Resolution

Ok, ok, I am brushing away the cobwebs on this ol' blog and I'm determined to post more frequently this year than last year, which  *ahem*  won't be too hard to do.  So I guess that's my New Year's resolution, if I'm pushed to state one.  

Two above-and-beyond-amazing events occurred in my studio in 2010.  First, I have incredible new workbenches/organized storage space. I guess I lost the "before" pictures of the studio that I had taken, but here are a couple shots taken today.  Some other time I'll post pictures of the lengths of bowling alley that Eric's co-worker turned into these incredible, bullet-proof counter tops...

The second monumental thing to happen in the studio was that I finally got a bench-mounted torch for working with glass.  I'm so excited to be able to work with glass in 3-D.  I took a Flameworking class at Pratt Art Center this fall that gave me the final nudge to get set up in my own studio.  Pictures from that class later.  

Meanwhile, here are more pictures of my little vessel creature.  It just makes me smile.  I can't wait to do more.

Happy New Year!

Pike Place Market Secret Message

A couple of weeks ago when I was at the Pike Place Market I noticed for the very first time what looked suspiciously like a Morse code message worked into the tiles on the wall in the women's bathroom.  I think I actually said "Ha!" out loud when it suddenly popped out at me.  I scribbled the patterns of dots and dashes down on a scrap of paper, in the process receiving some funny looks from other women in the bathroom, and looked it up later.  Yep, much to my delight, I discovered that the bathroom wall message says....

"meet"

"the"

"pro-"

"-duc-"

"-cer"

(In case you are wondering, taking photos of the walls in the busy bathroom did feel really awkward...)

The Morse code message is a play on this sign on the outside of the Market building - 

Perhaps you might call that phrase the "motto" of the Pike Place Market.  I'm not sure when that bathroom was remodeled with the new wall tiles, but I'm sure that it has been it a while.  Funny it never caught my eye before.  Nick verified for me yesterday that the same message is on the wall of the men's room.

I shouldn't have been surprised by the secret code message.  Here is the tile floor at the entry to the women's bathroom -

THAT has been there forever. Actually, the tiled floor of that very bathroom at the Market is what inspired my choice of tile for the bathroom floor in my studio several years ago.  Voila!  - 

Tibetan Monks Creating A Sand Mandala at Bastyr University

What better way to get back to blogging here than to share pictures from an amazing event that is happening this week at Bastyr University in Kenmore, WA. Tibetan monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India are creating a sand mandala all this week in the cafeteria at Bastyr. They began with an opening ceremony at noon yesterday to consecrate the site. I visited and took these pictures in the early afternoon today, and I can't believe how much has already been done.

Right after the opening ceremony the monks draw out the lines for the mandala design. The line-drawing process takes a few hours. I've never seen the opening ceremony, so I have to take their website's word on this. Then the colorful part begins.

From what I have read, nowadays the "sand" is dyed powered marble, but historically the sand for the mandalas was made from stones of different colors. Here are the sand colors being used at this mandala at Bastyr -

The monks use these long, skinny conical funnels called chakpur to scoop up sand and apply it precisely to the design. Here is their collection of chakpur -

By running a rod up and down a ribbed section near the small end of the funnel, the monks can make the sand flow out at a controlled speed. It is an amazing thing to watch, and the rubbing sound is mesmerizing in itself. Here's an "action" shot for you (ha ha) -

I've seen up to four monks at a time working on the mandala. My neck gets sore just thinking about working like this for long. I haven't paid attention to how long a given person will work at a time before taking a break longer than just refilling/changing colors. I did notice today that the monks have amazing flat-backed posture. Their heads and backs are in a straight line, reminding me of yoga. It looked like healthy/happy neck posture. But I do think my eyes would definitely go nuts working that closely!

My final picture is a close-up shot of part of the mandala -

I hope you can see the 3-dimensionality of this amazing work! The blending of the colors of sand in the larger areas is fascinating, too.

I will try to return in the next couple of days to take pictures of the progress of this mandala. If you are in the Kenmore area, you should check it out, too. It is in the cafeteria at Bastyr - just park somewhere at Bastyr, fill out a visitor's parking pass and put it on your dash, and ask at the office for directions to the cafeteria. The closing ceremony will be at noon on Friday. It is an amazing thing to experience the monks chanting and playing traditional instruments, and the first time I saw a closing ceremony I didn't know ahead of time that they would destroy the mandala as part of it. It is very moving to watch the product of all that careful work get swept up to symbolize the impermanence of all that exists. The first mandala I saw created and destroyed was at the Kirkland Performing Arts Center. Half of the sand was distributed to the people there for the ceremony (usually in tiny plastic zip bags or vials) and half was carried in a urn by a monk in a procession down to Lake Washington where it was poured into the water. I believe that the sand is to be poured into a body of water that flows to the ocean so that it can spread peace and healing to the world.

Here is a link to an amazing website that is presented by the Drepung Loseling Monastery and Richard Gere Productions - www.mysticalartsoftibet.org. It has terrific pictures and explanations of the mandala construction process.

One last thing that I learned today, thanks to the "magic" of the internet. After the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, 20 monks from this same monastery created a seven-foot-wide sand mandala in the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery in Washington D.C. It was offered for the healing and protection of America. The website associated with that project is full of interesting information about sand mandalas and has a time-lapse slide show of the creation and destruction of a mandala. Check it out at http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/mandala/

Oh, just playing with glass in the kiln...

I think that my favorite artistic creations are probably the things that make me smile or outright laugh when I see them. I have to humbly admit that I cracked myself up with the results of this little slumping experiment. I slumped a broken wine glass in the kiln, just to see what would happen. Hee hee - I loved the results, and I'm pretty sure that if I did it again it would never turn out as well!

Here are a couple of funky shots of the flat glass compared to a normal one -

I have a martini glass that needs to be slumped standing up, I do believe. So stay tuned for that.

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Here are some more things that I've been doing in the kiln lately:

Snowflakes in the kiln, ready to fuse

Icicles made from roughly-matched scraps of art glass

Those icicles, after fusing

Just one little icicle, with a penny for scale

I was pretty happy with the look of the hammered copper wire for a hook. I made hooks like that for all of the icicles and hung them in a vine maple in our yard, along with a couple glass snowflakes and the wine glass.

And finally, I made a bunch of glass stars to sell at a very small craft fair (but only sold a few) -

These are a fundraiser for my P.E.O. chapter. All of the proceeds go to our scholarship fund for local women pursuing post-high school education. My intentions were to try to sell the stars from my Etsy store, but I just didn't have time to get that all set up. So NEXT year I will!

Glow-in-the-Dark Reflective House Numbers Project

Here is a funny project that I did at the end of the summer, only to somehow loose all of the photos that I took during the process. I've recreated my project a bit here and now for your amusement. You know it has to be good if it involves glow-in-the-dark paint and a material normally used by street painting crews, no?

It really started with the need to redo our house numbers on our paper/mailbox post. I have had this bag of reflective glass "beads" for many, many years just waiting for the right use to come along. These "beads" are what are sprinkled on top of wet crosswalk and fog stripe paint, for example, to make them really show up in headlights. A short while back I ran across the glow-in-the-dark paint at Home Depot, and since I have always LOVED glow-in-the-dark stuff, that had to come home with me. Those materials mashed up in my brain, and I knew what I needed to do for our numbers.

I cut our house numbers out of a scrap of fiberboard that is finished (smooth) on both sides. This is where I am missing all of my pictures, unfortunately, except for the lone one above. For the most part I used the scroll saw to cut out the numbers, filing and sanding the edges to finish them. I sprayed them with primer, and then gave them a few coats of the glow paint. After applying a final coat of the paint, I dunked the numbers into a little tray of the "beads" to coat them well. This picture shows you the size of the "beads" -

Here it is, the finished project -

I actually considered the reflective bead part of the project a bust, because when I drive up and turn into our driveway, my headlights don't reflect off the numbers like I had hoped they would. No big deal; at least we have new, legible numbers out there.

Last night I finally dragged a shop light out there to try charging up the paint to get a glowing-in-the-dark picture. I'm pretty sure that the people who drove by thought I was a crazy woman. But it worked, a bit -

The camera was influenced by the streetlight off in the distance so the shutter didn't stay open as long as I would have liked. The best thing was to see that when cars drove by, their headlights did reflect off the numbers after all. You just have to be at the right spot to catch it. Ha! See for yourself -

That was lit up by a passing car, not me!

I guess at some point I need to make a matching set for the other side....