Prepping for an Art Show

A few weeks ago I decided to try to enter a local art show (see my other blog to see more of my work... I'll post final photos there from the show). I suppose that, had I submitted my photos sooner, I wouldn't have been rushing around so much toward the deadline... but that would be totally out of character for me, I think.

Speaking of the deadline... After I found out that six of the fifteen pieces for which I submitted photos had been accepted, I thought for weeks that I needed to deliver the pieces on June 20th.  Turns out that it was June 17th by 5 p.m., which I discovered at 10 p.m. on June 17th!

However, I still needed display stands on the 17th even if I had realized that was the due date for delivering the pieces.  I had three display stand "plans":  A, B and C.  Plan A - they were to be built by a friend Phil works with, Josh, who also happens to be the son of the family who built our house.  Plan B - our friend who owns a bike shop in Cheyenne was going to build some stands for me in case Plan A didn't work out.  Plan C - I ordered (in plenty of time) a number of generic stands from my usual source in Texas, but I had two pieces that would NOT work in any commercial display stand.

On the 17th... Plan B fell through: Our friend's welder broke and he had to order parts in order to finish the stands.  Plan C: I hadn't received the stands from Texas... I called the company and they said they were shipped the 16th!  Turns out that I found out later, part shipped on the 13th... back-ordered stands were shipped on the 16th.  Phil found them on Saturday by the downstairs entrance to my studio in the garage.


Plan A... I didn't hear from Josh for days when I was really beginning to sweat because I didn't know WHAT I would do if I didn't find something to use for my odd-shaped pieces.  He lost his phone at work and didn't find it until Saturday, I think it was.  I managed to keep busy putting together a new inventory of smaller items to sell at the gallery gift shop, but finally we heard from Josh!  He brought the stands to the studio to make sure everything fit, but had to take all but one back with him for adjustments.  


Once we got the glass piece into the one stand Josh left with us, we decided we'd better not try taking it out again.  It was a little tricky to insert... but looks pretty cool.  This is it:

Potential Energy

 The green and white stripes on this piece are actually strips of glass that I stood on edge before fusing them together.  The "zig-zag" shape is actually a glass tile that I made by standing strips of glass on edge, fusing it, and inserting it in the circle strips before the whole thing was fused.  The next time you get the opportunity, try taking strips of glass and forming them into a circular tile.  Try getting strips of glass to form a circle! Try getting strips of glass to stand up without falling over all the time.

It wasn't until Monday after I got home from work that I was able to check my email to see whether I could still enter my pieces on Monday.  They said I could!  Josh brought the stands to me that day around 1:30... after hitting a car on the way over.  There were still a few weld marks that needed to be buffed out... Fortunately, we made a contact with a man near us who helped us with that and, at about 4:30 p.m. I was able to get the pieces to the gallery!  That is about 1/2 hour sooner than typical for me, sad to say.


So, we wheeled our crates of stuff into the gallery.  I will be the only glass artist exhibiting in the show... and I got to include six pieces, which is more than other people got to submit because most of their pieces have to hang on the walls and wall space is more limited than floor space.  :-)


Here are the other pieces I submitted - fast photos taken in my table top studio, but I hope to get better photos of everything all displayed at the show - or maybe they'll let me get photo copies that are being taken for the show catalog.

Morning Reverie

This piece was made from scraps of glass in my scrap containers.  Hard to see in this photo, but it is actually slightly curved, which made it impossible to stand in a nice display stand that was commercially made.  This is in another of Josh's display stands.  The piece is actually in the stand upside down, but it fit better in the stand that way.  I had to smudge the stand photo where the weld marks showed before we had the marks buffed out.  Sun was setting behind the rain clouds, so lighting wasn't that good... I just needed a quick photo to get going!

'57 T-Bird: White with Pink Interior

This is one of my favorites.  It's called a "pattern bar" piece.  see the striped pink strips?  Those are actually cross-section slices of a tile I made by putting a lot of little strips of glass into a square frame, then fusing them all together.  After slicing them, I arranged them into a design.  I love the little "port hole" designs.  :-)  I love the diamond plate base on the stand!  And those things sticking up on the sides?  You were wondering about those?  Those are antennae.  I'm going to try to get to the salvage yard to see if I can find some car antennae to stick inside the holes to "complete" the stand; but at least the piece is at the gallery for photos, and this should work.

Blonde Bombshells

OK.  THIS is my favorite.  Oh.  Maybe it's just one of my favorites.  I do love the little blonde ladies, though, that are kind of bomb shaped.  See their little red shopping bags?  And red shoes?  It's actually a bowl, about 2" deep... thick and heavy because the blonde bombshell ladies are actually cross-section strips from another tile that I made into pattern bars.  It is a lot of glass in this piece.

Ikebana Sunrise

This is an interesting piece.  Not necessarily one of my favorites, but the components were fun to use.  The squiggly line pieces are called "vitrigraph," which I made by "melting" glass in a flower pot in my kiln.  When it got liquidy, I pulled the glass through the hole in the flower pot and twisted it into squiggly strands.  It cools quickly.  See the blue pieces?  They're really thick because they were some of the first pieces of glass to come through the flower pot.  As the glass gets hotter and hotter in the kiln, thinner pieces of vitrigraph are created.  This is another of Josh's stands.  The piece is not flat - it is slightly curved.  Again, would not fit in any commercially made display stand.

Coliseum

This is a small piece - in a commercially made stand.  Again, this is a pattern bar piece.  The "Coliseum" is made from the cross-sectional slices of the tile that I made.  The blue strip at the bottom of the coliseum reminds me of, perhaps, water in a canal.  That's how I know which side is up, and which side is down.


So, that's six.  Come out to the show and buy one!  I need to pay for a lot of display stands!  :-)


c@