Open Studio Tour

We are proud to announce that Arson Studios has been selected to be part of the upcoming Artists' Open Studio Tour, sponsored by the Maturango Museum here in Ridgecrest, CA! Buy a ticket, get a map and information about many local artists, then go visit their studios and talk about what they do and how they do it.

A portion of the proceeds from all items sold will go to the museum. In addition, each artist will have an item on display in the museum for the next several weeks. Those items will also be for sale and a portion of the sales price will go to the museum. Our item is a necklace of tiger striped beads, shown below. The center 3 beads are hollow to keep the weight down. All the findings are sterling silver.

If you are in the area, please come see us!

Also, we are planning to be at Maturango Junction on Saturday, Oct 16.

It works!

The studio is finally up and running! All the parts are back from repair and everything is in place. Here are a few photos, sort of a "left to right" pan around - hopefully in each picture you can see an object from the previous picture so you can understand the "panorama"!

Here's the door. Notice the business permits, fire extinguisher and first aid kit (can never be too safe!), a couple cork boards for displaying business cards and postcards of other glass artists, and inspiration and ideas.

A nice table for sitting to make jewelry (there is a cart hidden under the table with lots of drawers for storing all the jewelry bits), a place for the photo tent to be permanently set up, and a bookshelf with plenty of room to expand. In the corner is some shelving to hold all the tools, frits, glass bits, and other items that need to be handy when at the torch. Above the shelves is the vent where cooling from the swamp cooler comes in. Having make-up air here at your back when sitting at the torch helps keep you cool and also helps push any fumes away from you and back into the hood so they can be exhausted. Most days the temperature in the studio is about 20 degrees cooler than outside, so its anywhere from 70 to 90 (which is actually pretty comfortable here in the desert when there is low humidity).

Some posters showing all the glass colors available (to remind Shane that no, I don't have them all yet). The bench with torch and kiln on the right. Attached to the wall is the propane regulator connected to the propane tank outside, along with emergency shut-off.

Next to the bench is the window for additional make-up air. Below is the glass stash.

Of course all studios must have tunes! Below is the oxygen concentrator and oxygen holding tank, and some more shelves for additional storage.

Ventilation is Working!

After weeks of work, the new studio is almost up and running! The walls have all been finished and painted, things are arranged, and the ventilation is working.

Here's a summary of the ventilation:

Directly to the right of the bench, not visible in this picture, is a large window where makeup air is currently coming from. Eventually we plan to add ducting from under the bench and directed to the sides between the table and the hood. The weather here is very nice and temp in the studio is generally between 50 and 80F year round, but could get cooler in winter or warmer in summer, especially once the kiln and torch get fired up. So directing most of the makeup directly to the bench should help maintain temperature.

From the hood above the bench, there's a 9" hole in the top, with the vent connected to it. Originally we were hoping at this point to go straight up into the attic above, but it turns out the roof doesn't have a very steep slope, so along an outside wall such as this there is not very much room between the floor of the attic and roof.

So instead of going up into the attic, the vent runs along the ceiling across the studio (from the hood at the right of the picture, towards the left).

Then the vent goes through the studio wall and into Shane's portion of the workshop, where the blower for the ventilation is located.

The blower is located inside the box in this photo. Air comes in from the right of the picture, where the wall to the studio is at, and exits on the left of the box. The blower is currently set on med-high speed, which corresponds to about 1700CFM with static pressure around .6 (its pretty high static pressure due to the length of the run and number of bends). Since the opening on the hood is about 6.6'x3.3', this should be plenty of air movement.

Directly below the blower box, and not visible in this picture, is the incoming air from a swamp cooler.

Ducting will eventually be arranged so that the cooled air can be directed either into Shane's half of the shop, or into the glass studio. Because the swamp cooler sits right behind this wall, we cannot have the exhaust from the hood exit here!

After exiting the box, air continues along the venting through the rest of the workshop (again from right to left).

And finally exits the workshop! Total length of the duct run is 25'. This puts the exhaust vent over 12' from the swamp cooler intake and over 20' from the window and bench where the main make up air comes in.

Finally, here is an initial smoke test of the ventilation system. For this test, we set off 2 smoke "grenades" on the bench, let the hood and bench area fill up with smoke, then turned on the blower. The video starts just after the smoke has maxed out, and the blower is turned on about 2 seconds into the video, so you can get an idea of how quickly it is sucked out.

Torch problems!

What is going wrong here? This GTT Lynx has the propane set to 5psi and the oxygen concentrator at 10psi. The volume control on the concentrator is set to around 9 lpm. However, the flame is slightly reducing, and as the oxygen concentrator goes through its cycle, the flame grows longer candles and is even more reducing. Turning up the oxygen knob on the torch results in more noise and hissing, but no improvement in the flame.

Glass Storage

So, now that the studio is starting to shape up, I need a place to store all those glass rods. Keeping them in the cardboard boxes isn't going to work so well when its time to actually find what I want to use!

Inspired by others online, I chose to use fence rail. I called around to several fencing places in the area, but no one had what I was looking for until one guy finally said "oh, you want vinyl 3-rail horse fence. Of course we have that!" Not only that, but he had scrap chunks of it that he was willing to sell for about half price.

After a couple trips to see him, we finally had enough fence rail. We got a masonry cut-off blade (local Home Depot was out of all other kinds of cut-off blades) and put it in the table saw (I would recommend using a chop saw, but someone thought it would be easier to change the blade in the table saw so we used that, which worked fine but was more work in the end). It cut the material really well but made a horrible mess with lots of "sawdust" that is actually vinyl and static-y so it sticks to everything, including people! All the pieces then had to get hosed off and dried.

Shane had a cabinet in the garage he was looking to get rid of. The previous owners left it with the house. Its on nice casters and seemed a good size. Amazingly, the fence rail pieces fit PERFECTLY inside the cabinet with no need for shims or other filler, and the whole cabinet is just the right height to sit under the window sill in the studio. Judy put on a quick coat of white paint (it was looking really yucky before that!) We used some boards left over from a destruction project in our master bedroom to make stops at the back of the fence rail so the glass doesn't slide too far in and get lost. The bottom two rows of fencing are cut longer and have a deeper stop so they can hold boro rods (which are longer than soft glass).

All the glass now has a home. Each color has its own slot. Unfortunately, all the slots are now full and I may have recently purchased a few more colors...

Walls in the Studio

Progress on the studio continues. Here's what things looked like not long after the 2x4 framing was done. Dad and I put all the drywall up, and Judy was in charge of joint compound and tape.

The bench and hood are now assembled as well. They will likely end up sitting next to the window, where the white plastic shelving is at in this photo.

Studio Construction

Well, its been more than just a few weeks! But, we are finally here in sunny CA, moved into the new house, and getting started on some projects. The house has a lot of projects actually, so starting the studio had to wait a bit. BUT, its now under construction!

This is our workshop in the backyard.

Its about the size as a 2 car garage that is a little extra wide and maybe 1.5 cars deep. Pretty big. Part of it will be for Shane's woodworking stuff, and part for the glass studio. Because those 2 activities wouldn't live together very happily (open flame+sawdust=fail), it has to get divided.

Here you can see the first stage: the walls have been framed and the door hung. This first picture is taken from just after you enter the workshop through the side door, still outside the studio door.

And this next picture was taken standing just to the right of the door, looking through the wall. The finished wall straight ahead in the back of the studio is where the table and hood will be located. See the table? Legs are folded up and its leaning on its edge against the crate. The hood is on the floor to the left of the crate. There is a window off to the right, you can just barely see part of the edge of it. That's where the make up air will eventually be routed from.

Here is the construction crew. That's dad in white by the door to the studio and Shane in the flannel by the door into the workshop building. Judy is the bit of orange off to the left - she is standing right next to the window.

This was taken while standing over in what will eventually be the woodworking area. The studio door is on the right and you can now see part of the window.

Taken from the same location as the previous picture, just pointing the camera a bit to the left so you can see the back wall of the studio and the other half of the window. The metal frame stuff leaning up against the wall is part of the hood.

Moving!

Some of you may have noticed the lack of recent posts. Well, there is a reason. We're moving! All my time has been spent in looking for a new job, new house, planning, packing, etc. So it may be a few more weeks before you see any activity!
laura

Woodworking

So, Judy was here for an entire week. What else did we do during that week??? Well, we took on another project in a completely different material - woodwork. We've been making quilts together for several years, and Judy needed a place to store/display hers. She hasn't been able to find a ready-made quilt rack that she likes. So we scoured the web for designs until we found one she liked. The boys made a trip to the lumberyard, and then we spent a few days covered in Cherry sawdust. The first picture shows the end pieces after glue-up. Our hero Norm is right, "you can never have too many clamps."

















The next picture shows part of the team with the finished product (well, Judy is taking it home for final sanding, stain, etc). In an amazing feat, this is the only known photo with Judy looking directly at the camera with her eyes open while everyone else is not paying attention!

New Goblet

New goblet I made this afternoon. Trying a few new things here. The bowl is encalmo, with blue and striking red tubing. The clear is actually part of the striking red, but I liked the look with the clear section. Its been a while since my last boro work, so the foot isn't quite as good as some of my previous ones. I also tried the loop for the stem for the first time - think I can do it better next time. The sculpture is some of the technique I learned in the Lucio class, torso only rather than a full body. I think it turned out fairly well and I liked doing it in boro rather than the soft glass.

A Full Week of Activities

Judy is visiting Laura for a whole week! The adventure has begun. All of Judy's jewelry has made the trip so we can start taking photos of it to post on etsy. At least 2 of the items pictured in the previous post have already been sold before making it to etsy!

Today was spent trying out some glass fusing (still waiting to see what comes out of the kiln), doing some silver fusing, a little metalsmithing, and other things. More updates as the week goes on...

Judy's June Jewelry

Judy has been busy working on some new jewelry pieces. Here's a preview of some things you may see soon on our etsy site. The preview pictures aren't great, because, well, she doesn't have one of those fancy photo studios described in a previous post! But this should give a good idea of what's coming.

Naked People!

I heard from my mother last night that my niece was helping her look at the latest photos I posted. She is apparently quite concerned that the people are not wearing pants! No shirts seems to be ok, but pants are needed. This reminded me - if you are easily offended by naked people, naked angels, or devils doing "devilish" things, use caution when going to Lucio's site. If you are open to all sorts of art, by all means proceed there!

Lucio Class!

I just finished a two day class with Lucio Bubacco! He is amazing! Simply the best human figures in glass. Just getting to watch him work was a treat. Then we got to try things out for ourselves. Here are the 3 complete pieces I managed to create. Most of the work ended up shattered in little bits all over the table. Sculpture with moretti glass is a real challenge as the smallest mistake causes cracking. These are all about 3-4" tall. His of course are much larger, plus he adds goblet feet and bowls to them. His also have far more detail. You will notice that 1 of my figures has a sort of face to it, but they kept turning out quite badly so I went for more abstract heads on the others. He demonstrated a larger version of the face for us, so I think I know what I was doing wrong, but haven't had a chance to try again yet. These are nowhere near his quality (or even very good), but I sure learned a lot and got some great ideas and tips to use on my other work!

A figure with wings.























Another figure with wings. This one doesn't have a great face, but the hair is good!

A figure in a more active pose.

Chalcedony Fail? Win? Unsure?

I've recently been trying out some new glass called Chalcedony from Gaffer Glass. Many people have been getting gorgeous results from it. I have unfortunately not :(

At left are my initial experiments. The two beads in back used a base of Moretti sky blue. The one in front is Moretti white. The back left bead has Chalcedony stringer. The other two have Chalcedony shards.

From what I've seen and read, the trick seems to be repeated cycles of extreme heating and extreme cooling. However, no matter what I did with these, all I can get is transparent, the light/pale yellowish color, or the dark red brown. hmmmmm.

At the the Bead and Button conference I got some tips that the Chalcedony works better when used with other Gaffer Glass rather than Moretti. Granted, I know they are different COEs and that if you use them together you have to use just a little of one and the majority of the other rather than a 50/50 mix. But I had seen other people get good reactions with Chalcedony shards on Moretti base. Luckily, I also picked up a lilttle sample of some Gaffer at B&B (THANKS!!!!). So this attempt is a base bead of black Gaffer with Chalcedony applied over it. I did a lot of reheating and gravity shaping before it finally turned colors. It turned out quite nice. However, some issues/questions remain: when I made this, I applied Chalcedony over the entire surface of the black, but the black "sucked" in the Chalcedony and I had to apply multiple layers of it before it stayed on top. Also, I applied the Chalcedony over the entire surface, yet it seems to only be visible in the middle. I wonder why it didn't turn colors on the ends as well? Or did the Chalcedony gather up in the middle and the black snuck out from under it on the ends? Perhaps it only changed color in the center because that is the part that was heated and cooled the most times due to gravity shaping on the ends? or because when heating the ends the center was right at the edge of the flame, which may be better for getting the desired effect than reheating in the center of the flame? hmmmmm. What if I want a "normal" shaped bead, and not something long and tubular?

And here is the final bead I tried. This is a base of Gaffer clear with a shard of Chalcedony over it. Again, the shard covered the entire bead when applied, but now color is only visible at the ends. No amount of heating and cooling could get color in the middle. And again its mostly the yellow/orange/brick red. There is a bit of pink at the ends but not much. It doesn't seem that the clear could've "swallowed" the shard, because I can't see it "inside". Perhaps the Chalcedony needs to be applied quite heavily in order to get reactions, though I don't know how people are getting results using it with Moretti then. Apparently more experimentation is needed. Luckily I have lots more Chalcedony. Not much Gaffer though so hopefully I can get it to work on the Moretti.

More results hopefully coming over the next few weeks...

Photo Tent Win!

Those who know me well know that I hate to pay full price for anything. Especially if I think that full price is overpriced, or that I can easily make it myself. This is the case with photography setups. My glassy friend Bette recently bought a photo setup. I will admit that it is VERY nice and includes everything you could ever possibly need. It also cost in the hundreds of dollars, as do most decent setups. I would have to sell a lot of beads and jewelry to pay for that! After much research (that IS what I do in my "real" job anyway), I built my own setup. It does not include quite so many parts, but it has several features I think are very nice. Here are the details.

Photo Studio in a Basket, ready for storage

The most important part of a photo setup is the lighting. This is therefore the part I spent the most on! In this case I am using 5000K daylight bulbs that put out 2000 lumens. I got them from Energy Superstore (www.energy-superstore.com). I cannot say enough nice things about this place. I talked to them a couple times on the phone after placing my order online, for various reasons, and they had great customer service. Also, their prices were the best I found anywhere, no minimum purchase, and free shipping if you order over $50 (get some friends together for a bulk buy!). I have only dealt with them this one time, so I hope everyone else has the same great experience that I did. I put the bulbs into worklight reflectors that I got a Lowe's. I got the smallest reflectors - if you are planning on a bigger tent for bigger objects, you might splurge on the larger ones. The worklights clamp onto whatever you have around. You can see that I have a handy plant stand that I use, but I'm sure you can find something creative around your house (empty boxes from all your glass purchases perhaps?). Also, since they are fluorescent, they don't take much energy and don't get terribly hot. Cost per light = $13 total for bulb and fixture. Total cost = $39.

Next, the photo "tent". You can buy these from about $20 to $30 and on up depending on all the options. To build mine, I bought a $10 basket at Lowe's. It has a metal frame and the fabric attaches with velcro, so its easy to remove. Then I draped some fabric over the frame. This particular fabric is a sort of nylon-y stuff. It feels a bit like a cross between paper and thin plastic. It does a great job of diffusing the light while letting plenty through. I found it at WalMart for $1.50 per yard. Its extra wide so 1 yard was far more than enough. My favorite part about the tent is that you can slip the fabric back on the frame and have a basket that stores your whole setup in a nice little package that doesn't take a lot of space! (see first photo for the packed setup) Total cost for tent = $11.50.

The full setup!

Bette's setup came with 2 acrylic risers, one black and one white. For white, I have found that a piece of glossy photo paper for my printer works quite well. I haven't found a replacement for the black yet but I'm keeping an eye out. I also had sitting around a scrap of black velvet. I can drape it over the top rear of the frame and down across the bottom (see photo below). This makes a nice backdrop for clear glass. This is the setup I used for the goblet photos taken in the post 2 posts back. There are lots of other things you probably have just sitting around that would make great backdrops, and plenty of places online to print out free ones. You can also see from the following photo that at one point I just used some extra tissue paper to drape the outside of the tent. It didn't diffuse the light quite as well, but it was pretty good and it was free. Total cost of other "bits" = $0.


Cost for my whole setup: $50.50

I am not including the cost of the camera or camera tripod as Bette's setup did not include those. However, the camera I am using is a Minolta Dimage G600. You can find it on Amazon for more info. It is not an SLR, not a super high resolution, and not top of the line. I did not want to buy a new special camera just for glass photos! This is the same thing I've had for several years that I take on vacations. It turns out that getting the lighting really good makes it much easier for the camera to do its thing. This is just a nice little camera with a good macro setting and the ability to adjust the exposure a little. The only thing it won't do that I sometimes wish for is manual focus. The little camera sits on a mini tripod with legs that extend to almost a foot tall, and a nice swivel head. I already had one for the camera anyway, but you can get them new at most any Wal-Mart/Target/whatever for about $5.

I hope this helps those of you who want to build your own inexpensive photo setup for glass! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

ps. A big thank you goes to Bette for letting me use her fancy setup until I could get my own built, and to Lisa and all the others for their help and advice!

B & B

Well, its Wed already but it seems like just yesterday we got back from the Bead and Button conference. Here's the gang. We had a great time talking and shopping and eating and meeting friends, both old and new. I have tons of new ideas and glass to explore!

Goblets on my own

So the studio is back up enough that I was able to get out there and do a little playing a few days ago. Its not fully operational, but the ventilation was up, which is the important part. I made these 2 goblets all on my own with no instructor supervision. The first one was an attempt to recreate the yellow one made in Mickelson's class. He had to help a lot with the shaping on that one so I wanted to try to do it by myself this time. Not too bad. The stem has twisties of the new boro glow-in-the-dark glass from Glow Glass (http://www.swirlees.com/) and Origin (http://www.originglass.com/). Shane says I pulled the stem down too thin. I think he is probably right. I just love TALL goblets though :)

The other goblet is a shape I haven't done before. I'm not sure if it would be practical for drinking from, but I really like it anyway. There is a thin line of pink around the rim, and 2 shades of green twisted into the stem. Again a bit too thin, but nice and tall!

I must remember to take them back and anneal them - that part of the studio was not operational yet!