Back From Seattle

Hello everyone! This is my first day back from Seattle. I took a workshop taught by Janusz Posniak. Janusz is an extremely gifted glassblower and teacher. I learned much more than I have ever learned in a short (5 days in the workshop) time. I had a great time in Seattle. The summers there are so much cooler than here in Oklahoma. Janusz and I went out to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in Seattle and had a very good steak and the best dessert he or I had ever had. I should have taken a picture of it before we ate it and posted it. Anyway I had a great time and am happy to be back home - enjoyed making friends with folks there and enjoyed my accomodations. Now to put into practice what I learned......

Bella Forte Glass NOW at Dean - Lively Gallery in Edmond

Better late than never (I guess). Tonight we are showing some new styles of work we have done, plus some of the other styles we've done in the past, this time only BIGGER. DEAN-LIVELY ART GALLERY at 16 N. Broadway in Edmond, OK 5 pm - 8 pm.

Answer to Larry's Question...

Thanks for the nice words. The individual cups were blown out on another day beforehand. When doing the cups, I would blow out 5-7 cups at once out of the same stuff. Like, if I wanted a transparent sea green cup with light green cane, I would start by picking up a chunk of sea green rod, get a couple of gathers over it, then pick up the light green cane. Then I would blow it out and stretch it out until it was long enough to start making 5- 7 cups out of that one thing. Then I would repeat the process several times for other combinations. Then, when I had the right combinations I would pick the cups I wanted and heat them to about 1050-1100 degrees, pick them up and add them in whatever order I wanted. The exception to that is the first cup, which I do on the spot for the piece I am about to make. Then I start adding the other previously made cups till I get enough. Then I change the axis and blow out the piece. I don't have a lot of other pics right now of the process. Just took those hurriedly with my cell phone while blowing.

7 Incalmo Cup Piece

Here are a few pics of an incalmo piece with 7 incalmo cups and ultimately a change of axis.

New Idea

We were experimenting a little bit with the ribs on the bowl.

Update of Bella Forte at Night

Here's a newer photo of our Glass Studio at night with the flowers grown up a little better.

Lt. Governor Jari Askins and Bella Forte Glass

We are honored that one of our beautiful fluted bowls, a Cerulean Blue with light blue accent, were choosen to present to our Lt. Governor, Jari Askins at the monthly AICCO meeting at the Meinders School of Business at Oklahoma City University. The accompanying photograph shows (beginning on the left) Micah McGahan, Lt. Gov. Jari Askings, myself-Chris McGahan, and Philip Busey Jr. at the presentation.

Pictures of Bella Forte Studio

I thought I had these in the blog, but after a quick look, I didn't see them. Here's Bella Forte in the day, (I'm getting ready to go into the studio - note the killer Chihuahuas) and here's Bella Forte at Night. Looks kinda Thomas Kincadeish doesn't it? Click on each picture for a bigger look.

First Attempt at RETICELLO!

It's been a while since I've had time to post anything. I can't remember when I've been busier. Haven't worked out in over 2 weeks. (I can tell it, unfortunately) First, I want to say how nice it was to have Karl and Bill over to the studio again, and it was so nice to meet the guests they brought along. Dr. Long, Dr. Moore, Dr. Horstmanshof, and his wife. We had a great time enjoyed their company. Looking forward to doing it again. Also yesterday we were glad to meet Judy and Susan that drove up from Ardmore. Very nice folks.

Back to the reticello. We tried reticello for the first time yesterday. Very difficult to do unless you are Dante Marioni and Janusz Pozniak working together. They make it look easy these days. Well anyway, here's a photo of our first attempt. Not too bad for a first try. I know we will get better at it with practice. That's the way it always works. The piece is slightly over 16 1/2" tall and 9" wide.

Project almost complete

We were commissioned to blow 30 bowls for a corporate leadership team. Then an additional bowl for a commemorative gift to a high ranking govt. offical. So a total of 31 bowls. Here's a few photos of the bowls we were commissioned to make for a leadership team of a top organization. (A few of the photos of individual bowls were taken in an isolated setting.)

The First photo shows one of the blue tone on tone bowls.

The second photo shows the interaction of a different bowl with light and the background of it's surroundings. I love the reflection of light the bowls give off!!

The third photo is a different tone on tone blue bowl.

The fourth photo is of the bowls in the corporate conference room on the huge granite table.

The fifth photo is a different view on the same table.

The sixth photo is the bowls on the gorgeous lawn outside Bella Forte Glass Studio.

We have 2 more to blow, which we will do Saturday and the project will be completed ahead of the deadline which is the coming Monday. We had less than 2 weeks to get this far from the initial mention by our client. Yeah, that means we did good!

Draft of New Bella Forte Glass Studio Brochure

A Little Something....

This color combination is one of my favorites and to top it off, this bowl fluted out in a really nice and unique way. It stands about 9 inches high and almost 17 inches at its widest part.

Micah's Blue Caribean Vase

Micah blew this one. I thought he did a great job! It looks beautiful!

Great Group of People!

We had a great group of folks come out and watch us blow glass yesterday! Roger brought a group out to eat at the restaurant then come over to the glass studio and watch the action there for about 3 hours. We all had a great time! Here's one of the things we blew. It is a multi-cane vase. It stands about 9 1/2" tall and has canes that are "amethyst blue", "gold"(not pure gold-just the color gold), "blue", and "green". It turned out wonderful!!! I'm glad they got to watch us make it. Here's a few pictures of it.

Incalmo Platter

It turned out pretty decent. Not perfect, but pretty good for a first time. We will work toward perfecting it.

More New Stuff!

We continued on today with something new. If it turns out decent, I will post photograph/s tomorrow. It looked very promising when we put it in the annealer. Sometimes with something new, there are so many things to watch and moderate over I might have overlooked something that didn't look right. Right now, I am cautiously excited!

Expanding our skills!

Here's something new we tried yesterday and just got out of the annealer today. It's a five piece incalmo. It's the first time we have ever tried incalmo, and we did five of them. Very pleased with our first one. I know they will get better with practice. It's 23" tall before cold working. The four incalmo cups are in the annealer before we start. The 5th one was already on the pipe. The middle picture is before it was blown out. It looks pretty cool like that.

Success!

Well, we finally did it! We were shooting for a "Raffinato" style piece of 30" in the "perfect world", 27" up to 30" in the "normal world". We were about 29 1/4" before cold working. We ended up with 28" exactly. Not the 30" but close. Actually we were over 31" before we transfered. Our glory hole is only 24-26" deep. We had to keep 3 torches on it to keep it from cracking. (You can see the picture) This was our third attempt. We (Micah, Krista, and I) had glass on the pipe about 3 1/2 hours with about 1 hour prep time before that. I would say for where we are now, a 28" finished piece is about 10 times harder than a 15"-16" piece. As we progress, I know that will change. After that we blew a 16" piece and that used to be stressful. No stress. It felt like nothing on the end of the pipe. we guess the finished piece weighs between 12 and 13 pounds. Doesn't sound like much weight, but wait until you get that stretched out 30' on the end of the blow pipe with a thick moile, and the glass moving. Anyway, we want to thank Roy for helping (actually he did it and we barely helped him) cold work the piece! Roy did a great job! Roy, you the MAN! Here are a few pictures.

Atten Karl!

Karl, if you are following my blog, this will be of interest to you. For everyone else here's the scoop. Karl came into the restaurant in February looking for some glass and commissioned one of our multicolored raffinato pieces. He needed it to be as large as we could get it to be to fit the scale of his house. (big house!) He wanted the vase 30" tall. I told him, we never had done one that big before, but I knew we could eventually get it done. Since some of our operation is outside we try to avoid blowing some things when its cold for obvious reasons. We had some cold spells and wet spells and knowing we needed something bigger than we ever had blown before we waited for a better weather. Finally an almost decent day came and we started. The piece got too cold and cracked before we could even transfer. I figured out that in addition to needing a warmer day than what we had, we also needed a second large hand torch. I bought a second torch and waited for the perfect day. Today(Saturday) was that perfect day! We started at about 5:30 pm. It was going wonderful until the transfer (about 10-15 minutes from completing a beautiful 30 inch piece.) @ about 8:54 pm. The transfer was made and then after the transfer and on the way to the glory hole the piece fell off and busted on the concrete. Here are some photos. Hey, it was only Micah and I and Linda came and helped us man(in her case, "woman") the other torch and the camera. We saw Lino making pieces that big and he had some of the best glass blowers in the nation helping him, sometimes 3 or 4 assistants that had been helping him 12 -15 years. So considering everything, we did pretty good and are getting better. We are going to get the 30 inch piece completed! (Just not today). That pesky "Global Warming" that happens every year about this time is coming upon us again, which will give us perfectly warm glass blowing weather again and we will get that 30" piece done. You will notice the bright sunshine when we started and the darkness when we finished. That's the longest a piece has ever taken us! With all the multiple pick-ups and reheats it just takes us awhile. To give you an idea of the scale of the piece, the tool bench part of my glass blowing bench is 28' long, by the time we would have transfered it and stretched the neck out like we usually do, we could have easily gotten another 6' out of it! The last picture kinda says it all.(ha ha!) - I'm laughing to keep from crying.

Hello

Nothing extraordinary happening. We have been extremely busy at the restaurant and blowing chandelier parts for a commissioned chandelier. Busy, Busy, Busy.