First class in Las Vegas!

Today's class was Kiln Formed Collage. Nicole and I led 9 awesome students in the principles of collage making. Here ate some pictures. After class, Nicole, Sam, Lisa and I went to Spago for dinner at Ceasers. Dinner and the company was great.

Marjorie Simon-enamelist extrordinaire

Have Marjorie here was a breath of fresh air! Every student seemed to love the experience, including me.

Heres some pix!

Finished Another Baptismal Font!

Hello World! It's been 17 days since I blogged about anything. Can you believe that I've been feeling guilty?

Here are the pictures of the Baptismal Font for Our Savior's Lutheran Church in College Station, Texas. Their colors in the sanctuary are deep blues with touches of ambers and aquas. They wanted their font to evoke the feeling of water and tie in the colors of the sanctuary. They will be building a new stand for the font.  I can't wait to see it in the space. Pardon the reflections!

Our Savior's Lutheran Church Baptismal Font

View from the top - Our Savior's Lutheran Church

This is what the cast disc looked like...to see the
filled casting, you can check out the previous blog entry.

The last 2 weeks have been a roller coaster ride. I'm finally catching up with my school reading. I was 2 weeks behind on my reading and assignments, but I'm almost there. Spring Break for my son brought it's own time challenges, but that's almost done too. ...and our computer at the studio crapped out once again sending all the administrative stuff and into a tizzy....and me with it. Cathy who had to work with customers in the midst of this stayed calm! Stacey rode in on the white horse, and tried to save the day, (multiple times) mostly she was successful in keeping me calm and not allowing me to melt into a puddle on the floor. Thanks to Ed and Stacey for finally fixing it!

Enough whining!!! All is well in Gail-land and WD-land now! Thank you patron saint of over committed people everywhere!

So...  Mark Ditzler, an artist from Seattle came to teach about 12 days ago. He was wonderful! A very cool guy! He taught a lot of different glass techniques. His techniques were not new to me, but how he executed them was totally new to me. It's funny to discover that just because you know how to do something, doesn't mean you know the best ways, or even other ways to achieve the same thing. I always learn something from every instructor who comes here.

How Mark combines many of the techniques together into cohesive projects was the best lesson of his four day workshop. He demonstrated a few projects that he is well known for, but they are so elementary for him that I had to laugh! This guy has done some very complicated and exciting architectural glass work that isn't even on his website. Here are some of the simple demos he did.

Mark's dragonfly with silk screened wings.
He uses these in sinks, etc. So simple, but totally effective and powerful!

Mark's fish - Pretty realistic, and not cartoon-like!

Mark's Pattern Bars - Bilateral Symmetrical Fruit!
The students made butterfly wings, lemons, kiwis, etc.

Mark's silk screened sea shells!

I'd love to have Mark come back and do an advanced class on architectural design. The stuff he's cast is amazing. But we'd need 2 months just to anneal the suckers!!

Then Rene and I co-taught a combined Soldering 1 & 2 class. She taught part 1 and I did part 2. We had fun! But then we stayed until 7:30 at the studio doing our thing! Kaye, one of our students, had a ball! She's so much fun to hang around with! The other three students had a great time too! Although I think we overloaded them a bit.

He's my mixed metals pendant with bezel cup setting and custom bezel set dichro cabochon.

This week I taught on Thursday night, and Friday and then Lisa Meyer (she's awesome) came by to help me do more printing samples and non-dichro jewelry samples for my classes in Vegas. I'll post when finished so you can see the results!

Heidi was in the studio a lot this week! Love having her around! She'd doing great stuff! She's spinning as many plates as I am! I'm impressed! Go girl!

Another Baptismal Font! City Year Event Pictures!

The City Year Gala event was Tuesday February 28th. Here are a few pictures featuring the vases we made. One of the vases was a gift/award for this years chairman, Gordon Hartman. 

Gordon Hartman accepting his vase as an award at the City Year Gala 2012 

Another Shot!

Here's a shot of one of the tables!

Thanks to all who made this happen! Especially Stacey C, Stacy L, Judy H, Rene J, and Heidi A! These ladies helped smash glass, prime molds, grind discs, vacuum kilns, wrap vases, and keep my spirits high during all the drama. I love the WD girls!!!

I started the newest commission today. It's another Baptismal Font. This one is for Our Saviour's Lutheran Church. I really love doing these bowls! Anyway, the client loved what we did for Zion Lutheran Church and asked that we do a similar design, but with their colors. We were happy to oblige! Their sanctuary has much more amber light, so we added an amber tint to the mix to make the light coming from the bowl more "golden." I think it will be beautiful!

Here's the glass we choose, later we decided to add 1414 also!

This is in the kiln right now!

 I'll post tomorrow from Mark Ditzler's class at Wired Designs Studios!