Best of Luck to JC!

It seems as if we’re having a change of the guard here at Watch Me Create.  JC is moving on with her adventures around the country so be sure to continue following her blog to see where she is next and what she is up to.  As you saw from her last post, she’s on to some really cool fused tiles with a style all her own.

We’re sad to see you go, JC, but excited to see what you come up with next!  Good luck with your travels and I’ll be seeing you in Tucson next month!  Maybe we’ll see you back on WMC sometime soon.

If you, or someone you know, would like to be a part of Watch Me Create, drop me an email so I can add you to the waiting list and be watching for new contributor introductions in the coming days!

Fiber-Inspired Fusing

I’ve been working on these tiles for awhile now. Since fusing is mostly comprised of my least favorite activity (prep work) and the process is a bit slow and tedious, it’s taken me a little while to build a small collection of these.  Originally I began to create them in order to cobblestone and mortar them into a large tabletop for an effect that I felt could only be achieved by massing the tiles together.

The entire design was inspired by an art quilt by Melody Johnson (www.wowmelody.com) called Streetdance (right). As soon as I saw a picture of this quilt I fell in love. I just kept thinking about how it looked like cracked glass tiles and that I wanted to make something like in glass.

Being limited in my ability to fuse large pieces of glass in my 18” fusing kiln, I quickly settled on making smaller tiles and piecing them together to achieve the big piece that would best voice my interpretation of the quilt.And so I began the prep work and, eventually, the fusing.

As I began the process, I realized pretty quickly that this was going to take me a really, really long time. And it became a long-term, always working on it in the background sort of project, which is something I tend to enjoy and dig into quietly. And by the time the Art Glass Invitational rolled around last August I had a small collection of tiles and decided to bring them with to show my friends what I was up to. And they were surprisingly well received. I traded most of them away and came back with the realization that one these tiles could stand alone as a little piece of art all by its self! I could make stands for individual tiles and I could piece smaller collections together and frame them. I could even top smaller pieces of furniture and, one day, sometime in the future I can finally fulfill my original vision and I’ll create the big table or super long sideboard I first saw in my mind’s eye!

 

With these tiles I learned how to adjust my vision based upon the advice of people whose opinions I respect. Yes. My original, very grand vision will be great… but all the other ways to use these tiles including actual installation in the home are also outstanding! I’m not sure I would have been able to see this if it weren’t for others pointing it out to me.

JC Herrell is a glass artist who blogs from her home studio in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. See more from JC at JCHerrell.com or jcherrell.blogspot.com

How To Take A Hint

I leave a lot of my creative process up to chance, fate, coincidence or whatever you may choose to call it. By that I mean that I have very few creative goals for myself, rather I let inspiration find me in whatever form it happens to come (or not come). I commonly find inspiration from friends, other mediums of craft, and random ideas that pop into my head. But sometimes inspiration also comes to me in clusters of hints (or suggestions) from several different sources.

While I usually jump enthusiastically into inspiration, for some reason when it comes in the form of hints I resist a little. Perhaps it’s because it feels like I’m being told what to do by something other than my creative source. I’m emotionally stubborn like that. But in theory I have to grant just as much validity to inspiration via hints as I do inspiration via some source I’ve judged to be more divine. I mean who am I to judge inspiration?

This time the hints began with several requests from customers for smaller beads that could be used for bracelets. I ignored the requests and responded with apologies that what I’m currently making doesn’t work for them. Then I received several inquiries to see if I made sets of beads. I happily ignored this hint as well and responded with apologies that what I’m really only inspired to make focal beads at the moment but that, on a rare occasion, I do make sets however I don’t have any plans of doing so at the moment. At the end of this cluster of inquiries I knew I was being hinted at by inspiration. But I shook my head and continued ignore them.

But finally, inspiration became very insistent. At the Female Flame Off I won a lovely prize package that included a tool I didn’t think much of at first. Truthfully, my first conclusion about the tool was that it would look nice hanging on the wall as it’s a fairly tough looking tool. I call it the smoosher but it’s probably called something like a curved masher. I know that it was manufactured by Nortel, but that’s about it. And, at first, I did hang it on the wall and went on with my life. Until one day when it all seemed too obvious. I had received so many requests and now I have a tool to mash small beads into a lovely curved tab shape. How could I resist any longer? I started making and smooshing beads and… don’t tell anyone… I liked it and will do it more.

JC Herrell is a glass artist who blogs from her home studio in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. See more from JC at JCHerrell.com or jcherrell.blogspot.com

Second Annual Female Flame Off - Preparation and Process

In preparing for the 2nd annual female flame off this year, I gave myself a challenging creative adventure. Flame offs are neat events! Usually, lamp workers compete in two hour time frames to create their best work. And then work is then entered into categories (like wearable, marble or functional) and winner of each category is determined by a panel of judges.

They’re great to attend! The crowd mostly consists of lampworkers and people excited by lampworking so the socializing and networking is exciting all on it’s own. In addition, watching the competitors work under pressure is great! It’s fun to watch the pieces come into being and watching the artists deal with the challenges of creating under pressure. Add competing in the flame off and the event becomes really exciting! And I am a competitor.

 

This leaves me, as a glass artist whose skill is in bead making, with interesting challenges. Beads are not often represented at flame offs. Mostly the artists create in boro and create work like goblets or marbles.

I’ll be doing what I know best, which is beads. However the idea of a bead, or a couple of beads just sitting on the table didn’t feel like a good representation of the artistic quality of beads among these larger works of glass. In terms of making a statement, it seems to me that a couple beads sitting on the table can’t annunciate very well. So I became determined to make a stand and two beads to sit on the stand.

Right away I envisioned a “U” shape on a pedestal with a bead sitting on each end of the “U”. The challenge was finding a way to hold that “U” up. I’m just learning to make proper goblet feet and they’re far from consistent. I would even call them wonky (the picture makes my foot-making attempts look far more graceful than in real life). And since I think a wonky stand would really take attention away from the beads, I quickly eliminated a traditional foot as a way to support the stand. (In fact it’s important to me that the stand take very little visual attention, even though it took almost all of my actual attention in preparation!)

To substitute for a foot I experimented with some other alternatives, include large weights and organic looking structures. In the past, I’ve sometimes pulled the top off of wineglasses and then the pulled the stems into a point as a way to support one bead at a time for bead shows, so for a little while I even thought about using pre-made wine glasses to create the stand. I thought I might remove the top and foot from one glass, bend the stem into a “U” and attach it to the foot of another glass. I even bought some wine glasses from the thrift store and tried to see what I could do but the glasses were too shocky and difficult to work with so I took it as a sign to get to work learning a way to make a stand myself, the hard way. I wasn’t about to give up on the stand, mind you. It is too important to the statement I want the beads to be able to make!

 

Finally, I thought about ways to use legs to form a base for the stand. And I pulled out the books to stock up on knowledge. (I turned to Contemporary Lampworking by Bandu Dunham and Glassblowing by Homer Hoyt.) What I came up with is a tripod design.

Nice and clean and simple, but required much skill building on my part. I was challenged by keeping the legs in an even tripod and getting the feet to sit level. I was challenged to get a nice wide, but still smooth “U” shape. I was challenged to find a way to attach the legs to the top and get the darn thing straight! I was challenged at almost every turn. And it was nice to feel my skills build. It took a little while to get the design and the process down. But after I felt I had the process down I started to time it. At the torch off I get 2 hours at the torch.

The first time I timed it the stand took an hour, which wouldn’t leave me enough time to make the two beads. So I repeated the process over and over until I was able to bring the process under 40 minutes (barely). And with the bead making that takes the entire process to just under 2 hours. I am writing this post before leaving for the flame off and asked Lori to post it after the competition, so currently I’m still unsure if 2 hours will be long enough I’ll have to check back in to let you know if I was able to get everything done. If I take longer, by the way, I’m disqualified from the competition. Bummer.

 

JC Herrell is a glass artist who blogs from her home studio in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. See more from JC at JCHerrell.com or jcherrell.blogspot.com

 

 

Cutting Edge Bead Design

A little while ago I found myself with a rather large molten wad of glass at the end of my mandrel.

I had lost myself in thought as I added rod after rod to the “bead”. Of course I was giving very little thought to what I was going to do with all this hot glass.

So when the mandrel finally got heavy enough to force my attention on it I found myself mushing the mass of glass into a cone… I even started to take out some aggression on the poor thing.

After a little while I had a very off center, very large bicone…. and no interest in finishing the shape.

I spied a knife sitting on a plate left over from lunch (this is not an admission of eating in my studio, by the way). I took the knife, wiped it clean on my pants and started carving into the bead.

I liked the way it felt. I liked the way it looked. I liked how it forced a bulge into the straight line of the bicone. I liked that it left a distinct crease with detailed and sharp angles at the bottom of the valley it created. I just liked it! It felt good. So I kept going. And then I coated it with enamel and reinforced the shape with using only my knife from lunch.

I went on to fall in love with the results of the hour and a half I spent creating that bead. I loved finding the process. I love the beads that result. I love seeing people react to the different-ness of those beads. And I really loved discovering the perfection of my butter knife! It totally lacks serration so there’s no threat of unwanted texture. While the “cutting” side is thin and sharp for fine lines the other side is thick and square to make wonderful sharp, thick indents in the glass with crisp edges. And the cutting side is gently tapered towards the end of the knife which allows me to roll off the bead so nicely… I’m so pleased that this perfect knife has serendipitously found its way into my work!

OK. Back to the beads.

After that first journey with the knife I started to look at different ways to affect shapes with it. And I started to think about size, which of course matters. In order to really have fun carving into the glass and to have enough to really get it moving around in a way that excites me, I seem to need a good amount of it. So part of my challenge in this design is to keep the size down… or at least stay aware of it. And therefore my beads in this series tend to be quite large, 60-70 mm (2.5-3 inches) long. But that’s part of their statement. Though I have to admit I’m still working on knowing exactly what statement these beads fulfill.

So far, for me, it is an exciting process that produces exciting and sensual shapes which hold color and simple graphic design well. And I intend to keep enjoying it!

JC Herrell is a glass artist who blogs from her home studio in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. See more from JC at JCHerrell.com or jcherrell.blogspot.com