what am i doing?

so a while back i was invited to be in a group show about design. i was invited as some of my production work has a design feel to is as it is not very functional but still references function. anyways i had been wanting to push the ideas in my production work to make some new work and thought this was a good opportunity to do this. the vase on the right was the prototype i made of a functional vase (as it still held water and flowers) but also had holes in it playing with the layering of light and colour density and the idea of function through the holes. it worked well and i thought i was onto something. that is until i tried to reproduce it. i had forgotten that rule when you wander upon a happy easy moment in making and then spend the next few weeks trying to recreate what seemed so simple. it turns out that what i did in the first vase was not easily reproduced, or atleast i haven't figure out all the kinks just yet. in the above image the vase on the left looks ok but in real life there are many things wrong with it, too many to list here and there are many new issues i need to resolve before i will be showing this work in any offical format like an exhibition. not a complete loss but too much to resolve right now with my deadline only a week away.



in making the vases with the holes, i had also been inspired to a similar idea but totally different approach and process. and i thought it seemed simple enough so i quickly booked in a blowing session where i tried successfully again a new techinque i had never done myself, where you stuff a hot glass bubble into a colour cup to get the colour on the outside of a vessel. Usually the colour is on the inside layer of glass and the clear is on the outside. the above vessels are black colour on the outside and the white circles are this vinyl resist that i use to mask off the area i want to remain black. then i sandblast the forms and the black that is not masked off is removed to leave a frosted clear glass.

the idea here is to make the holes positive and to make more of an organic or random pattern appear out of the over-lapping circles. again the first step was easy in stuffing the cups, although now i am sure on my next attempt it will be much harder. but it wasn't until i got to the sandblasting that i got held up.



again in the image this vase does not look too bad, but this was the second attempt, after ruining the first one with a hole blasted right through it by accident. this one is an improvement but the blasting took a long time as the layer of colour was very thick on the bottom half of the form. in the future i will need to try and make this layer of colour more even and thinner like the top half of the vase. i still have many kinks in both the design and making process to work out.



so after many long hours, last minute effort and not to mention cash i now had two "new" unresolved products that were not ready for the deadline of the exhibition.

during all this making time i was also working at my day job in the glass studio during the first two busy weeks of the training program and working extra hours to get my work done and then doing my own studio time on top of it. i was exhausted and my spirits down and feeling like a complete loser. as is the way when you attempt to make things that look so perfect and easy and simple in your mind.



with no time on my hands i went back to the back up back up plan and put into the exhibition the finished and resolved work that are my whole bowls or simply a bowl with a hole. i have been making these for about 4 years now.

i make about 40 or 50 a year and sell them through a few retailers. by no means do i make a living off them but i do manage to put the money made from these back into my practice giving me the opportunity to have a studio space and have my practice pay for itself; which is the goal of my practice from a financial perspective.

more on the exhibition in the next entry.