with a cloth and fresh SLIDE applied. The  aerosol can states that materials can be cleaned up post-firing with isopropyl alcohol.Over the ten identical runs (other than different colors of glass) there have been mixed results; slightly worsening each time. The first few times the glass slumped properly and the slight hazy on the back of the glass did indeed wipe away with a swipe of alcohol. Those runs used a mix of black/clear, assorted greens and blues.  

The next few runs used a lot of transparent dark colors like cobalt and garnet. The white haze left on the back of each noodle would NOT wipe or scrub away with alcohol. Soaks in hot soapy water did not remove all the haze. I treated these noodles the same as if I had stuck-on kiln wash, rather than Boron Nitride. An overnight soak in a bath of vinegar worked. Finally I resorted to just sandblasting the backs of the noodles for speed.

THEN it happened… same mold, same can of SLIDE freshly applied, same schedule… different glass….

Cracked the kiln lid 1/2 inch at 300 – my standard procedure – walked out of the room for 5 minutes and returned to the sound of Jiffy Pop coming from the kiln. A quick peek shows the Salmon Pink is breaking up and spitting glass bits all over.

 After cooling I found the Aventurine Blue had also stuck slightly, and when lifting away found glass pits on the backside where the glass had been pulled away – even from the ones that were NOT stuck.

Surprisingly there is no aventurine glass stuck to the mold. The bits just swept away easily. The Salmon is stuck in areas and underneath each Salmon strip the mold is pitted and damaged.

Now I’m stuck with a LOT of questions….

• Is there a slow degradation of the SS mold that’s not visibly apparent?
• With all factors being the same, why is the BN progressively harder to remove with each run?
• Why did the Salmon stick so badly?
• Does whatever makes ”aventurine” have a protective effect as mica would?
• Why didn’t I just use the darn kiln wash to begin with?

 

working with Bullseye reactive glass – part 3

On a 9×12 blank I placed four of the commercial brass stencils representing different types of leaves and ferns. Those were blasted and then placed irid side UP and capped with opaque turquoise 0116. It looked oh! so pretty! in the kiln with only the turquoise showing – then I flipped it over to find the entire surface had reacted, except one small corner. The edge of a fern was peeking out a bit from a swamp of deep russet brown. [edit in photo when found]

Not one to give up a good sheet of glass, I embellished the turquoise surface with hand-pulled stringers and finally got a predictable reaction on the surface. The odd backside is now a “feature” of this interesting piece – hah!

By making small trinkets and functional dishes utilizing different methods and colors of copper-bearing glass; most of the sheet was used up. I’m certain the backing to the platter was from the very edge of the sheet.

Firing schedules for inital fuses (Denver CS-60 or Paragon Pearl 22):

1. 300 – 1050 – 15
2. 75 – 1275 – 15
3. 350 – 1460 – 10
4. 9999 – 900 – 60
5. 160 – 700 – 0
6. 200 – 200 – 0

 

working with Bullseye reactive glass – part 2

BE suggests cutting the top layer (reactive ice) slightly larger than base. Strictly guesswork on my part but maybe it aids in stretching and breaking up the irid surface so the crackle can develop. I did not stick to this guideline due to the thin rim of irid peeking out on the bottom after firing. The top and base were cut flush. This could be a good design element by removing the thin layer of irid at the border before putting the piece together. The result would be a decorative border around the piece.

The next pieces are kiln-carved using 1/8th fiber paper under the entire piece. I thought that it would disrupt the irid enough to leave a distinct pattern but it did not. A nice little kiln-carving but certainly no different than using regular irid.

It matters ( a LOT) what part of the sheet the reactive ice irid is cut from. The irid is thinner or a different color. I think the sheet I was working from was a rainbow irid which would have silver irid on the other edges; or the iridizing was thinner.

This is again turquoise 1116 or light turquoise 1416. The spiral shape on the left tray (at top) appears to have a darker design but is a trick of the light. There is light transmission through the darker areas but lying flat it appears a very dark russet brown.

An Attempt was made to kiln-carve using fiber paper cut into leaves with emerald green 1417. There was no reaction at all in spite of multiple firings. The refires were to try and correct signifcant trapped bubbles between base and irid, around the leaf shape. I surrendered after 3 tries.

 

working with Bullseye reactive glass – part 1

Descriptions of outcomes while working with Reactive Ice Irid:

 In the cold sheet Reactive Ice appears clear. On my last order I jokingly told the BE sales rep I didn’t trust myself to have more than one deceptive glass on-hand at a time. There’s some truth in that so I ordered just the one sheet, with a plan to use it up in a short period of experimenting with the copper-bearing glasses. A list of those are on the BE website – all in the blue family of colors.

Use of the irid facing down toward the base sheet should give a crackled effect. I sand-blasted designs on the irid side to reveal more of the reactive surface with the intent to have a darker design within a field of crackle. I was pleased with the way it worked out. The interior irid flashes copper and bronze which complements the turquoise.

 

 

 

 

The above design was hand-cut on the fly from an aboriginal sun design using sand-blast resist. For the two trinket dishes (below) I used a brass commercial stencil and blasted away the irid in a fern leaf design. The glass is light aquamarine 1408.

 

Every journey begins with the first step

I’m embarassed to admit I’ve started at least two blogs over the past few years – one was lost because I could not find or match up an email address and password. The other withered and died due to neglect. I thought Facebook would be the answer to needing a central place to share glass ideas, photos and network with other glass artists. Turns out  it IS a wonderful place to connect with other people; also to make jokes, play mindless games and waste an amazing amount of time.

Now I’m back to where I started – in a place I can post glass pictues and talk about glass issues with like-minded people.   The Glass Niche is the name of a company I started about 8 years ago. (It has nothing to do with the Niche awards, though I covet one.) As I excitedly described the glass fusing process to my oldest daughter, she said simply “I guess glass is your niche”. That became the name of one side of my business, and I quickly nailed down the domain name. My primary work is promoted and sold under Malench Glass locally. Someplace in the cyber-world there is a half-empty store called Glass Niche that is slowly being merchandised.

Bright and early tomorrow the second step of my journey takes me to BE reactive glass.