This course will focus on efficient glassblowing. By breaking down the processes and working in clear, the course will address blowing it at its fundamentals with discussions on heat and heat placement. Tumblers, cylinders, bottles and bowls will be approached with simplistic methodologies, as instruction will be personalized and detailed according to your level of experience. Through repetition, error and discovery, students will gain the confidence and skills needed to establish a solid foundation.
Prerequisite: 2 years of blowing experience required
Workshop: Collage- Personal Histories & Stories | 6.1
You will use your own images to print and collage onto tissue and other delicate papers. With these printed materials, we will use the chine-collé method to attach them to a paper substrate. Additional exploration of handwork, including embroidery, painting and drawing on the collaged tissue will be explored. Be inspired by your own personal histories and stories to create unique pieces.
In this intense five-day workshop we will unzip all the secret compartments in the caneworking suitcase to reveal what lies beyond the basics of Venetian cane and murrine. Taking simple, traditional cane techniques as a starting point, this workshop will explore the potential that lies in combining and synthesizing methods of generating regular patterns in glass in order to achieve innovative, original results. Cane techniques can be understood a means of assembling a glass envelope, which offers a different starting point from the more usual methods of inflating a homogeneous mass of glass. As such, a glass object becomes more related to collage and opens new avenues of discovery.
This class will take intermediate blowers back through the basics with a new comprehension of what to do and, more importantly, why. We will keep our focus on thoroughly understanding the material and how the relative heats are affecting it. The approach to making basic forms (cylinders, cones, pulled necks and bowls) will be broken down into step by step skill drills. Working in clear glass and finishing the pieces in stages, we can repeatedly and quickly practice our skills until they become second nature. There will be daily chalkboard discussion concerning individual expression, color applications, surface decorations and approaches to more complex projects. There will also be daily demonstrations by Randy.
Students should have more than 2 years of blowing experience.
Explore your contemporary ideas through Aluminum Etching. You don’t have to apply rosin or airbrush acrylic resist to the plate for aquatint as the aluminum automatically creates crystalline texture. Resists can be created by photo polymer film, acrylic medium, spray paint and frisket film. This non-toxic process will also be explored with the artist’s introduction of chine collé.
This is an intermediate / beginner class focusing on how to work with enamels and how to apply them. We will be focusing on applying wet enamel, capturing your own line drawings, on a flat surface then after the enamels are fired, we will stack them to create one-of-a-kind pendants. This is also a class for lampworkers. The last day we will take our tiles, and roll them up into beads.
In this workshop we will cover the basics of color theory using black, greys and white. Then we will substitute unlikely colors and exchange values and hues to create new unexpected results. Playing with random colors in this way can open up new ways to see and use color.
Any form can be realistically rendered in glass when reduced to basic shapes using a methodical approach. This hot-sculpting class will enable each student to examine shapes of interest, imagine them structurally broken down into parts, and then develop the necessary techniques to re-create them at the glassworking bench. Students will learn how to approach sculpting glass as they are introduced to the use of various torches, intricate bit work, components using the garage, and teamwork. Through sketching, practicing, and observing demonstrations, students will acquire a variety of shaping techniques and tricks for color application that will add a sense of realism and humanity to their work.
