June & GlassBoston

Hello! I have been very busy since last I updated. I attended the GlassBoston conference in mid-June, and have also been busy working on new glass projects and preparing Dichotomy for its opening on July 27th. Below are the beginning stages of a "tree woman" series I am working on, and you can see how I begin my human figures. They start out indistinct and I add detail as I go along.

And here is my first try at making an octopus! This attempt was inspired by Jeremy Sinkus' squid demonstration at GlassBoston, which appears in the photo following my octopus. Pretty impressive stuff. I'm always saying how I need a bigger torch - this octopus is about four inches at its longest point - but maybe I should get as good as I can on my own torch before stepping it up...

GlassBoston was a wonderful experience! The first day of the conference was held on the MIT campus, with its crazy architecture, and I met a number of excellent people there. The second day was held at a place called APG-NOCA, a glass studio in North Cambridge. I saw some demonstrations (Matt Szosz, Jeremy Sinkus, and portions of some others), heard a few fascinating lectures (Ioannis Michaloudis - look him up!), and went on a tour around the city that included several art galleries, the Mapparium (a three-story to-scale inverted stained glass globe that you walk inside of - incredible), a private collection of glass art, and the studio of Wayne Strattman, which had the feeling of a brilliant mad scientist's laboratory.

All of this was punctuated with eating, drinking, and socializing with fabulous glass artists and enthusiasts from all over the country. I admittedly had a little bout of post-conference blues when I returned home.

Crazy MIT architecture:

A piece by Peter Muller (blown portion, outside) and Joe Peters (flameworked portion, inside). Just straight up awesome. This piece was on display at L'Attitude Gallery in Boston.

Perk Peek

Tonight! Come visit Dichotomy Rochester's studio at the Hungerford Building for an exclusive sneak peek at our IndieGoGo perks! With just 11 days left in our campaign, we'd really love to drum up some more financial support ASAP! Come to the event and donate, and you can take one of our many awesome perks home with you on the spot, instead of having to wait for the campaign to end.

Dichotomy Rochester Perk Peek
Friday, June 7th
6pm - 9pm
The Hungerford Building
1115 East Main Street, Studio #345

Also, snag a poster for our Art Bazaar this Sunday - if you bring it to the bazaar with you, you'll receive a free raffle ticket! (There are some pretty sweet raffle items... all made by local artists of course!)

Dichotomy Art Bazaar
Sunday, June 9th
10am - 6pm
Java's Cafe
16 Gibbs Street

Both events will be a great time! I hope to see you at one, or both!

Canal Days

Festival Heads Up!

This coming weekend I will be participating in Fairport Canal Days, on Main Street in Fairport, NY. You can find me in the Emerging Artists tent on Saturday June 1st (10:00am until 6:00pm) and Sunday June 2nd (10:00am until 5:00pm).

It should be a big, exciting show - one of the largest held annually in Rochester, with vendors, food, music, and a duck race (I think with rubber ducks to raise money for a nonprofit, but still)!

Also, Dichotomy's IndieGoGo campaign is still trucking along! Check out the long list of perks, and see the gallery for photos!

And - Happy Memorial Day.

Dichotomy Rochester

Tonight I would like to share with you a project that I have been involved in developing that has gained  some major momentum over the course of the past few months. It is called Dichotomy - this will be the name of a storefront opening on Park Avenue in Rochester, NY that will feature exclusively locally handmade goods, including but not limited to functional goods for the home, jewelry, and art.

Rochester is lucky to be host to so many craft festivals over the summer and even into the winter months. Exciting though these may be, they are fleeting, usually lasting only one or two days after which point the artist disappears into a puff of smoke. Of course, you can take a business card, which may direct you to Etsy or another online marketplace that many artists utilize, and some with great effectiveness - but online shopping is very different experience from shopping face to face and being able to interact with the work. Dichotomy will serve as a sort of permanent craft show, a venue to give exposure both to brand new emerging artists and artisans and also to those that are established.

We want to make it easier for local makers to support themselves, easier for the community to access high-quality, locally-made goods, and easier for Rochester to sustain its own economy by offering something of an "alternative to Target" or other big box store and keeping local dollars local.

Please take a look at our IndieGoGo campaign and if you'd like to help us along in our process, you have the option to either donate or simply share the link. We have just under a month to reach our goal, and there are some fabulous perks to snap up. We hope you like our idea, because we would love to make it a reality in Rochester!

Beads of Courage

If you attended Mayday Underground last weekend, you may have noticed a little sign next to my dishes of beads for sale that read "For every bead you buy, I will donate one bead to the Beads of Courage program." Beads are not something I have tended to make in large quantities as production items, but I find them to be fun, whimsical, and cheering both to make and to use. I found out about the Beads of Courage program several years ago, and have been waiting for the right way to include them as a part of Fine Specimen. I think I've found it!

Beads of Courage is a non-profit organization focused around giving heart and hope to children dealing with cancer and other illnesses. In their words, it is "a resilience-based intervention designed to support and strengthen children and families coping with serious illness. Through the program children tell their story using colorful beads as meaningful symbols of courage that commemorate milestones they have achieved along their unique treatment path."

You can read a summary of how the program works here.

So! I sold ten beads at Mayday Underground, and here are my ten best remaining cupcake beads, which I have selected to send to the program. I figure most kids like cupcakes, so I hope they make somebody happy!

My next craft show will be the first weekend in June, (Saturday the 1st and Sunday the 2nd) at Fairport Canal Days in Fairport, NY. I will be at the Emerging Artists' tent. Come find me and buy a bead or two!

Mayday Underground 2013

The first craft fair of the season happened this past Saturday - Mayday Underground - at the Village Gate in Rochester. Good turnout, great vendors, and lots of wonderful things to see.

Here's my booth, all the way in the back corner!

It wasn't actually that much of an issue though, I still got some traffic.

Feather ornaments! And amphora vessels in the distance. This window frame display was a little difficult to transport, but I like the way it looked.

And some turtle pendants to round things out. Someone said they looked like a fleet of baby turtles they saw in a documentary, trying to reach the ocean before a seagull ate them. I like it.

Happy springtime everybody!

Online Presence: Kapow!

At long last, an online presence for Fine Specimen has been established. Check out these awesome new pages, and perhaps give 'em a follow! Keep up with my newest work and up to date with information about craft shows I will be participating in this season.

Fine Specimen on Facebook

@Fine_Specimen on Twitter 

FineSpecimen on Instagram 

Beginning of SuperPrep Week #1

As of today, I have exactly one month left to stock up and prepare for my next craft show, Mayday Underground. While waiting for a fresh tank of oxygen to arrive, I've been doing a lot of office work and organizing, and a little Instagramming....

Some of the things I have been working on this week, before my oxygen ran out, include small vessels, and easter eggs with feathers inside at the request of my aunt. I thought they turned out kinda cool!

IFC 2013

Glass birds by Vittorio Costantini

This past weekend I attended the International Flameworking Conference in Salem, New Jersey. I stayed with one of my Alfred friends, a former classmate and glassblowing partner. Some of the highlights were watching Vittorio Costantini, Eunseuh Choi, and Micah Evans demo their techniques, seeing a couple familiar faces, and watching two bald eagles fly overhead.

And! Paul Stankard complemented my implosion flower pendant that I was wearing and I totally geeked out. He asked if it was soft glass, I told him it was boro, and he thought it showed a level of delicacy not often seen in borosilicate implosion work. Thanks Paul!! I'm flattered! :)

Steve working in his studio

A bald eagle's nest! We saw three nests and two bald eagles.

Artist Eunseuh Choi's demo

A sampling of my goodies from the conference vendors.

Flame On

Another photo update of the things coming out of my kiln...

Beads! I had a soft glass day the other day. I like to do that every now and then, change things up a bit. It's a completely different animal, much more, shall we say, "responsive" than borosilicate. Perhaps one of these days I'll get into the habit of donating to Beads Of Courage.

Made some more of the ever-popular mustache pendants.

And also a tiny amphora vase, in keeping with my spontaneous tiny vessel fixation. This guy is just over an inch tall.

Pick Your Poison

A preview of the vials in varying degrees of tininess I've been making that will soon be coming to a Fine Specimen shop near you...

Action

I would like to share an adage I heard the other day that might possibly become my mantra:

Action is the foundation of all success.

I have had problems with motivation for quite a long time, back through high school and middle school, and I can't speak to elementary school but it always comes down to STARTING whatever needs to get done. Once I start on something, I usually work away at it until it is all or mostly complete. The problem is, I can dance around projects like no other by finding other things that need to be done, like cleaning the house or making a needlessly elaborate dinner.

So I'm going to start reminding myself that action is the foundation of all success. Because that's honestly one of my biggest hurdles.

New Fascination: Hourglasses

It took me a few attempts to get it right, but I finally ended up with this hourglass that I'm fairly happy with. It is about five inches tall, and it measures 3 and one quarter minutes.

The adorable small ones I had intended as my end product gave me such a hard time that I didn't complete a single one despite many, many attempts. I got them 95% of the way though! The very last step was where the problem was, which was quite frustrating.

Maybe someday I'll reach this level of awesomeness: Ikepod Hourglass by Mark Newson

I Heart Jellyfish

This week, in the spirit of Valentine's Day preparations, I've been making hearts. But hearts are sooo boring. Everyone makes hearts for Valentine's Day. What else would one make for such a holiday? There's simply nothing else. Hearts are THE symbol, and there's no getting around it. So, the challenge I am faced with is how to make it a little more interesting.

The first answer that came to my mind? Stick a jellyfish in there.

Who doesn't like a nice jellyfish, safely incapacitated in clear glass? They're cool, for pete's sake.

So anyway, January has been a month for recovering from the raging capitalist beast that is the Christmas season. That thing can wipe a girl out. While I have been taking my me-time however, there is a problem tugging at my sleeve. At some point, the question needs to be addressed: what is my direction? I have been caught up for a long time in a fear of starting down a career path - any career path at all - because I feel that I will become trapped doing something that is not the "right thing," and wasting my life. The uncomfortable truth that I need to face now is the opposite. The real waste of life is not doing anything with it for fear of commitment, and that is pretty much what I am doing right now.

Thus, I am currently in the process of writing a business plan. For Christmas, I received this handy dandy book:

I have been finding it helpful so far. The internet has also been helpful, and a few friends have offered to give me pointers along the way. Additionally, I will soon be instating regular business hours. Then will come taxes and ledgers and never any free time and carpal tunnel and a boatload of other stuff, but I think if I take things one step at a time I can probably avoid being overwhelmed.

In the meantime, here is a little heart charm that I actually think is pretty cute (you know, for being just a heart). Stay tuned to Fine Specimen, because it's fun to be festive! Oh, and happy 2013!

Farewell, 2012

As the year sweeps to a snowy end, there are a whole slew of phrases and issues that come to mind as I attempt to discern what I can take with me from this year moving forward into the next one. Here are three of the more glaring ones.

1. I Need To Get A Spacephone So That I Can Use My Square Card Reader - this one is pretty self-explanatory. Without the use of a card reader, I am only able to accept cash or check at a craft show. This used to be common practice, but it is rapidly becoming inconvenient. Some folks do come prepared with cash, but people who happen upon a craft sale are much less likely to have money with them that is not in card form. And seriously, who carries checks these days?

2. I Need To Do Some Serious Display Testing - At each of my shows this past year, my display has been changed up and tweaked and adjusted and pruned. A few of my craft show neighbors suggested that this behavior is fairly normal, that their own displays usually change up a bit with each show, and at the time of my shows my displays seemed to me to be pretty decent.

But I can't afford to be decent. I need to be more WELL HELLO THERE YOU PRETTY LITTLE THING...

Granted, I pretty much dove head first into this craft sale thing without much prior planning, but now that I'm out of the woods of the busy season it is time for some hours to be spent on actual display design.

3. It Is Going To Be A Long Road Pricing My Work - This is something that everyone thinks about a little bit differently. There are so many things to take into account when I am deciding on a price for my work that it is easy for me to become overwhelmed. How clean and crisp is the design? Who am I selling it to? How long did it take me to make it? How much did it cost for me to make it? Do I even want to sell it or could I do it better? What are others selling a similar item for? What kind of value do I personally place in it?

I have become aware that it will probably be some time before I am very confident in my pricing ability. For the time being I just have to do it and stick to it, see what works, and go forward from there. I am often torn between my own sense of frugality (from the perspective of the consumer) and the fear of selling myself short (from the perspective of the artist/person who needs to eat food).

This is the issue, I think, that will eventually spell out whether or not I am a savvy businessperson - I have more confidence in the other aspects of business, I am organized, and I am disciplined, but I have such trouble with pricing.

Things I need to work on aside, I have met some really spectacular people in just this one season, my first season of craft shows, and I have no doubt that there are a great many more very friendly and talented people yet to meet. It also actually astounds me for some reason that my friends and family are so responsive and excited to support me and watch me succeed. I wouldn't be where I am now without my awesome network of people, but I guess that's what friends are for! Thanks guys, and Happy New Year to all!

Handmade Sale

 So these twirly icicle-looking ornaments have been a big hit at my last two shows.

Also, these mini blown ornaments are so satisfying to make. They look great in sets.

The ever-popular mustache pendants are crying for me to make more.

I decided to bring out my two newest corset vases, which I made down in Corning last week. 

For not a huge amount of vendors, the people vending definitely made some cool stuff.

Like this corset vase! Fresh out of the oven!

Spot Coffee Handmade Holiday

 Well, the show was lightly attended, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless! I had the pleasure of vending next to The Knotty Owl, who is a talented woodworker & a lovely person. And with all the music and food and what sales there were, it was a great way to spend my weekend! Thank you to all who visited!

My last two sales of the season are coming up this weekend. The first will take place on Saturday, December 15th at Funky Junk (123 East State St.) at the Ithaca Commons in Ithaca, NY. It will be held from 10:00am until 7:00pm.

The second will be on Sunday, December 16th back in Rochester at The Owl House on Marshall St. I believe that will be from 10:00am until 4:00pm, but it may run later.

Here are some photos from Handmade Holiday by the spectacular Sara Joy Tiberio:

How I Make A Glass Ornament On The Torch

Step 1: One end of a glass rod, with a small neck pulled out a little ways from the end. This end is closed, the other end is open.

Step 2: A thinner rod of glass in a different color is melted onto the tube to make stripes.

Step 3: Using another rod of glass attached to the closed end of the tube, the striped portion is evenly heated until slightly viscous and twisted.

Step 4: The same area is evenly heated until uniformly molten (very important for a nice round, symmetrical shape) and then inflated by blowing into the other end of the glass tube, which is open.

Step 5: Using the torch to melt the necked area, the ornament is separated from the tube, a tiny relief hole is made, a loop is formed with tweezers at the top, and then the piece is annealed. Voila!