Two different shows in two days!!! That was our weekend and it went by like a flash...First we went to a bead show in Orange County which is always one of Penny's best shows of the year. It did not disappoint this year and made up for some less than stellar shows prior to this one. It is a one-day show at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana which is only about an hours drive north for us. Yesterday was Cindy McQuade's studio show where I sold my glass and sculpture pieces. I'm happy to report that my copper, glass and steel sculpture, Cupricity, found a home. I also had several compliments and interest in my Bloom piece. The ornaments that Penny and I made all sold as did some tumblers, vases and bowls. It was a fun day and the food and company was great. Everytime I do Cindy's show it amazes me how creative our little group is; there are so many new designs people come up with for pieces in glass. Ann Mitchell does everything from paradise paints to solid glass work to blown vessels. She will mix everything she does and comes up with wonderful designs. I also met Patty Yockey who teaches ceramic and glass at UCSD and makes some incredible pieces. Although she was certainly no stranger to Cindy and the other artists, I don't believe she had done the show while I was there before...always fun to meet someone new.
More reports later and more auctions!

Dan

Boy did we have fun making some bowls and ornaments on Saturday. We put out three main colors and just went to town...pink, purple and apricot with a little white to add accent. I played with single and double optic mold patterns and the results were great...


We have also been making some ornaments and getting better and better at the whole process. Penny is really crazy about squashing the balls into lollipop shapes (big sweet-tooth).


We have to get that process on film sometime.

I don't think I'll be adding these to the website until the big Glass Show this weekend at Cindy McQuade's house (13644 Winstanley Way, Del Mar, CA). That's right...I almost forgot to announce it! Cindy's semi-annual sale is this weekend; Sunday, April 29 from noon to 5pm. Cindy and her friends make quite a spread so come hungry and browse all the beautiful glass!

Hope to See you there!

Dan

I am starting some ebay listings to sell some pieces and drive traffic to the website. I have done this quite a bit for Penny's work in the past and whipped out a fancy little graphics template that will allow me to drop new items in as I need to. The hardest thing about auctions is deciding where to start the bidding, if you should use a "buy it now" and the myriad of other crazy options they now have to help you sell your items more effectively (i.e. line their pockets with more moolah). There is also an Artist community link on craigslist that looks like it is used by several people to advertise their site. There is some nice glass on eBAY directly from the artists so I encourage you to browse my category as well as the Art--->self-representing artists section. I will be listing pieces in both categories in order to reach a broader audience. Here is a piece that did not make my Gallery page as I just finished the glass witha bit of sandblasting and have yet to complete the metal finishing.



I named it Industrialization, and like some of my other work, it deals with the development of technology to harness nature for our own ends. I guess in the case in global warming, it would be to our own END...


I am not set on the glass for this piece and may yet change it...I have some new red colors that work quite well and may give it a bit more of the flame look I was trying to achieve. Thanks for stopping by!
Daniel

Its that time of year when every other commercial is telling us to get in shape for the summer. Now they even have Valerie Bertonelli in on the act...Its just a matter of time before she is looking great, but forever her 'before' photo will be attached to her 'after'. I met a nice lady one time who actually carried her 'before' photo in her purse. She had gastric bypass and was very thin...hard to believe she had weighed well over two hundred pounds. I would think one would want to tear up every 'before' photo, negative and everything else that reminded you of the life you tried so hard to change. That's just me, I guess. When something reminds me of a bad situation, I have no problem with a trip to the dumpster with it. Even then, I can't completely get away from it. Seems my mind is like a hard drive from a Law and Order episode; every once in a while the forensic experts are digging up something I tried to delete but couldn't.
Speaking of dumpsters...aren't they great...even better though is a dump. When I was a kid, my friend and I would go and visit an unofficial community dump to play in the mounds of crap. There were ropes hanging from trees that encircled the junk and you could swing from one side to the other. I guess we went looking for stuff, but all I remember is jumping around like an idiot. In East Texas, my Dad had a cabin and there was a dump for all the people in the county. Not sure how they select a dump spot, but this was way down a winding dirt road. At the end was a big pile up junk, usually with something burning a little and some guy in a pickup truck with a bed that had a pile of aluminum cans ten feet high. He had put wire all around the bed and just filled that truck with cans. I wonder if he was collecting or if one day he would sell them. Most recently, Mom and Dad have a cabin in Montana where there are neighborhood dump spots. Every couple days, you pack up all the garbage and head to the dump. These are pretty classy in Montana...they have big containers to throw your stuff into which smashes everything down and a truck comes around and takes it to who knows where. There's a nice guy who watches to make sure you do it right and will even help when something is heavy or awkward. He's there all the time...this is Montana folks and he sits out there in the cold waiting for folks to come and dump there junk. Just think about that the next time you are feeling a bit cold.
Oh right...the title of this entry is Before and After. Here's why...I showed you in my last entry the light pieces for a bathroom and the owner was nice enough to let me photograph the installation...thanks, Sharon!
Here are her fixtures BEFORE...



Here they are AFTER...


Wow...that was really a short entry when I finally got around to the subject at hand...

Dan

The question mark indicates that while I added a couple of new pieces to the website (see them here), only one was made this past weekend. The other has been with me for a while and is looking for a home. I plan on periodically bringing home pieces from our booth at Leaping Lotus to rotate inventory and get more stuff on the website. I really only had one additional piece to add this week as I spent the majority of time blowing light fixtures for a custom order. I was a little worried the colors would be hard to replicate from the sample I did, but they turned out nice.




These are for a bathroom in a lovely home in Escondido. The colors to match were gold and burgandy and the client was very happy with my sample. Penny and my sister, Kimmie, will be traveling to Oakland this weekend for a bead show and I will install the lights while they are gone. One little step between blowing and wiring/installing lights is the coldwork. I'll get some picture of this process the next time I do it. A little tip for other glassworkers out there...don't believe the hype about core drill bits. They certainly work, but you can do just as well with a carbide paddle bit you can buy at Home Depot or Lowes. Just make sure the bit is well lubed...I use a trick taught by Ed Schmid at a workshop (that's right, the book guy). He suggested using clay to form a little reservoir to hold water while you drill. I found some great clay from Playdough in the school supplies section of the drug store. The water "going down the drain" is a nice indicator that you are through the glass. I always get such a weird feeling in the school supplies section...its like summer is over again and here we go buying a huge supply of junk for the next school year...FLASHBACK! Anyjuay...Buy a few bit sizes to work up progressively to your final hole size and change your water often. Its a little scary, taking your drill to a fine little piece of art glass, but with a little patience (and lots of water) you should have no problem. BTW...a paddle bit I just purchased says it has a lifetime warranty! I'll let you know if they replace it when it goes dull, which I'm almost sure it will. That's my main issue with core bits...they don't last worth a toot!

Until next toot...er time!

Dan

The weeks fly by so fast...here I sit after my latest Saturday studio session thinking about the pieces I made (and wondering how I could have done better). Tomorrow Penny and I will drive by the studio and pick up the glass. Its a great rush to see the pieces at room temperture for the first time. When glass is worked hot, it goes into the annealing oven at about 900F and the colors can appear quite different at this temp. It is pretty rigid at that point, but must be slowly cooled over several hours to prevent sheer forces within its molecular structure from causing it to crack, or in the worst cases just explode. Hope I'm not jinxing myself by mentioning this possibility...I do feel pretty safe because the studio owner, Cindy McQuade, let me design and build the new annealer for her studio. I'm pretty crazy when it come to details and used some very heavy duty steel in putting it together. I will get some photos of it soon and discuss the design aspects of it that make it a little unique. Perhaps some glassblowers out there might like to use some of these ideas for there next annealer. Its been in operation for over a year now and doesn't show much wear. Well, I'm tired and the Sam Adams is chilling in the freezer...Will post some photos of the glass soon, until then, here is the annealer partially assembled in my garage...



Dan

Currently, I blow glass once a week on Saturdays for 5 hours. This week my wife, Penny, joined me and helped out with color choices and lots of little things that make blowing glass easier (shielding my arm, closing the furnace door, etc). She is also a great cheerleader and I always seem to push myself a bit more when she is there. As a jewelry maker, Penny has developed a keen sense for what people like in color. It's spring, so she immediately set me on the task of gathering up all my bright colors such as pink, green, orange, etc. It also doesn't hurt that these are some of her favorite colors. Here is a picture of all the colors laid out prior to making a vase (also pictured) now available on the Buy it Now page. Pretty cool 'Before and After'...don't you think? We had lots of fun and even started practicing our technique for making ornaments together. These are a big year-round seller and we did pretty good for the first time; making several that, while not yet perfect, did still "work". In addition to vases, I made two sets of tumblers and have now stocked that page. Be sure to check them out and note the special pricing for buying the sets.

Until next time...
Dan

I just added a number of bowls and a plate and tumbler set to the Glassware section of the Buy it Now page. These are mostly from my last studio session in which I was using lots of green, blue and purple colors. I haven't really mentioned it, but I work alone most of the time. I heard someone compare this to trying to play in a one-man band before...meaning it just looks awkward. I guess if I tried to do too much this would be the case, but I don't attempt to make Venetian style goblets or items that would require a team of people to make. Still, having a glassblowing partner can make things a lot easier and if the two people work together enough it can surely lower your failure rate and increase the complexity and shear quantity of things you can achieve. I really love the solitude though and knowing that my work was solely influenced from start to finish by me. It is pure meditation...something akin to working on the weekend when noone else is around...no distractions, nothing but the sound of your thoughts. So how did I get off on this...oh yeah, the color thing. Without someone else there to help change colors, I usually tend to use what I have out to conserve time. Plus, my adrenaline takes over and just wants to get another gather from the furnace and make something else! It is addictive...glad I go tomorrow...I'm starting to shake just thinking about it. Here's one of the new pieces listed...




Dan

We have a carpet installation going on so its the perfect chance to add more content to the website. I have been held up in my new office all morning with our dogs and got on a Dreamweaver roll. I can't believe that I use to make websites with nothing more than Notepad for coding HTML text. Dreamweaver makes it so much easier and unlike some other editors I have used, gives you the same output on the browser that I see while in the design program. I use to wonder which would be better to use Adobe Pagemill or Macromedia Dreamweaver, but Adobe made it easy when they purchased Macromedia...hurray for corporate monoliths!
Anywho...I used a service that I came across when I first added a shopping cart to Penny's website some 8 years ago...Mals-e.com. Its free and its really easy to use...what better combination can there be for an artist? Please give my new Buy it Now page a visit and browse the selections. I try to give a little description about the process in making each design. I hope you enjoy this personal touch and again I welcome your input. Much more is coming and I will also start the eBay auctions soon.

Daniel

I purchased this webspace more than a year ago and have finally found time to add content. I do a lot of other website design and when combined with my artwork and other projects, I just never seemed to get around to it. For a long time I have been making the analogy to those who would ask about my website that "the cobbler's children have no shoes...". Finally...I can take a long exhale knowing that now the answer will be "yes, I have a website...thank you for asking". When I first purchased this space, blogging was really hot so I made the template around a home page which is a blog. This was a first for me, but with Dreamweaver and a little trial and error I think it came out pretty well. I plan lots of additions soon including order buttons for my work. This will likely be in the form of an entirely new page with blown glass bowls, vases, plates and tumblers for sale. Please take a moment and sign up for my Google Group and I can send messages when things are updated. Thanks for stopping by and please comment about the new site...Thanks, Dan