My Other Studio

I have another studio that has nothing at all to do with glass. In this other studio I work with colors and flame to change, rearrange and transform an organic material into something all together different. Wait, no that is what I do in my glass studio. Well, maybe the two are not so different after all.

My other studio is my kitchen. It is one of my favorite places to be. I enjoy making people happy with what I cook and I love the process so much. For me, cooking is like glass, it is part science, part art and all passion. Previously I worked as a chef and although I do not do it full time anymore, I still love it.

I am catering a gourmet dinner for four this weekend and today I am playing in my “other studio”. I am doing some prep work for the dinner. Things that have to be made ahead of time for the best flavor. I am making soffritto today and I am making garlic comfit. The garlic comfit is not so time consuming but a good soffritto takes about 4 or 5 hours. By the time Saturday comes both of these should have full flavor and enhance the dishes I am using them for.

As with glass, in cooking the process is a huge part of what draws me in and keeps me intrigued. I love to watch glass as it reacts to the heat, to the flame chemistry, to items like silver and to other glasses that you mix with it. Today, with the soffritto I am making, that is what I am doing as well. The process is what is important and there is a reaction happening.

I am creating a reaction by applying slow heat, very slow heat so as not to burn it. Moisture is getting slowly driven out and sugars, acids and other flavors are getting concentrated and mixing together. I can see a very gradual change as the heat begins to caramelize the sugars. Heat control is of vital importance today.

I am also making an aioli with the garlic comfit I made. Again it is the process that intrigues me here. An aioli is an emulsion made basically with egg, oil, lemon juice and garlic (a mayonnaise). The acid in the lemon juice will help de-nature the proteins in the egg and that will allow the water in the egg and lemon juice to get caught up in the proteins of the egg and it will bind together with the oil. Sounds complicated but it really isn’t and it is very tasty.

The color pallet is also a natural draw for me. The stark contrasts of red tomatoes with the pale yellow and whites of onions or the earthen muted tones of garlic cloves against a sprinkling of deep green chives. There are so many possibilities.

The flavors again are part science and part art. I like to layer flavors so you get hints of different tastes as you eat. I like contrasts in flavor, texture and temperature. Of course you take the science, the art, the colors and the flavors and then add fire and who wouldn’t love it?

So, today I will play in my other studio and maybe go play with glass later. Somehow though I know they are both related. Creativity is often where you allow it to be.

Otter

Otter is a glass artist who blogs from The Pacific Northwest.

A Kilo of Happiness

I got a kilo of happiness in the mail!

No no no. Not that kind of kilo. Although it did come from a tropical island!

I love, love, LOVE larimar. Larimar is a rare blue gemstone found in only one square kilometer of the world — in the Dominican Republic. Larimar is a volcanic rock, and since it’s in such a limited area, it won’t be around forever.

It’s not often that you find jewelry made with larimar beads. There’s a lot of wasted stone when cutting beads, so it makes sense that they aren’t readily available. I feel lucky to have a source.

The other day I emailed my supplier and asked if any beads had come in (last time I’d asked, in February, he’d said there wouldn’t be any until September, but I figured there was no harm in asking). He said no, and he doubted there would be any at all until late next year.

Panic mode. No no no.

And then Divine Intervention — it must have been. Because he said, “Oh wait. I do have a kilo sitting here of all random beads that never made it onto strands. You want ‘em?”

Heck yes I wanted them.

Three days later, FedEx arrived, and I poured them out into a big serving bowl. (Cue angels). Aaaaaaaah.

I don’t know why, but I dearly love to sort beads. Sorting is also something I tend to do when the Creative Muse isn’t bothering to make a house call. So not only is this a mega mother lode of larimar beads, I get to sort and string and weigh and it will be an enormous pleasure.

However, I’m not looking at my credit card bill for a while.

Lori Anderson designs and blogs from her studio in Easton, MD. You can buy her work at her website, Etsy, and craft shows, and read more about her at her blog.

Orange Passion Pendant Renews My Interest in Making a Bead

Look! I made a bead!

Okay, so what’s so special about that, seeing as how I am a lampworker after all?

Well, I gotta tell ya that I may be the only lampworker on the face of the earth who never practiced making those 100 spacers or perfected a simple round bead. I suck at it. I discovered sculpting, my beads grew and grew larger until they became sculptures, and I rarely try to make a wearable piece any more. . .

One of the rules of marketing for an artist is to always wear a piece of your work if at all possible, so I try to keep one or two wearable overgrown beads to wear. Yesterday, I sold my favorite one, and I figured it was time to make a new one. That’s it in the picture, and I gotta tell ya I am pleased with it! It’s only about an inch long, but it sure packs a nice bit of orange-y pizazz.

Whoops, I gotta run! Gotta fit in some torching time today. . . and methinks, I’ll be making one or two beads just for the fun of it!

AngelinaBeadalina is running behind yet again and so instead of leaving you a clever message here will just say: www.angelinabeadalina.com for links to my blog, my Etsy shop, and my BeadArtists.org gallery pages.

Tool Testing (aka A Great Way To Get New Ideas!)

I was recently asked by Amy O over at www.zooziis.com if I might be interested in testing a new top secret tool for her. She said she liked the new things I was doing with Mixed Media Art and thought the new press might lend itself to things I could use in my pieces.

First of all, I gotta say… I was totally honored to be asked. Secretly, in the back of my tortured-in-high-school-always- picked-somewhere-in-the-middle-for-dodgeball mind, I hoped that someday I would be “good enough” to be asked to test something. LOL… silly, I know. (hmmm… now that I have had that secret wish filled, I wonder what one will replace it.) Anyway…

The tool is fantastic! Amy came up with the idea of having interchangable word plates that allow you to press messages into the surface of glass. They work with the texture plate presses she already has out. She let me choose a few words that I wanted to play with. I chose LOVE, DREAM, CALM, CREATE, & JOY. I picked words that spoke to me. I think JOY is such an under rated word, don’t you? It isn’t used nearly as often as it should. Looking back though, I should have asked for LIVE and LAUGH to go with LOVE because that would make a really sweet bracelet!

When the new tool arrived, I knew right away what I wanted to do with it… off mandrel flat back discs!! (what? wasn’t that what you were thinking? LOL) I think one of the reasons Amy asked me to test the tool was that she knew I wouldn’t go for the “supposed to” way of using it. Paired with cabochon mandrels by Inspiration Toolworks, I was able to get out of my head just what I had in mind. I love these new clasps!! And I also used a couple in ACEOs that I have been working on (shown up top).

Eventually Amy gave me a gentle nudge and asked if I had tried using it on mandrel as it was designed. I was so excited by the results. I found that words came out really crisp and clear with opaque glass and more subtle in transparent colors. Both very cool, very inspiring findings. I love the texture of the word in the surface of the glass. You can run your fingers across the bead and feel the bumps of each letter. I love love love jewelry you can play with while you wear it, and these beads definitely lend themselves to that.

Anyone else ever tested tools? Did you find it inspiring? I would love to hear more about it. And if you make beads and get one of these tools, I would love to see the kinds of things you came up with for it!!

Kerry Bogert is blogging about her glass art beads and jewelry from her home studio in Ontario NY. Check her work at www.kabsconcepts.com.

Returning To The Old Things

This we be the first post in a series of two or three post I will be writing about combining techniques. This post will have no photographs but I will post photo examples in my next two posts.

I started out in glass art doing kiln work. I had no interest in glass beads at all. In fact I would absolutely say that when it came to beads, I just didn’t get it. I couldn’t understand what all the hoopla was about those round little bits of glass. I wanted to make sushi plates, candle stands, platters and slumped, fused glass art. I was well on my way to understanding the process and starting to make some pretty decent fused pieces.

Then, one day at the museum glass co-op, someone brought in a Hot Head torch and some glass rods. I wasn’t really interested in lampworking but I thought I would give it a try. Maybe I could incorporate some lampwork elements into my fused projects. If nothing else, I could at least say I tried it.

So, I sat down in front of the torch, stuck a rod into the flame and in just a bit, the glass I was holding actually started melting and moving. WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Look at that glass I thought, look what it is doing! Those first couple of minutes on that Hot Head torch changed my entire outlook on glass. I knew then that I was going to be a lampworker from that point forward.

I gathered the tools needed to do lampwork and started in like a mad scientist experimenting every day and working into the darkest hours of the night. Unfortunately I didn’t have anyone nearby to teach me lampworking so I decided to jump into it and teach myself as much as I could.

I completely stopped doing any fusing and slumping. The only thing the kiln was for now was annealing. I had forsaken fusing and slumping and dedicated myself to the torch. I am not a fickle person by nature but I had completely changed tracks in no time at all.

Fast forward several years now and I was out in my studio in the wee hours of the night working on teaching myself a new technique, new to me anyway and then it hit me. Hey, this would look good if I combined it with some fused work. Could it be? Did I actually say that? Yes, this piece would look really nice if I combined it with some fused work. So now I have to figure out how to do it. I am hoping it will turn out as nice as I think it will. When I get it worked out I will post photos of it.

It has occurred to me on more than one occasion that each and every artistic media, technique or style I have ever learned, even though I may not have continued with it can always be combined in a totally unexpected way. I know most of us have worked in other media. I would encourage you from time to time to sit down and think about the different techniques you used and how they may be applied to the current media you are working in now. This can really help you think outside the box and possibly point you in a new and exciting direction.

Otter is a glass artist that blogs from the Pacific Northwest.