more glass

 I picked up the remaining pieces of my fired glass yesterday. They are not easy to photograph but hopefully the mark making is clear. The top two have had two firings and the one below is one of the thermofax/enamel experiments. Each of them is a physical reminder of the processes I learned from Christian. The next job is to make some of them into larger panels with leaded cames so that I have the samples in front of me for future reference, instead of in a drawer somewhere, sight unseen. I find it all very exciting but there's a lot happening at the moment to stop me getting carried away with it all.

On Sunday afternoon  I start the first of two, six week sessions at the National Botanic Garden of Wales. The first session is on lichens, like this one I photographed on my garden bench the other day. I am fascinated by oakmosses in trees and lichens on old stone walls and, as regular followers will know, on gravestones and memorials, so I am going to study them in more detail for a few weeks with experts. I'm also joining a friend on the geology sessions, another subject I want to understand in more detail.

And at the risk of sounding like a bit of a 'course junkie' I am actually running one myself next week too. I'm doing a taster session with the local authority on making handmade books and if it takes off, a five week course is planned to follow. This has all happened because I've decided to organise myself this year and promote printmaking and book making courses around the county either by myself or under the adult learning auspices of the council. I suddenly realised how many contacts I have and decided to make use of them. I am hoping for enough people to turn up to the taster session to make it viable. If they don't ,what with the glass and the lichens and the rocks, I don't think I shall lack things to be getting on with!

All white?

More wet weather has meant the ground is still too saturated to get out in the garden and try and prepare for Spring. Despite a few dry days this week we abandoned the idea again yesterday and went to the beach instead to get our dose of fresh air. When we came home I was struck by how our garden looks very damp, mossy and green. Everything growing seemed to be white or primrose yellow. The soggy ground is churned up by badgers, moles, squirrels and rabbits. That's the downside of a rural garden. On the upside we are inundated with feeding birds, especially large numbers of yellowhammers as well as many others that we see so regularly, we've become a bit blase about them. We shouldn't be, as we are very lucky to see so many. Failure of the autumn beech mast harvest has meant that jays, normally shy birds in a garden setting, also come daily, over and over again to feed from the seed we scatter around for them. They are very skittish and easily spooked. I am mesmerised by their huge eyes and jaunty crest but their colouring is most arresting too. It's like a soft ointment pink with a vivid azure 'go faster' stripe at the side. Just beautiful.

Hellebore seedlings are everywhere but they are too wet to transplant. Normally we pot them up and give them to friends or else we are over run with them but they will have to stay put this year. Whilst some of the established hellebores are still in bud, others are already finished. It is the same with the snowdrops. What a strange season here. Anyone care to let me know if you are experiencing the same conditions?

Having a blast.....

Before Christmas I posted about the great stained glass taster day that I had with artist Christian Ryan. I enjoyed myself so much that I booked a glass painting weekend to learn the original techniques employed by people for centuries in producing windows and panels etc. The recent snow sadly meant it was cancelled at the last minute. Whilst the others have re-arranged to attend courses later in the year, Christian offered me the opportunity to do the two days on my own with his guidance, so I went to Bridgend on Wednesday and Friday this week to learn more. I consider myself very lucky to have had this opportunity as Christian geared things towards techniques I was keen to explore whilst ensuring that I tackled the core processes planned for the original course. So, I spent the first morning learning how to mix the specialised paint and practicing line drawing on glass (hard!!) before trying out different surface decoration techniques. All of the above small samples on the lightbox were subsequently fired once in the kiln and I can now incorporate them into a finished panel if I want to. I also worked on two larger pieces which were fired once before I worked back into them yesterday, adding layers of shading, tone and texture. I am excited to see how they will emerge from the kiln when I pick them up in a week or so's time.

Yesterday I screen printed some enamel onto glass and the pieces I did need to be fired before I can see how they turn out. This was something of an experiment for both of us as Christian does not use enamels in his studio work and we transferred the images on to the glass via a thermofax screen, technically better suited to fabric and even paper. Thermofax screens were new to Christian so we're both interested to see if the results can be the starting point for other ideas. I shall share the results when I pick them up but I also had the opportunity to try sandblasting glass yesterday, courtesy of Christian's friend Rod who has a sandblasting box in his glass workshop nearby. I loved it, although it is fair to say that whilst I did all the resist work myself, it was Christian that got his hands dirty and actually sandblasted all my samples. Here is a small selection:

A pva and bubblewrap resist

Torn masking tape on each side with both sides later sandblasted

Hand cut letters using sticky backed plastic. Ignore the wonky scalpel skills!

Pieces from a roll of adhesive backed fabric trimming

Sticky backed plastic resists on both sides. Sandblasted on both sides.

All in all I had two fabulous days and my head is full of the information I absorbed. I made lots of notes and have to think now what I will do next. This is not an activity that can just be picked up and worked on. Lots of tools and specialist materials are required so taking it further will require commitment and a real desire to do so on my part. I am keen to learn more and investigate how glass and print can be married together. I also want to try glass engraving and etching. So many things. Not enough time!

Saving the albatross. The ongoing campaign.

Every year since I started this blog I've written about the RSPB/Birdlife campaign to save the albatross. It's a campaign I support in a simple way by sending in my used postage stamps. So many people now save them for me that my packages have to go with more frequency. Today I packed up everyone's Christmas stamps to send off and finding this film trailer the other day only re-inforced that whilst it might not seem much, every action counts. Some images in this trailer made me so sad. To see a young bird, dead, from eating plastic waste is heartbreaking. Parts of it made me want to look away but we created this situation and it's hard not want to find whoever dumped this material and make them pay.


MIDWAY : trailer : a film by Chris Jordan from Midway on Vimeo.

Just testing

The issue with Blogger uploading photos persists but they have given us Internet Explorer Luddites a way around it so I'm just testing the theory with some Photoshop trials. It seems to work.......

The mantra for 2013

The post I wanted to share today has been thwarted by issues that Blogger has with uploading photos so I want to share something else instead. The quote below from poet Mary Oliver is one I found somewhere a few weeks ago and scribbled down. I did that because she has managed,yet again, to put into words a call to action that I need to register personally. I then  found the following video here earlier, and it seemed that the two things are sort of saying the same message in essence.Words to revisit and take heed of in the months ahead.

'The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work; who felt their own creative power restive and uprising , and gave it neither power nor time'

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Ring out the old....

What a tremendous year 2012 has been. With so many celebrations, especially here in the UK with the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics and Paralympics, it seemed appropriate then, in a year when bells literally did ring out all over Britain to end the year with more bells. Tennyson was to the fore in the summer when one of his lines from 'Ulysses' was writ large in the  Olympic athletes' village..... 'to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield'. It may be old fashioned to choose another Tennyson poem  to record the year's end but I think it carries a message of hope and decency for a better world and I am all for that in the year ahead. Have a good one everyone.

Ring Out Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

   The flying cloud, the frosty light:

 The year is dying in the night:

Ring out wild bells, and let him die

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

           Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

 The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

            For those that here we see no more;

        Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in to redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

   And ancient forms of party strife;

   Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

   The faithless coldness of the times;

   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

   The civic slander and the spite;

   Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out the shapes of foul disease;

   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

   Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

  Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.