My how things have changed

When I first started this project, there were very clear ideas of what I was actually trying to do.  I was attempting to make a head of some sort, mine or perhaps someone else's.  There was going to be drawing, mark making, on the glass to help delineate the features of the head.  There was going to be some type of table with assorted bell jars with different scraps of memory to reference a brain.  There were going to be a lot of things, and a lot of things have changed.

When I make objects, and in glass it's very hard to NOT make objects, I have a very strong desire to work the hell out of it.  Call it OCD, call it the crazies, call it whatever you want, I work and work and work to the point of over working things.  Sometimes I just don't know when to stop.  Sometimes, I just scoff at the idea of less is more.  Sometimes I think my desire to combine disciplines is a smokescreen for not being able to settle on one thing.  I am trying to not do that with this piece, at least I am trying to not that with this piece anymore.  Logistically, I think it would be impossible to pull off my original proposal in a semester.  My classmates can agree I have worked a lot, and I mean a $#@*!^& lot, with little to show in the way of a final project, and time is running out.

There is a reason that clichés are around, more often than not they are true.  One heard in the art world often is "Less is more", one heard in the glass world quite often is "Keep it simple stupid".  One that is particularly hitting me at the moment is "Jack of all trades, master of none".  Simple design was something that I would witness a lot in Japan.  Hand made items there had a strong, yet simple, design sense and an openness that a lot of hand made items of western design lack or is covered up by excess (Chihuly anyone?).  My reference point for this is primarily the glass world, before I get angry emails from people about how I'm calling them slouches... I'm not.

This idea of simplicity, and to a slightly lesser extent openness to interpretation, are the guiding forces behind this piece now until completion.  The glass walls of the box have not changed at all from their construction, the only detail changed here was removing the drawing.  I have started to refer to the project as the box and not the head, most of that has to do with a reference to a head, or still space, perhaps a room, which is all up to the viewer.  I believe by stripping the excess away the viewer can attach whatever they feel applies to this construct of mine.

The front of the box is a different story, it has gone through a few reconfigurations of glass panels and windows.  My final thoughts on this will to be add more windows to the front to completely close off the structure, and to also stagger the windows as well... so it's not just 2 rows of windows, there will be no more point of entry on the front anymore.  The original intent behind the windows were "The windows to the soul", but my windows opened up to brain... not a soul.  Sounded neat when I first conceptualized it, not so much now.

The interior has gone through several reincarnations of what will be inside.  The first idea was the table with bell jars, lots of bell jars, or just cluttered with family items like any coffee table in any house in America.  Then on to stripping that down further to a table with 3 clear bell jars on top, and 3 opaque bell jars hung underneath the table. (I still really like this idea and will probably make this it's own piece in the future) A mirroring of good and bad thoughts.  Finally on to a chair, made out of the door I originally wanted to make into the table in the first place.  This chair, made out of a portal, is now the center of this little glass world of mine.

A physical, spiritual, lonely, exhibitionist, etc, etc, chair now occupies an isolated, enclosing, safe, fragile, bright, etc, etc, space.  What will it be to the viewer?  I don't know, but I do look forward to finding out what others will think of it, and what their stories are, when it's done.


A few side notes...

I was planning on doing this post at some point but a few things prompted me to do this now.  Nicky's conceptual post, which is a great read and you can find here.  The other is Woody's reply to the previous blog entry.  He's curious, as I think all of my classmates are, about what the hell is going on in my head... and I have to thank him for bringing it up.  He's my classmate, it's his job to do that.

BIG Update

There it is, in all it's cardboard goodness.  This is the life size mock up of my project, now just imagine all the cardboard as frosted glass and you'll get an idea of how the final will look.  While putting this together, the amount of information learned was great.  The configuration had to be moved 3 times to get the spacing in the grid right, and that was the main purpose of this mock up, to figure out the spacing.  The maquette was a, slightly flawed, model.  This has been much more informative in terms of placement, in the space itself, and the spacing of the larger panes of glass.

One of my goals for this project is to stay fluid and roll with whatever comes down the pipe.  Today was a great reminder for this attitude.  I had wanted to get at least one column hung for my progress crit this Thursday, sadly this will not happen and it has to do with this guy here.

The image above is called a lapidary wheel, it's a large steel disk that turns at a high rate of speed.  This type of wheel has several magnetic disks in many grit sizes, a typical selection is 80, 220, 400, 600, and cerium (final polish)... it's just like sanding wood, only with water.  It has a water feed to keep glass dust contained and to keep the temperature of the glass cool while cold working.  It also is the only way to finish the small glass pieces that need polished back to shiny glass goodness.  The problem is I'm missing the next step in the polishing process, one was ordered for me but has yet to arrive.  I tried going to another studio today, Glass Axis a public glass studio here in town. However they do not have the disk in the grit I need.  I also tried using a wet belt sander as well, that marked the glass too differently so I will wait and use the same tools for consistent results.

Remember these, well due to my wonderful math skills... the photo above has changed into the photo below.

That's another 62 small pieces to bevel.  It's not all bad in glassland though... they only need two steps in polishing to be finished.  While waiting for the rest of the small glass pieces to arrive, I went ahead and kept working on the half that will need to be polished all the way.  Today I did manage to get 30 of the new small pieces roughed in, I'll have them all finished in no time.

The two pictures above are showing the gluing process.  I can get the small pieces that are going to be sandblasted in place and set, while continuing to work on other things.  Like more grinding.  All the small pieces need work of some kind, however all the large panes need the edges taken off so I don't cut my fingers while working.  Last count was 18 had been worked on, leaving about 15 or so to do.  If I get real sick of grinding glass I can keep gluing.  The glue being used is called Hxtal (Hex-tall), it's a 2 part epoxy with an extremely long curing time.  It takes a couple of days to set, a week to cure.  Those aren't the same pieces of glass in the pictures by the way, they are 2 separate batches.  Once the glue sets, those pieces come off the table and the new batch gets started.

Once the large panes are being glued, I can grind more glass, or go work on the hardware configuration.  The picture above is the hardware layout for the top row of panes.  Nice and clean, unfortunately I did not get a picture of the finalized layout I came up with today and will post it later.

The specialty hardware arrived and it is sexy, try to deny it.

This is most of what I have been up to since last crit.  This doesn't include getting ready for sandblasting or ordering more hardware for the final hang.  There has been a lot gone into this project with much more to go.  It has been a lot of 18 hour days.  It has been moving into the mindset of "This is my job".  

That last sentence, I feel, can sum up how I'm feeling about everything right now in the program.  This is my job, sure it is tough sometimes.  Sometimes, it makes my head hurt.  Sometimes it's scary, exciting, and awesome all at once.  The entire time has been fun, and I hope my job stays like this forever.

Suppliers page added

So at the top of the blog is the suppliers tab.  This is the info I have been using for just the first project, as the MFA program continues I will be adding to this list over time.  The idea is to have a database of contacts for other people to use.  It also serves as a type of "back up" for my sketchbook, just in case something were to happen to it.

Forward motion

So here is the maquette in it's finished form.  This is one of the better pictures too, I found out that photographing plexi is a lot like photographing glass... hard.  The working scale here is 1 inch to 1 foot.  The frosted plexi squares are 2 in. X 2 in.  So a working height of 6 feet hung from a 8 foot (from the floor) ceiling grid.

This is the foot print of the piece on the floor in tape.  I know you can't really see it but I wanted to show this photo for the light in it.  This is the light coming into the MFA space every morning and it is beautiful.  I think that light in combination with lots of frosted glass will be spectacular, hell that box is going to glow.  So here's the foot print without the funky angle.

The spacing of the columns was a problem on the maquette, I'm trying everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen for the final build.  To figure that out, it's going to take another model.  A "to scale" model at that.  I'll be taking 2 ft. square pieces of cardboard and arranging them to figure out the best spacing.  Keep in mind there will be "dead zones" in the grid from the hardware that keeps it together, I'm trying to hang the piece with that in mind.  The final model won't be finished until the end of this week, and that's if everything goes smoothly for the rest of this week.  I want to get some pictures of people standing around it for scale... maybe some of my classmates?

The specialty hardware I need has been ordered, the glass I need (that I had miscalculated about) has been ordered as well.  The glass should be here at the end of the week, the hardware order will be filled in about 2-3 days with another 5-7 days for delivery.  I'm working on having the polished glass reinforcement panels done by the end of this week, Sunday at the latest.  The next batch of panels coming in will sandblasted, so not much cold working there.  

Working with glass can be tricky, it's more practice than anything else.  I have to keep in mind the Fiberwave video and bend with any changes that might come my way, there is a way around any problem.  Gaming circles call this the "way of the water warrior", having a plan but being fluid enough to react to anything that can happen and to remain fluid through the encounter.

Transparent technology

Transparent technology, where the concept is the most important element and the technology backs it up.  This  piece is called Fiberwave, by Mokoto Sei Wantanabe.  It is a sustainable, kinetic sculpture that runs off the wind and stored sunlight to glow.  Simple, readily available, technologies making art.  

The only thing this video really doesn't give you is scale.  There is another video showing the installation of a Fiberwave sculpture (I'll see if I can edit it into this post) and the poles are about 15 feet high, maybe 10 it's hard to say.  They are much taller than the people installing them.  With stronger gusts of wind the poles really bend and get a very surreal feeling to it.

Depending on where this was installed you could really take advantage of the wind in certain areas.  How fast would this move in Chicago?  What if the color was played around with?  The color of the lights as well?  What if it was on top of a building, or maybe on the exterior walls of a building?  I just want to play around with it, because it moves and looks so cool.  I'll take 2 please.

Progress crit

My crit went really well today, at least I thought so.  I felt a little scattered with how I presented some of the information, but felt it was a flowing encounter that moved at a good pace.  I feel that I was able to talk about my current project in technical and conceptual terms, and be able to answer any questions that my classmates might have.  There are a few things that made this possible... a working maquette, material tests, a slide show of process in the Sculpture Studio (my studio away from the MFA studios), and all the notes I have been taking up until now from this summer.  Basically, being prepared.  My classmates and instructor (Ric Petry) offered up good insights and are making me think things through, they are doing their jobs and I thank them for it.

As the project has evolved, the prime execution of it has stayed the same.  Cut, polished, drilled, and Hxtal-ed glass hung from a ceiling grid in a box form.  The main thing that is presenting itself as fluid are the details.  Gone are the eyes on the windows, and actually all the drawing on glass of this project has been scrapped for something more... open and  inviting to the viewer to make their own inference on the work.  I'm trying to let the material have it's own dialogue, or at least do most of the talking, and I'm just making a structure for it to talk from.  In a lot of ways this is like working with hot glass,  it's starting to feel that way anyway... I'm using tools to talk to the material, but ultimately it's the material doing the talking in the final piece.  

Lots of little edges

This is what I have been busy with for the past week.  At least doing 2 stacks of 10 panes per day (more if time allows), each stack of 10 takes an hour to bevel 3 sides.  I am taking a little time off from this part though, my wrists and fingers are locking up faster each day so a little rest for the hands is in order.  These are the reinforcement panels for my larger sheets of glass.  These measure 2 1/2 inches wide by 5 inches long, and I ordered a gross (144) of them.  Do I need 144 of them? No.  But, like any glassblower, I believe in having more than what I need in case something does go wrong... if I happen to drop one, or not having enough water when drilling the holes and the friction cracks it, or my dog's tail knocks a few off the table, you get the point.  Redundancy in materials, having your bases covered with the same solution just multiples of it.  It goes to the big panels as well.


*edit* Remember up above when I said I didn't need 144 of those small little pieces?  I was wrong.  Redoing some of the math I am actually short by about 70 pieces, when I was tabulating how many I would need I was only counting the reinforcements for ONE side of a 2' x 2' pane.  The good thing is I caught it now, not when I'm trying to everything glued up and hung later.  I will still have extras, which is good since I had 3 casualties today out of 50 pieces.

This is my crate of glass goodness, this came to the Sculpture Studio yesterday, and that made me very happy.  There are 36 panes total, I need 31, so there is room for error... just not a lot of room.  The edges of these 2 foot square panes of glass will be beveled enough to take the edge off, so a millimeter at most here.

I'm thinking about the material, and for a project this size material is very important, what you use is just as important as how you use it.  I'm also doing some research into more conceptual art and those books arrived today in fact.  In my head the project has undergone a transformation, at this point I don't know if I'll be drawing on the glass, and most likely won't.  I do plan on writing on it, text from myself, my Mother and Grandmother will adorn 3 of the sides of the box.  The remaining wall will be blank in reference to my Grandfather, who is gone.  The project is starting to feel like a family room, that room in the house that everyone would hang out and talk in, maybe watch some T.V. or a football game.  That room is usually filled with mementos of the family that lives there, little figurines, photographs, and books.  The thing is I'm getting that vision of it completed in my mind's eye.  I can see it and as I work on the glass it gets more clear everyday, I have most of the materials now and nothing is going to stop it... except exhaustion.