Ever wondered what a full time artist life looks like? Here are an informal look of the things that I get up to every week, some art related, but some not!
We are right smack in the middle of a 6 week beginning fusing class at the University of Utah Life Long Learning program, and having a blast, the class is marvelous. Sometimes in teaching you get lucky and have a group that is just fun all the way around, and this class is FAST, learning so quickly and mastering skills quick style. Love that!
To make my life easier, when I put student projects in the kiln, I have been writing the student names on the shelf paper with a metallic marker (from the Dollar Tree). The marker stays on the paper, so collecting student projects back up is a breeze! If we are on the second firing for the paper, I write the kiln map on a sheet of glass with a dry erase marker. And last of all, I take a picture with my phone so if I have any questions after firing, I can zoom in and read the names. A system makes it so much easier to handle student works, especially in a large class.
This month has been the month of new molds so far, I’m not sure if it’s the cold weather or what, but I just want to sit in the warm studio and carve new mold designs. Sometimes I have a hard time getting into the groove, it’s fiddly and difficult work, you have to compress a lot of dimension into a very shallow field of view. When things are rolling smoothly, I like to just keep at it as long as I can. So, new mold designs coming up!
In between all of that, I’m still trying to cram 20 years of glass fusing gack into the new studio. It is amazing what you can accumulate over the course of decades! One of the slightly surprising things (only to me, apparently, no one else was surprised) is how much vintage glass I own. Goodness! My next task here is to identify all of this stuff, figure out what is valuable and/or rare, and what is common. The common stuff is headed for fusing! Mixing the work with fun.
And last but not least, I leave you with the Hobbes. He is a big orange tom cat, who is normally a jerk, but so cute when he is squishy! That face!
