Lathes, Casting, Electroforming and Cemeteries

It has been a very busy September and things are moving right along in the studio.  Precision Fabrication is way more exciting than I could have imagined.  I finished my lathe samples last week and I am going to do my milling sample tomorrow (it's has fluorescent orange in it, it's very exciting).  The lathe definitely is not as scary as I originally thought, I even figured out some of the really precise calculations, with plenty of help from the instructor of course. 

Here are my samples! The Delrin (the type of plastic) was really nice to work with too.  We also got some wax that we can turn on the lathe and then we can cast that! 

We cast our waxes last week and I am really happy with how mine turned out.  There were some little bubbles trapped in the texture because the vacuum machine was out of order when we were investing.  But the bubbles sort of work with the texture that is already there so it's not the end of the world. 

I have been playing around a bit with some finishes/patinas and I think I have finally found one that I like.  This part of the casting project is getting close... but still much more to do before the pieces will actually be finished!

Electroforming worked! Apparently the problem was lack of paint stirring. I am kind of glad it was a simple solution but slightly frustrating nonetheless.  I still have to patina the copper and decide exactly what I want to do with this test, but I think it's a really great starting point. 

Also, even more exciting is electroforming over wax! You just steam the wax out after and you are left with an amazing copper shell!  There are so many possibilities for this! So exciting!

I had to go to Camp Hill Cemetery for an essay for my Art and Death class and there were some really lovely gravestones and monuments. 

This is the back of one that was particularly beautiful.

Aside from all all the studio fun I also took a stroll through the Public Gardens.  I decided it was time to do some Halifaxy things since I really didn't do much of it last year.  I even braved the crowds at the market last weekend and got a delicious basket of peaches!

Oh and also, this is my favourite fountain ever.

Back to School!

It has been a crazy few weeks back in Nova Scotia! First, a few friends and I went to Crystal Crescent Beach and we saw a seal!  It was so nice to have a beach day here. 

Back at school, things are fantastic.  The new class Precision Fabrication is going to be amazing.  We are working on a lathe right now and will be doing milling, some photo etching, and some laser cutting!  As of right now the only thing I can picture myself doing with the skills I will be learning in that class is making glass tools and not jewellery, but hopefully the jewellery part of my brain will click into gear soon. 

My lecture classes are pretty good too.  My Art and Death history lecture is going to be really great.  It's not exactly what I thought it would be, but it has been very interesting so far.  I am still not sure how I feel about my Intro to Semiotics class.  The concepts we are learning are going to be really helpful when designing work, but for now I feel like I should be in the remedial class because none of it makes sense to me yet.

In Intermediate Jewellery we are starting out with casting (which I totally love!) We had to play around with wax a little bit and try out some different techniques.  Here are some of the samples I did:

My simple yet effective at home wax setup

My tree of waxes all sprued up and in the rubber base ready to be invested tomorrow and cast in bronze on Thursday!  Side note - casting requires way more math than you might think.  You have to weigh your wax, multiply it by the specific gravity of whatever metal you are casting with, add about 15% for the button of your casting, and that's how much metal you need.  Even more fun is when you need to order your metal and they measure in ounces, but you are not sure which kind of ounces they measure in.  Could be avoirdupois ounces, could be troy ounces... After you have called them to figure out which measure of ounces they use, you have to convert that to grams to figure out how many ounces you will equal the amount of grams you need.  

I won't get too much into this because all it's really managed to do so far is make me cranky but I am doing some tests with electroforming.  I got a bead core liner from Nortel before I left and lined a few beads with copper to use as my tests.  So far I have had almost no luck.  The technician has been very patient with my obsession with getting this to work.

Here is the clear piece which was freshly sandblasted just before test #4. You can see the tubing in the middle has a nice little buildup of copper on it but there is absolutely none on the silver print.  I have ordered a water based copper paint instead and I am hoping that will make a difference.  I am going to try one more test tomorrow to rule out another variable, I will probably be more frustrated if this test does end up working. Either way I am kind of stuck waiting for the other paint to arrive to really resume my rigorous testing!

Something very scary is happening too, I may be turning into a morning person.  Anyone who knows me at all will not believe this for a second.  This new behaviour is a product of necessity though, that's what happens when you have three morning classes.  Even scarier still: I think I could get used to this. 

Some things will never change though. I got a donut pan and made myself some tiny donuts. They were glorious! 

Positive Things

Last May I started a journal (generally I hate keeping journals because after a week or so I have abandoned it).  This journal was different.  After a particularly bad day last year I was talking to a friend on the phone who told me that she would hang up on me unless I told her one positive thing that had happened that day.  Over the next few days she continued to prompt me for more positivity.  Then I decided to keep a record of this for myself, so I grabbed a notebook. 

While there have been a lot of ups and downs since I started, this has really helped me focus on the positive amongst a year of changes.  There are obviously some bigger life events and frustrations that are not as easily forgotten but those little day to day annoyances are gone. 

This is sort of the same way that my quote book works for me.  I remember lots of very happy moments vividly because of a funny one liner. 

This was not always easy though.  There have been a few times I almost gave up on it completely and one day where all I wrote was "bacon".  But the glory of the whole thing is that on that wonderful bacon filled day something was obviously bothering me, and to this day I can't think of what it was.  All I know is that there was bacon and that it made me happy.  Now it's time to start a new book! 

Things that make me happy today: It's international Cat Day! (Seriously, it's real thing) 

Flash is clearly eager to celebrate

Haliburton Fun

My journey to Haliburton required two very important things that all great Canadian road trips must:  Timbits, and broccoli

It was a soggy drive and setup on Thursday, and the forecast was calling for rain most of the weekend but we had lovely weather.  Lots of sunshine!

The first night I went for dinner at "The Moose" with my lovely hosts Jenn and Terry (of Artech Glassblowing Studios), their daughter and their other guests jeweller Joy Annett and her son. The patio overlooked this beautiful lake, the end to a perfect evening in cottage country. 

And what's a blog post about a show without some cat love? Jenn and Terry have quite the collection of pets now.  There are two cats, a guinea pig and a new (super cute) puppy. This is Smokey Joe, he is the best.  

It got hotter as the weekend wore on, thankfully there is a lake so readily available to jump into to cool off.  I foolishly tried the rope swing after a long hot day on Saturday... It was not particularly graceful, mostly it involved a face full of water and a bit of a belly flop and my shoulders are still killing me.  But considering that the tree that the rope is attached to may be cut down any day now, I figured it was worth a try.  I always love the Haliburton show.  The visitors are lovely, the organizers are fantastic, we get a delicious vendor's dinner on Saturday, there is minimal schlepping to setup, and most importantly it's just fun to do!

I had an uneventful drive home, which was a blessing considering last year's deer debacle.  I saw some wild turkeys though! That was about as exciting as the drive got. 

Now I am home and finishing off some commission pieces and orders!  I have been working out of Edy Roy Glass Gallery in the studio there.  Working with fire and hot glass is the perfect thing to do on a rainy day! And boy was it ever rainy... 

some of my recent commissions I have been working on include:

gummy frog cufflinks

juicy berry cufflinks

Guelph Art on the Street 2012

I should be packing for my trip to Ottawa so this is going to be a short one, but it was another good year in Guelph.  The organizers are so fantastic and the volunteers or "art angels" are such an amazing help, especially when they bring around the misters to help us keep cool! 

I finally got to show off my new packaging too. It seems like such a small thing, but I am so happy with them and I think that it makes a huge difference.

gummy bears

mini eggs - possibly my favourite redesign

gummy worms

gummy frogs

The friendly locals in Guelph sure are interesting folk there was a shirtless man with a snake and another with a big white parrot.   I always get really bizarre questions there, though I seem to attract strange questions no matter where I am or what I am doing. 

I desperately need to start packing for my Ottawa trip - too many things on my to do list right now.  But another longer update is on the horizon... 

Beaches Arts & Crafts Show 2012

The Beaches show last weekend was fun! Lots of friendly people, and definitely some interesting characters. 

Thankfully, we did not get all the rain they were predicting in Toronto.  We got lots of beautiful sunshine instead, especially on Sunday! 

My favourite part of the show was the woman who asked me: "Who has the time to do all this work?" after I told her that each piece was hand sculpted out of glass. After I told her that I guess I had the time to do that, she pointed at me and then told me I was cuckoo.  Takes one to know one I guess?

NSCAD work

I want to add a section on my website for my NSCAD work, perhaps later in the summer not that I am going to have more time as the summer draws on.  For now though, I will just put them up on here. 

My ring project from first semester.

My brooch project from first semester.  
Meant to be worn by two people so you can secretly communicate with each other.

Neckpiece from first semester.

Viewmaster Brooch from Jewellery II

Etched and Mitered pendant. I love etching!

Production!

One of my favourites

Forged spoon!

Fabrication!

Final project!

Done!

Well, the last two weeks almost killed me but thankfully I have survived. I do have one more exam (for my feelings on exams, see last post) on Monday and a final critique in holloware tomorrow then I am done, done, done! I am going back to Ontario in a little over a week - then it's right back into business/show mode. I will be doing another post about that soon.

I am going to be taking some nicer (i.e. not on the bench) pictures next week, so I will do another post with those as well. For now here are some more pictures:

This is a slightly more finished picture of my etched and mitered pendant - I have since attached a bail, but no photos of the finished piece yet.

One more process shot of my holloware....

Done!

And another view. I am so thrilled with how this turned out. I am so exhausted from finishing it today I don't even have anything else to say about it right now, but it's done and that's the important thing!

I should be studying

I hate exams. I have decided that they have no real world application. In what real life setting am I ever going to have to memorize information to regurgitate it back again? In all the years I was out of school I never once ran into any such situation.

I have locked myself in my apartment to study - despite some griping I have actually made a lot of progress. I hate to admit that the readings that were assigned are actually helpful, much more so than the original lectures in most cases. I feel like I should have saved myself a lot of time and early mornings and just did the readings instead of going to class.

Ok, I am done complaining about the futility of exams. I have had a very busy week, and I am in for another one this week. Last week I finished my production assignment for jewellery, despite my hatred towards powder coating. I still have a few little things to do as far as touch ups go. I am pretty happy with them, though it's one of those things that I have been looking at them for too long that I can't look at them critically anymore. They are beautiful because they are finished, finally! I think the gold plated one needs to be mine.

And then we get to etching. Thank god for Pam and her trouble shooting. The ink did not want to transfer onto the metal using the original method she had shown us in class. Finally after using the vulcanizer (used to make rubber molds for casting) we got the design on there.

Here is the silver all etched and perfect. I am so happy with it, I didn't even want to cut it up or do anything else to it. I have cut it and mitered it though, photos to follow when the piece is actually finished.

These are some of the samples I did to get the hang of mitering. I really like this technique now that I sort of understand what is possible.

And then it was Easter. I woke up yesterday to snow. Yes, snow. Apparently the East coast missed the memo about it being spring. Today it's more spring-like, which means it's grey and sort of drizzly which unfortunately is not much better. It's perfect studying weather though... which reminds me I should stop procrastinating and get back at it.

April!

It's April and there are basically two weeks left of school. This is both exciting and terrifying. I am excited to head home for the summer and hop back into business mode and shows. I am worried, as always, that I am never going to get my work finished.

First, there is holloware. My raised cup in now in half!

Nothing is ever simple in holloware. Binding before soldering is a necessary evil and saves tons of time and headaches in the long run. It doesn't mean I have to like it though.

More binding for the base.

And even more soldering fun!

The more urgent project is my production assignment for jewellery, due on Thursday... I have made a ton of progress the last few days but there is still much to be done.

My soldering nightmare. Eventually I got all the forged elements on there, but it was not without a lot of frustration. I don't think I will ever be designing something like this again that has this type of connection.

This is the latest progress, or at least the latest documented progress. They all have the prongs for setting the glass now, they just need a bit of cleaning up, the loops soldered on the back, a bit more cleanup then some polishing. Some are going to be silver plated, one will be powder coated, one will have a patina on it, and another will be gold plated.

Still lots to be done..... But it's getting there.