2 weeks away from One of A Kind, year 2

I'm in full on planning panic mode, and I've realized that this feeds my inner adrenaline junkie.   I have 184 pieces ready to be signed and packed, 35 pieces in the kiln or in progress and another 70 in my plans (30 of that 70 are 5"x5" or smaller, so I can get a lot in the kiln). 

I have spreadsheets tracking the pieces and how much glass I have left to work with, checklists, display stands and frames en route to my house and platform pieces waiting to be assembled to raise up my shelves.

Here is the planned vision for my booth:

Now I am trying to figure out which pieces go on which shelving units, and how to group the framed pieces on the walls.  Last year we were winging it, and I think it took much longer than necessary.  This year I'd like to have a plan so that everything looks organized and polished.

The other lesson from last year that I've been able to make use of so far is to queue up my fusing work differently.  In order to make sure that I can stay caught up at my engineering job as well as in my fusing I have planned differently.  I try to get a weeks worth of pieces cut and queued up during the weekend so that it's just 15-30 minutes a night during the week.  Just enough time to pull the last batch out, clean out the kiln and put the next batch in.  

I'm also trying to take advantage of bulk cutting.  When I cut a piece and have less than 1/2 a sheet left over (a sheet is roughly 20"x30") I look at that sheet and the standard sizes that I use for bases.  I cut that sheet as efficiently as possible to create those bases and stack them out of the way.  That way, when I go to create the queue for the week a lot of the bases are already cut.

 In the photo above, the pieces on the far left standing on end are the bases that are waiting to be matched and used, the front center are pieces that are fused and waiting for slumping during the week, the back center are cut and waiting to be fused and the far right are pieces that need to be cut and put on the bases.

See, an old dog can learn new tricks.

Patience, no shortcuts

I'm not a particularly patient person.  I like to see results of my efforts immediately, an odd trait for someone who fuses glass.  Most sessions in my studio end with an 18-70 hour wait (thankfully way more 18 than 70) before I can find out if I created what I wanted to.  The final assembly for many pieces happens in the kiln so my kiln space limits how much work I can do in a studio session. 

This is my big kiln, I also have one smaller kiln that does a single piece at a time

People ask me if I know what I will get when I open the kiln.  When I started fusing that was a very real question.   My results were similar to what I hoped for 80% of the time and 20 % of the time I was surprised, and rarely in a good way.  After 8 years of fusing I can say that I am accurate (instead of similar) probably 95% of the time and when I get surprised it is almost always because I tried a shortcut.

So now I'm on a fusing marathon to get ready for One of a Kind.  Prepping for this show is stressful, I'm always afraid I won't have enough stock, or I will have the wrong stock.  I make spreadsheets to figure out how to maximize my fusing cycles and I plan to work at least a few hours EVERY DAY between now and the show.  44 fusing days until I load the car and it feels way too short.

So what is the most effective way to maximize my kilns?  Patience!  As I loaded the kilns tonight I considered putting one extra piece in.  It would make the fit a little tight, but I am fairly sure that the pieces wouldn't have ended up touching while they fired.  I put the extra piece on the kiln shelf, I started to walk away and I stopped.  If I misjudged this I would be reworking a 15" bowl, an 8" bowl and possibly scraping/refinishing a kiln shelf.  I considered the risk and decided to be patient.

Hopefully this new attitude actually nets more successful pieces in December.  I'll never know but that's my theory and I'm sticking to it!

Success, or Opportunity realized!

In July I had what appeared to be a disaster (read about it here) - that resulted in a lot of broken fused glass.

I've spent the last two months trying to figure out a way to salvage the glass without creating things just to consume the lost glass.  Many wonderful people have given me suggestions but as is typical for me I had to just meander until I found my way.

In my attempts to reuse the glass I become progressively more convinced that it should not be identifiable as a scrap once I had a finished product.  For my quilt pieces that is a goal,

 but these needed an entirely new life.   After many directions and several more blog posts I have found the formula, and it's good enough that I am quite proud of the result.  And best of all, even I have trouble identifying which of the broken pieced contributed to the new one.

Here is my favorite to date.  It's a dish that stands about 4" high and 6" in diameter.  I had one other that stuck to the mold so it had to be shattered to remove it.  This no longer feels like a bad thing, it will just go back into the pile of glass that gets used for my new line of Tie Dye dishes!

Right now I am busy trying to get enough pieces ready to justify my fees for One of A Kind in Chicago. I hope to have enough of these to make them a focal point of my display!  Stay tuned and see if I do it...

What, no jewelry?

I've been selling my artwork in various mediums on and off since 1990. This year I have a partner (there was one other, years ago, on the craft fair circuit - but mostly I have worked alone) and she does amazing lampwork beads. Sounds like the perfect time to really go the jewelry route. But alas, it has become more complicated. For the first time I am displaying/selling at art fairs and there is no jewelry for sale in my booth

In the last two years the whole art fair process has changed.

Background: There are soooo many people selling jewelry that apply as jewelers, and then there are the folks who apply as artists in other medium that bring along some jewelry to sell. Glass vendors are among the worst offenders - if you make a dish the scrap often makes a lovely pendant which is technically made of glass. The end result is that an art fair organizer tries very hard to keep the ratio of jewelers to EVERYONE else at a certain point, and when you walk around and count the booths selling jewelry it turns out that the ration is far worse. For example, I did a show years ago with 50 artists - 15 who had noted that they would bring jewelry. When I counted there were at least 25 folks selling jewelry - so 30% was the projected amount but 50% was the end result. This leaves the organizer two choices - put up with the angry artists who followed the rules or argue with the sly artists who decided to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

End Result: Anyone who wants to bring multiple categories of work needs to go through the jury process twice (at double the jury cost) even if they want a single booth. This gives the organizer the ability to selectively accept the work of any artist. In my case I would jury in as both "glass" and "jewelry". My response letter could say any of the following:

1) You are accepted in both categories

2) You are only accepted for jewelry

3) You are only accepted for glass

4) Thanks but no thanks

This seems to have helped the organizers control the situation which makes for a much fairer environment for the folks who only sell jewelry.

So, back to me. After much consideration on whether or not to double our jury fees for the potential to sell jewelry we decided to try to focus elsewhere. Rather than spending the spring waiting for our art fair responses and making jewelry that we might not be able to sell at all of our shows we decided to focus on "functional art".

So if you see us at a show (www.heartfirestudios.com/events.html for a list) you don't have to say "what, no jewelry?". You already know the story.