What we are working on now

We are and have been working for some time now to get 2 or 3 fairly large sets of these Optic Twisted Raffinato Vases. Several of the ones we've already blown have already found a home and we didn't get them in the grouping photographs we wanted to do. I don't really like the setting these are in but when we get more blown I will go to the hassle of getting a nice photo op.The tallest of these is 30" high.

Reviewed in the Oklahoma Gazette

We had a surprise visit from the food editor of the Oklahoma Gazette at our restaurant, Italian Jim's recently, which resulted in an impressive article that just came out in the May 26th, 2010 issue. Read pages 26 and 27. They talked about our food and our blown glass. Thanks Carol and Shannon for the favorable words and great photo!

Here's the link to watch

As I have already mentioned, OETA came out and filmed us blowing glass and put us on a show with some friends of ours who help people with heart problems. It's a great program and well produced. After clicking on the link, click on SOC 205 Full Episode and also the SOC 205 Web Extra: McGahan's on Teamwork.

Click Here for the link.

You can even go on iTunes and find the podcast and download both podcast to you iphone.

Bella Forte featured on OETA HD!

State of Creativity is the program name. Starts at 9:30 pm on Wednesday night at 9:30 pm and Sunday night May 23rd, at 9:30 pm. We are being featured on this program in connection with the LVAD Cardiac care program at Integris Baptist Hospital. Pretty neat program, produced really high quality!

Here's a couple of Raffinatos we just did. One is with murrini and the other a beautiful strong transparent colbalt blue. The one with murrini is our first attempt. The murrini one is about 23 1/2" tall and 11" wide. The blue is 21 1/2" tall and 11" wide and both are about 3 1/2" deep.

Whew!!!

It's been an eventful 3-4 weeks! We have quite a bit of glass in the OKC Symphony Show House. This year it is a 17,000 sq. foot home on the the east side of Lake Overholser. The address is 2550 E. Overholser Drive, Oklahoma City, OK 73155. The date is May 1 to May 16, 2010. We've also had a ceiling sculpture with an April 1 deadline. We've been busy blowing glass and fabricating the steel structures for our projects. Ron Licklider with J. Kimball Interiors asked us to do a "obnoxiously large" glass sculpture for the show house that needed to be installed before today. Heap big thanks to Ron for giving us this opportunity to get noticed!! We are making the deadlines so far. The large (about 9' tall) glass scupture is in the "Art Gallery" area. We also have several other pieces of glass in different parts of the home. We have a total of 5 pieces consisting of transparent turquoise, turquoise and white, and white cane pieces in the kitchen utilized by "Domain Interiors". Kristi Forhan and Heidi Smith are the designers and owners of Domain Interiors and did a fabulous job with the kitchen and have been so nice to work with. We also have several of our large art vases we call "Redento Raffinatos" in the Mathis Brother's design area by designers Angela Davidson and Todd Stepp. We may also place another set of beautiful Chartreuse with Gold Ruby accents (a stunning color combination!) within the house. We are so grateful to Angela and Todd for giving us the opportunity to get our Redento Raffinatos looked at by over 15,000 people in the 16 days. I just had my 50th birthday. Mixed feelings about that. Not too happy about being that old, but really happy that I am still having birthdays. Growing older is mucho better than the alternative, if you know what I mean. My son, Micah, honored me greatly! Without my knowledge, he contacted Dante Marioni and bought me a signed goblet from Dante. A DANTE MARIONI SIGNED GOBLET! Did I raise a great son or what! I am literally holding it now as I type this! But then....... But then..... But then...... yes, out of the box came another signed Dante Marioni goblet as a gift from Dante Marioni himself! I now own 2 Dante Marioni Goblets! One a gift from my son and another a gift from "The Man". Whew! I have to stop now. I'm getting too excited and all wore out from thinking about it. I'll post pictures of stuff later.

A Gathering of Redento Raffinatos

Here's the largest group we have been able to get together at one time at one place so far. There are 16 here. We call this collection, "Gathering of the Redeemed". Make sure you double-click the photo, it opens up nice and big.

Some Commissioned Blowls

Bank Installation

These are a couple of photos from an installation we did in the lobby of a bank. The first photo is the mock-up in our studio and the second photo is in the bank lobby. There are a lot of fluorescent lights over head that washes out much of the color. I think they are gonna install some nice spots to shine on it. That will really make the color pop! It was kinda dark in there when took the photo and the photo didn't turn out as well as when we get good lighting on it. We finished the install the first week of December, (I think).

Couple of things.....

Here's a smaller Redento Raffinato we did for a custom order. Also a new can technique we tried for the first time came out pretty decent. The cane vase is 23" tall.

Without Janusz.....

...... we couldn't have done these. These are our latest and greatest. We made 9, we sold 3, we have 6 left. Here is a photo of the grouping of the "Redento Raffinatos". We are VERY proud of these! Make sure you click on the photo to enlarge it. It looks tremendous!!! The shortest one is 28 inches tall, the tallest is 34 7/8 inches tall! They weigh in at 16 to 18 lbs each.

Signature Chefs Auction report

The auction was a fun event. The food was really fancy and the Skirvin was really nice and high class. We sat at a table with some really nice folks, Glen and Vera Alexander. Glen does wood sculptures. Beautiful, contempory, wood sculptures! His sculptures were some of the most beautiful there. His web site is: http://www.glenalexanderart.com/



We fared very well, ours was the top seller in our catagory of about 9!! There were several groans thoughout the crowd when the auctioneer said, "SOLD!"

Signature Chef's Auction & The Latest and Greatest.......

Tonight, Linda, Krista, Micah and I are guests at the Signature Chefs Auction at the Skirvin Plaza. We were chosen as....
well, here's the promo on their website..

"This event will pair OKC's top chefs preparing a four course meal at the Skirvin Hotel Ballroom with local accomplished artists! March of Dimes mission is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality."

We donated the the centerpiece with platters on it for the auction. It is located on the Mickey Mantle restaurant table.

The Redento Raffinato pieces pictured here range from approximately 29" tall to 35" tall. They are absolutely gorgeous!

Many thanks to Janusz for all of his help!

Wowser!

First Oklahoma got Seattle's basketball team, now the coup d'etat, we were able to bring one of Seattle's finest glass blowers (Janusz Pozniak) to Oklahoma! (Just giving you Seattle guys who are reading this a hard time :-)
Wow! Janusz (you pronounce that, Yah-noosh) went back home to Seattle Tuesday evening. It's amazing that 5 days can pass so quickly! Bella Forte Glass Studio is better because Janusz was here. Really, really, world class in every way. We did our best to show him a little what Oklahoma was like and show a little bit of Oklahoma what a really sharp Brit was like (We tried not to mention 1776 too many times ;-) Every person I introduced him to was really impressed. It was truly an honor to have him blow glass in our humble studio. I want to thank Andy Boatman and Craig Clingan for coming out to the Bella Forte Studio and meeting Janusz.
Janusz helped us refine a few of our processes on some pieces we do called the "Redento Raffinatos" and with his help (or him with our help) were able to do some pieces in the 30" range. What he taught us on how to cold work a piece would have been worth a few hundred dollars alone - SERIOUSLY!
He almost wore us out! We were glad when he left so we could get some rest. We weren't really glad he left, but after he left, we were able to get some rest. The guy is a work horse! We even took him to church with us (pretty brave guy), he went on a catering with me to Shawnee, he even did a demo for a little group that came out to the studio. Not to mention doing a demo for a few glass blowers who were wise enough to realize what an opportunity they had to be this up close and personal with someone world-class, also helping Micah and I upgrade every aspect of our game. The guy was frickin all over the place. He was like a one man volley ball team, this corner, that corner, the middle, then slam!-game over! I am gonna post a few pictures. The first photo is some of Janusz's latest works. The one where I have just hand fed him some fresh fruit and fixing to hand feed him some more. The story behind that photo: In the 12 page contract that he made us sign to get him to come down, page 9, item 62, stating that, "....fresh fruit must be kept on hand and be hand fed to Janusz at his every request" Unbeknownst to Janusz, I had just dipped the strawberry and pineapple slice in the dog's water dish before I fed it to him. You can see he was enjoying it almost as much as I was. Really, he was a good sport. He was able to dish it out as much as we were. Oklahoma is a good fit for Janusz and Janusz is a good fit for Oklahoma! He got to eat some Italian Jim's Pizzeria food, we fed him the best steak sandwich the world has ever seen and also fed him a Freddy's Triple Steakburger with cheese, fries, and the best custard at Freddy's Frozen Custard! I don't think he's used to eating like that. We figure 3 or 4 more trips down here, he'll put on another much needed 20-30 pounds. The other pics are some various photos of blowing glass and some various studio shots and some shots of some of the things we blew. The one pic of Janusz turning the pipe and me putting the jack-line in: The story behind that is..... Janusz was feeling a little homesick and missing Dante, so I took Dante Marioni's place and let Janusz turn the pipe for me while I set the jack-line in. It made Janusz feel better (see the picture with Janusz smiling and happy) It felt really cool being Dante! After that, the prices of my work went up 300%!
Looking forward to his next trip...... and the one after that..... and the 4 after that..... and the 12 after that....ad infinitum...

Janusz Posniak(see the 2 guys highlighted? The one to the right) here to demo and teach!!!

Monday night only! Monday night, September 28th, 4 hours, starting 6:00 pm. Up close and very personal. Only a few slots possible. Janusz will be demonstrating, answering questions, giving some instruction, and just in general demonstrating what a Glass Blowing God does! $50 per person. Want to be included - Call me before there is no more room left! 405-659-6169 There will be light refreshments served.
The photo is of Dante Marioni, Janusz Posniak (Not faded out), Paul Cunningham (between Dante, who is on the left and Janusz who is on the right), then starting on the far left the other folks are the hot shop team at the Tacoma Museum of Glass. By the way, not only was the hot shop team very talented, but they were extremely nice to us throughout the whole week. This photo was taken when Micah and I went there and watched them for a week. First there is, Alex Stisser, (I wasn't introduced to the next 2 ladies and don't know who they are) then Dante, Paul Cunningham (who I've already mentioned who is a close friend of Dante and Janusz), then Ben Cobb, then Gabe Feenan, then Jeannie who did alot of announcing at the TMOG.

Janusz Posniak at Bella Forte Glass!!

Janusz is coming to Oklahoma! Janusz is coming to our studio to get a few pointers on how to blow glass from Micah and I. We may have to dumb it down a little so Janusz can keep up, but it will be good for us to remember how we used to be.
NOT!!!
If anybody tells Janusz we said that, we will immeadiately go into counter-attack mode, which is, DENY, DENY, then make COUNTER FALSE ACCUSATION!
Actually Janusz is coming down and we are so excited. It's like a dream come true. We are goIng to blow some glass and express some xtreme southern hospitality to this World Class Glassblower and Artist and just hang out some.

On Monday, Sept 28th we are gonna have a four hour demo time with Janusz where you can watch, ask questions, get some pointers and interact directly with this truly World Class man for the very small price of $50. We only have a limited number of slots available, so it's on a first come basis. If you are interested email me from the link or call me at 405-659-6169 to get the details.

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.