blog
Living in the glass house
Sep 5, 16:17
Ive mentioned before that I work at the Toledo Museum of Art’s hot shop. Well, now that the new Glass Pavilion is open I can finally say that I work in one of the top 3 hot shops in the country…maybe in the world! We literally went from a shack to a palace. There are only 3 areas on the first floor that are not made of glass. Its like living in a glass house! Beautiful!! One can blow glass and see one of the top glass collections in the world right behind them…..very inspiring!
The week of our grand opening was so crazy…..I put in over 24 hours of over time in, in which I enjoyed meeting some of the top glass artists in and out of the area. Fritz Dreisbach came to demo with Shawn Messenger and her husband Jack Shmidt. Other artists such as (goblet master) Jeff Mack and Phil Yamin from the Henry Ford Museum and (the swedish trained) Boyd Brothers from Foci Glass were there to dazzle us with their techniques! Other demonstrations by local artists like Tink & Jonh (Black Swamp Glass), Mike Wallace (Village glass), and the list goes on!
Patrick and I also demonstrated during the Opalescent Occasion evening, in which we captured the moment by making a cane drawing vessel of that very evening. The Director of the museum told me that they would like to keep our piece for the TMA’s archives! Wow! Finally, a piece that we made might go into the museums collection!
other quick news: I just started selling bead sets on e-bay! Its really weird to put a piece of yourself out there and see what happens. Cool…...but weird! Im so used to making single focal beads that I forgot how fun it is to make sets. I have been so inspired by all of the beadmakers i see on ebay! Its only been maybe 6 months since I “found” the beads on ebay and got sucked in….......sucked in to watching everyone selling their beads…....sucked in to their web sites…........and i found this really amazing community of people!
I obviously dont spend enough time on the internet! LOL ! its weird just writing these blogs! But I check on other people sites to see if they write anything, and boy do they ever!! So Im trying to keep up with the “jonses” and come out of the shell as much as I can to let you all know whats goin on with me, Pat, Slicker, Alex and the good ole’ TMA hot shop!!