Glass Gardens

I work in small glass beads but have always been fascinated by cast glass.  Twice I have taken classes with Loren Stump.  It is inevitable we will make a paperweight near the end of that class,  They turn out very well and it's great to try something new.  It's definitely not my thing - paperweights, that is -but a class with Loren Stump is an event.  I learned things I use even now, fifteen plus years later.  If I could afford it  I'd take a third one.

"The Lightness of Being" by Howard Ben Tre'

What I always find remarkable about the glass artists who work sculpture size is the planning it must take to pull that off.  To think that some of the pieces they make must cool in a kiln for several months - - - well, that is just mind blowing.  It would kill me to wait that long to see how my piece turned out.  I'm more of an instantaneous gratification kind of person with glass.  I don't even want to put my beads in the kiln to cool.  I want to see the color and if I got the composition correct. So, my overnight cool keeps me on pins and needles.

In the Dennos Museum they had one exhibit hall dedicated to an installation by Howard Ben Tre'.  It was beautiful.  The tall sculptures looked like trees, sundials, people standing tall in the wind.  Spectacular pieces!!!  DH and I sat in the gallery for awhile admiring them and resting my cranky left knee while we contemplated which one would look good in our yard.  Then I had to laugh - uh, they are impervious to weather but what about dog urine?  Okay, skip the dreaming about a sculpture garden.

Out and About

Finally I'm moving around - it's plenty awkward and I feel like a baby at times, with the same wobble, but it's all upward from here.  YES! 

 

Yesterday the opthomologist checked out the eye the cataract came out of and guess what - I am street legal to drive without glasses.  Look out world!  Since I grew up near Detroit and my father worked there I can drive with the best of the "ditch" drivers.  For those who don't know - a lot of Detroit's expressways were dug into the landscape rather than laid on top.  So one of the main thoroughfares into the area from where I lived was lovingly known as the ditch.  Aside from being cut into the landscape it had an early design flaw that was later repaired - it flooded - hense the ditch to those of us who remember or had parents who passed down its moniker.  I was lucky enough never to have witnessed an accident on that thing but imagine all kinds of crazy drivers doing about 80 in three lanes with cement walls on the sides averaging 8 -12 feet tall.  Talk about a training ground.  Another unique feature was the fact that many entrances to the ditch have on ramps - and don't confuse them with merge lanes.  You are either on the ramp or IN one of the lanes of traffic.  I often wondered if that is where the 0-60 in ten seconds was born.  It's not like up north here where we amble down a ramp and have plenty of extra lane to merge into the traffic flow.  Nope.  You hit the end of a Detroit ramp doing 60-70 mph and get your fanny over - or else - because there is no more ramp.  I loved it.

Anyhow, I digressed there.  Back to the trip.  While in Traverse City getting my future eagle eyes checked out I wanted to test out this new knee and get in some exercise so we went to the Dennos Museum.  It's a small but mighty place with beautiful gallery spaces.  They have a children's area, a great Inuit gallery, sculpture gardens, and then several galleries with rotating exhibits that come in. 
This time they had an art quilts exhibit, and a glass exhibit from the collections of Habitat Galleries.

I don't have any current work finished as I rehab but I thought you might enjoy a little inspiration from my outing.

Shame on me for not getting the artists name but this is a beautiful cast sculpture that is about twice as tall as I have photographed.  It's title is "Sonya" - which stuck with me because it's my DIL's name. 

 

Section of the art quilts by Katie Pasquini Masopust.  The main gallery was covered in exquisite art quilts this is a section of a large one that was so beautiful.  She used her thread like pencil and it was so lush with painterly qualities you didn't realie it was fabric until you were close.  What a great exhibit.

                                                            Have a great weekend.