Fire and Glass

I like fire.  For many of you this will not be a surprise.  I got the chance a few years ago to go to a lampwork bead class at the John C. Campbell school in North Carolina.  It was a great class.  Lots of folks there who had been working with torches and glass for years.  I think I was the only one who had never sparked a torch to life before.  Pattie was a great teacher.  It was her first time teaching and I think her being nervous actually made me feel better.  That sounds strange doesn’t it?  But it’s true.  The more she worried and fretted about teaching the more at ease I felt being a total nube working with glass. She did a terrific job and I really and truly enjoyed the class.  So much so that I requested a starter kit for my Christmas present that year.  Here is a link to the beads I made during my first class. I can tell you it’s not easy to photograph the little buggers.  So my pictures are all kinds of bizarre.   As you may be able to guess I like blue and white.  Again shocking to those who know me.  The short story is that even though I’ve had the starter kit for 2 years I’ve not had anywhere I could safely set it up to make beads.    So all of the equipment has been hanging out waiting patiently for a plan to emerge. 

SOoooo last year Betty and I went and took and a Cloisonne class and a metal smithing classes.   That spured on the interest in having our own workshop.  We are fortunate enough to have 2 2-car garages that came with our house.  The first is attached to the house and had all kinds of cabinets and a closet already built into it.  The second garage was built by the previous owner to work on his antique cars.  It has been under construction to become a full fledged workshop.  

Betty has been leading up a team of folks who have insulated, panelled, painted, moved cabinets, put on gutters, re-worked the drainage around the foundation, put in a large dryer vent and is now looking at connecting the dryer vent to two stove hoods to vent out the fumes from the torches and the kiln.  (the story of how I got the kiln is a whole different post.)  It is nearing it’s completion and I’m starting to get really excited about how it’s all going to come together.  I will post pictures soon of the workshop once it is set up and running.  I’m sorry I didn’t get more pictures of it as the work has progressed so you could see all the stuff Betty and Eric have done. 

Betty and I made another sojourn to John C. Campbell school at the end of January.  I took a second bead class and she took a silver smithing class.  She made some amazing earring bezels and she reset one of her cloisonnepieces which looked terrific when she got done with it.  I took an intermediate lampwork bead class with Kimberly Adams. She is a phenomenal teacher.  I was in there with some amazing lampwork bead makers.  These folks were mostly professionals who had a minimum of 2-3 years of working as professional bead makers.  I felt majorly overwhelmed.

Due to SCA obligations I’d come into class a day late.  (Holly and Ivy was well worth it.)  I’d only ever been on a torch two years prior and then for only a weeks worth of class time.  It helped that I was in the same classroom, with the same torches.  I settled in and just focused in on not blowing myself up light the torch Propane Oxygen, turn off the torch Oxygen Propane… I wound a couple of simple beads and played with shapes and masking and dots.  ( I love dots).   Then Kim taught a demo.  I tried that bead and I was able to do it. Yay!  So then I just dived in with both feet.  My classmates were very supportive and I had a blast.  Here are the ones that I made in Class 2. 

So now you won’t be surprised when I post up photos of the studio once it’s all finished.