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Some art, some life, here and there

I’ve felt quite absent from glass lately. Going through the motions a bit as other areas of my life have required more attention. In spite of that, I celebrated 1 year of consistent practice in July! I made several pieces and partial-pieces recently that I’m very proud of, a few of which I included above.

Learning has felt both painfully slow and also sudden, immediate, like someone ran up to me in the street and hit me with one quick jab, but they’ve gone before I can follow what happened. It’s been a blur of a year. At the beginning I had such an appetite for anything and everything I could find about the medium. There is a shockingly low amount of glass content on the internet, at least for how often I wanted to think about it.

Lately there’s the fear of - what if this was just a phase and it all meant nothing? What if I do nothing in this art form and the intensity with which I desired to learn will fade or move to something else? That would cheapen the whole thing. How could I even believe myself the next time I purport to care about anything so much?

I am not being fair, I just need to get in the studio again after two months away. I do want other things with my life and I need to create in other ways, too. I’ve been trying to do everything. by @lifeofphish

I did my first cane pull!

I used Reichenbach Old Pink Rose. I like the color even more drawn out in cane! First we practiced with a mass of clear glass, then with our own bar, and it was just like all the YouTube videos I’ve watched so many times before this. You pick up the color bar, let it get cold, then gather clear over and marver into a soda can shape. Your partner should make a post, let it get cold, and cool high enough up the pipe so you can grab it close to the actual post. Now I better understand why folks wait to try pulling cane - you have to be comfortable getting the glass hot enough to pull.

I also really understand how much of a difference the pipes/punties make now. We used my instructor’s thicker puntie, but it was hollow inside so much easier to manage. If I’d used a shop pipe of that thickness, it would have been twice the weight and much harder! by @lifeofphish

$I had some studio time on February 14th! Since I made the booking myself, it was the first time I got to see “Trish” written on the annealer. I added an outline of a pink heart with chalk after I took the first photo 💗. During this time I made a pitcher and a cup in about 35 min and 20 min, respectively. The pitcher came together relatively fast, but developed a bit of a wobble as I finished the top - I think I was heating the lip too deep when I tried to put the spout in, but spot torching alone was not getting the glass hot enough. I also used large frit (chunks of glass color) in size 3 on the first gather, but it blew out to almost nothing. You can see some streaks on the piece. I want to test both - 1\ using larger color chunks (probably chunks off of some rod instead of frit) and - 2\ using this same frit size but putting it on the piece after the second gather The cup, I’m quite proud of! The walls are very straight and the lip is thin. I used this nice blue frit size 3 on the first gather so the frit blew out to be very large, which I really wanted, but the actually color came out white! I think that’s because there wasn’t enough material to maintain that saturation over so much clear glass, which is similar to what happened with the pitcher. Again, I want to retry using the frit later in the process and also using much larger color chunks right on the first gather. by @lifeofphish$

I went up to Corning NY for a week-long glass sculpting class right at the end of January.

⭐️In numbers:
- 6 days
- 20 finished pieces
- at least 3 failed-mid-making-and-didn’t-make-it-to-the-annealer pieces (which actually seems kinda low)
- 1 snowstorm avoided
- 10 new friends in a WhatsApp group chat
- endless learning

Being around so many creative, inspired individuals and hearing about their work was INCREDIBLE. I felt humbled to get to know them and work amongst them. It reaffirmed how important the act of creating things really is to me, just like it is for them. I have a whole lifetime of creative fulfillment ahead of me 😊. I’m getting to a place in my glassblowing where the point is more about the making than the having, which is where the magic really starts by @lifeofphish

some of the glass items I made in 2025! by @lifeofphish

learning stamp carving and printing a few weeks ago. These were eventually cut into cards by @lifeofphish

About 10 in this edition! by @lifeofphish