Staying Focused

Relic of a Memory No.1 Copyright2009 DonnaBranch All Rights Reserved

Glass, cast, kilnformed, carved with battuto, sandblasteted, acid-etched

Maintaining focus is difficult for most of us at some time or other, so I wanted to share some interesting information that I came across while doing some reading because I thought it might be helpful to others.

One of the articles that I found helpful is Lori Woodward Simmons article "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" on Clint Watson's Fine Art Views (which I highly recommend). I thought Lori's method of staying focused should work well, particularly for artists. Lori discusses how most artists perform a lot of tasks during the day that are unrelated and that we often get sidetracked very easily. Her theme is that we, as artists, are visual; and if your work that you have to do that night or the next day is not right in front of your eyes, so that you can see it, it is completely out of your mind. I know this is true for me. She goes on to say that because we wear many hats as artists and business owners, we probably will not ever be able to "do it all", but that we can build powerful productivity habits if we get the "the real work out the night before, so that I see it first thing in the morning". Great article!

Most of us know the basic rules of how to stay focused and it is written about by Dave Cheong in his blog, but I don't think it hurts any of us to review these now and then, so here is another one at Michael Angier.

What did you think about these articles? I would love to hear in the comments.

The Serenbe Project: Installed

Photograph: Copyright Robert Rausch GAS Design Center 2008, All Rights Reserved

The Serenbe Project, which was the building of a 12-foot white oak tree, graced with 175 cast glass leaves was installed on October 31, 2008. Robert Rausch of Gas Design Center, Tuscumbia, Alabama, designed the project, Jason Smith, a blacksmith from Decatur Georgia, created the iron tree blacksmith and I created the cast glass leaves. The project resulted in a beautiful installation and it is so gratifying to collaborate with two other very gifted artists! The project is permanently installed next door to The Hil Restaurant on Selbourne Lane and graces the entranceway leading to the Serenbe property offices.

Serenbe, is a nationally acclaimed sustainable community located 32 miles southwest of Atlanta in Palmetto Georgia. The New York Times featured Serenbe in its' Travel section on Sunday, March 1, 2009. Thank you to my good friend, Julian Hazlett, calling this to my attention. Cottage Living named Serenbe on of its' 2008 Top Ten Neighborhoods.

The beautiful glass leaves in the picture were made from Bullseye Glass of Portland, Oregon. Many thanks to them, especially Geraldine Gladden, for providing such a fine glass to cast, and great customer service. Thanks also to Olympic Color, who provided valuable information about the mold material. The process of making the leaves is shown here.

A funny thing happened during the installation. We had arrived in Serenbe the afternoon before the installation in order to preview the site and make sure we had all of the tools we needed. Since we were not familiar with the area, we thought we might stay at the Farmhouse at Serenbe, however, the F-350 (which was packed to the gills) would not make the turning radius between the split rail fences. This called to mind a quote from Henry Halem, one of the founders of the Glass Art Society, who says something to the effect that "you can always tell the glass artists, because they are the ones with trucks". Maybe, another time at the Farmhouse, because it is such a beautiful setting definitely worth returning to enjoy.

Copyright Robert Rausch Gas Design Center 2008, All Rights Reserved

I am grateful

I'm grateful for snow in Alabama...

Thank you to all who have expressed your prayers during my family illnesses. I am so grateful to have all of you who have remembered to call, write and think of my family at this time. My Mom is continuing her treatments with chemo and my husband will return to the hospital for his second round of nucleur treatments at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center in March. The doctors at the University of Alabama Birmingham have been so wonderful and commited and I am also grateful to each of them.

This is a short post and I hope to be able to stay in touch at least a couple of times per week. I will be posting pictures of the completed Serenbe Project very soon.

What are you grateful for today?

Interview/Podcast Tonight with Local NPR Station, WBHM 90.3FM

I announced on Tuesday that I would have an interview aired tonight, at 6:30pm CST on the local NPR Station, WBHM 90.3FM.

The interview did mention that there were 33 or 35 leaves. There are 175 leaves!!

Before I'm off to sign more leaves....a total of 175!.....I wanted to post the link for the podcast. Enjoy. https://www.wbhm.org/Tapestry/

Interview on "Tapestry" on NPR/WBHM 90.3, October 23

An interview on "Tapestry" on the local NPR station WBHM 90.3 will be aired on October 23, 2008, at 6:30 pm. The interview about The Serenbe Project was taped at the studio, so there is a good bit of "raw" sound and I think it will be entertaining.

There should be a picture on the WBHM website that shows a real limb that I found on which I installed some of the Serenbe leaves.

Hope you enjoy.

35 Days: Serenbe Installation

35 Days Until Serenbe Installation: This weekend I started to clean the cast leaves by smoothing them on the lathe and diamond wheel. When I get them the way I like them, I will sign and date each leaf.

Hopefully I will be able to get some shots of the lathe work as well as the application of the signature and the finished leaves.

The majority of the leaves (about 120 of them) are between 7-8 inches and the remaining 30 leaves are various sizes from 3 -10 inches. There will only be a couple of 10 inch leaves.
The portion of the project that entails producing the leaves nears completion. As I discussed earlier, the installation will take place on October 30-31. We will begin early the morning of October 30 and work until the installation is complete.

42 Days: Until Installation of The Serenbe Project

I'm still working on the Serenbe Project which is slated for installation starting at 7:00am on October 30 and spilling over into October 31 if need be. That's 7:00 am EST, which is very early. I plan on traveling to Serenbe on the 29th of September so that I can visit the site and see any changes that have been made by the blacksmith.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. The Microsoft Meltdown contributed to that, however, I understand that Blogger had its' own set of issues. More pictures are ready to be posted of the process of weighing the glass when these current issues with Blogger are resolved.

Microsoft Meltdown

Sorry for the lack of posts these past few days....there has been a Microsoft meltdown on my computer. I had planned to post 4 images of the process that I use weighing the glass, but words will have to do tonight. I will attempt to post the information tomorrow in my next post. Somehow the computer does not want to upload to blogger, and it is very frustrating....especially when you are posting under a time constraint. Do you ever wonder if Microsoft has a clue about its products?

52 Days Left: Until Installation at Serenbe

Tonight is the opening at Artwalk in Birmingham, Alabama. Several of my friends are showing at Artwalk and I'm going by and visit with them a minute or two.....then back to work tomorrow in the studio bright and early.

These are the friends who will be at ArtWalk this weekend: Julian Hazlett, Debra Riffe, Lisa Dunn and Donna Steele. I hope they have a good show.

53 days: More on the Glass Studio

This is the latest post on the studio processes regarding The Serenbe Project. I talked with Robert Rausch this morning and we have decided that we will be installing on October 30-31. I can't wait to see the leaves in the natural light. It will be beautiful!

Go here for my lastest post about the studio

http://donnabranchglassstudio.blogspot.com/2008/08/cast-glass-serenbe-project-installation.html

Ten Basic Steps for Making Cast Glass Leaves: Serenbe Installation: 59 days

I loaded ovens this evening. It took a while to get the glass loaded into the moulds. So, here is the process. I will post more pictures of the process in a future post, probably tomorrow.

1. Make an original model or pattern
2. Invest (pour) plaster into the mould (creates negative space in which to put glass)
3. Remove the pattern material
4. Dry the mould
5. Apply kiln wash to the mould & cure
6. Wash and dry the glass that will be used
7. Determine how much glass it will take to fill the mould (on a future post)
8. Weigh the glass
9. Fill the mould
10. Fire the kiln

The Cast Glass Serenbe Project Installation: 54 days

Ok, I published this post on 9/3/2008, but don't see how to re-list it with its' correct date. Enjoy.

During this project there are a lot of studio processes that I have had to refine. I'm showing one today. These pictures show a process that I use after I have determined the weight of the glass that it will take to fill the mould.

Basically what I worked out is that I number the moulds, for this project, then I number the leaves that are in that mould. For example, in the mould to the left, mould no. 3, I numbered each leaf in that mould. Then, after I have determined the weight of glass that goes in each leaf (a process for another post), I don't have to weigh it each time. I just replicate what I did before.

This system has worked well for me, since I have several different moulds for The Serenbe Project. I made a total of 11 different leaf patterns. Since I keep a notebook page for each mould number, after I calculate the weight of glass needed for each leaf, I write that down on the page with that particular mould information. The next time that I cast in that mould, I just look the info up in my notebook, that gives me the total amount of glass that I need to fill each leaf in the mould, I weigh the glass, fill the mould and fire. I also mark the mould each time that I fire to casting temps (1500+degrees). This will enable me to track the performance of this mould material and I can determine how many times I can re-fire the mould. It also gives you more reliable cost information for calculation of retail pricing.

60 days: The Serenbe Project

After the Bullseye glass cullet is washed and dryed, I store it like this next to the kiln and the scale so that when I get ready to weigh the glass, I can load the scales, weigh the glass and load the mould from the same place. Also, I don't have to move the moulds as they are very heavy.



















This is Bullseye casting cullet on the left and Bullseye casting billets on the right. Bullseye is some of the best glass made. The billets have been cut on the wet saw, then washed, then stored


















Ok, if the cullet is too large, it has to be made smaller and I do this with a sledge hammer and a garbage compactor bag (because they are thick bags). Safety glasses are a must.


















I'm crushing the glass a bit here to make it smaller. The very small frit I use to help secure the wire.

What I thought would be a good idea was to blog about the remainder of the time from now until installation at Serenbe. There is somewhere around 60 days left until installation and today is DAY 60.

Tonight I applied kiln wash to the new 21" diameter mould and the wash will cure at 500 deg. I left the lid of the kiln propped open until it reaches around 120 and then I will completely close it. Another oven is just about ready to be unloaded (leaves). I added some amber color to these leaves. I left the lid open a bit on this oven also so that it would cool about 10 more degrees. Then I will remove the leaves from the mould, reload the mould and fire again.

Glass Studio Processes and The Serenbe Project

These moulds pictured are still for The Serenbe Project. Take a minute and visit the Serenbe Community, it is a delightful place. After the clay model is removed from the glass mould, the moulds have to be checked to make sure there are no undercuts (places where the glass can become lodged). This pictures on the blog tonight show how I finish the moulds.

You can see the greenish gray area on the top edge of the mould. That is leftover clay that has to be removed. I finish removing the clay, and sand down the glass moulds

This is how I finish the edges and remove the remaining clay.

I then brush out the mould to make sure that it is clean before taking a warm damp rag to go over it one more time.

After the mould is cleaned like this, it is ready to be placed in the kiln to be force-dried.

I found these cool little paintbrushes at Harbor Freight Tools. They are good for a lot of things in the studio and they are so inexpensive, I just throw them away!

At this point, the mould is still very wet. The plaster material with which I invest the mould has a very short working time (under 10 minutes on a cooler day). This means that most days in the South, you better have your plan together when you begin to mix, because on a 95 degree day with high humidity, the working time is more like 5-6 minutes. I still like this material very much.

These glass leaves will be installed at Serenbe in late October.

Cast Glass and The Serenbe Project

A quick post tonight because I have to get back to work. Last post, I discussed the problem with the wires as the glass becomes molten. I came up with a solution, which was great! Here are a couple of pictures that I took right after these leaves came out of the kiln tonight. The important thing was that the wire extend from inside the glass in the middle not on the edge where the glass is thinner. It worked!

This mould is the round one to fit the kiln. It has been force-dried and is ready to be cured at 1475 degrees for this kiln.

The Serenbe Project

This was a very busy day in studio doing more work on The Serenbe Project , which will be installed toward the end of October. In case you have not read any of my earlier posts about The Serenbe Project , hop over there and check it out.

I was having trouble with the wires, which are embedded in the cast leaves, "falling" to the side. I came up with this solution, shown on the right, I drilled a little hole in the mould, and placed the end of the wire in the hole. So, when the other end of the wire is embedded in the glass, the drilled end acts as an anchor.


This is a close-up of the moulds and the embedded wires. This seems to have solved the problem.

I'm washing all of the cullet, getting it ready to place in the moulds. After I wash the glass, I put the glass in containers which are placed close to the kiln so that it is ready to weigh and place in the mould. This glass is Bullseye cullet for casting.

The other problem that I had was that the moulds that I had made were wasting kiln space (and electricity). The way that I solved this problem was to design a mould that was the exact size of the kiln shelf, which means that it used all of the available kiln space. I "dammed" the plaster with aluminum roof flashing mounted on a round piece of wood (this kiln shelf is round).

This is the new round mould which looks like it was a good solution. The clay leaves have just been removed (to the left of the mould). After trimming the mould with a dremel,
and cleaning the clay residue off of the inside of each leaf cavity, the mould was put in the kiln to dry it. This will take about 2 days. I blogged before about the Castalot mould material that I'm using. I really like this mould material.

More Bullseye glass being washed.

Beautiful Bullseye glass ,washed and ready to fill a mould!

Preparing Kiln Wash and Coating a Mould

A couple of people have asked me how I prepare kiln wash and apply it to the kiln floor, kiln shelves and the moulds for The Serenbe Project. This time when I used the kiln wash, I took pictures of the process so that I could post here.

I mix my kiln wash according to the manufacturer's instructions, which was 4:1 in this case.

I mix kiln wash, a bucket at a time, so that when I need it, it is ready. I measure out the water that I need and the amount of kiln wash that I need. For example, if I have 12 cups of water, then I would measure out 3 cups of kiln wash. I always put the water in the bucket first and then sprinkle the kiln wash on the top of the water.

The picture (above right) shows the kiln wash floating on top of the water (before being stirred).

This picture (above) shows the kiln wash after I have stirred the wash some.

After I have stirred for 20 minutes or so, or until it dissolves, I apply the kiln wash to the mould (in this case), kiln shelf or kiln floor. Using a hake brush, I saturate the brush, lightly run the brush over the rim of the bucket, then lightly brush the wash across the mould in lines going toward and away from me. When the first coat is absorbed, which will be quickly, I apply the second coat at a right angle to the first coat, so I'm painting this on from side to side for the second coat. For these moulds, I only put three very light coats of wash. The number of coats of kiln wash that you use depends on the application. On the floor of my kilns, I applied at least eight coats. I reapply kiln wash to the floor about once each year, depending on how much each kiln is used.

The mould on the left is a mould to which kiln wash has been applied, the mould on the left has not had the wash applied yet. The hake brush is on the right hand side of this picture. The other little brush that I use to coat the inside of the leaf cavity is an old BBQ brush.

After I finish applying the kiln wash, I place the moulds in the kiln and fire to 500 degrees to cure the wash, WITH THE LID SLIGHTLY PROPPED OPEN WITH A KILN POST. When you prop the lid open, this allow moisture to escape from the interior of the kiln. This is the manufacturer's directions for this wash. No matter what type of wash you use, you have to dry it in the kiln before you can fire on the shelf or the mould.

Return to Blogger

ok, a while back I wrote about blogging for artists and said that I had opened a blogging account with Go Daddy because they offered podcasting. The short story is taht I have returned to Blogger. I returned for several reasons. The primary reason is because the Go Daddy templates are very "fixed" (you know we artist do not like to be tied down), and because it is a very s l o w blogging servie. I was very disappointed with the service. Some of my friends told me that they checked my blog for studio updates, but they did not have all year for the images to load....it's time to go!

This is a lesson learned. Blogger probably will add the podcast feature later because they do offer a good product and the price is great!I plan to customize the template that I use on blogger, but until then....I will just blog.

Tara GlassArt Studio and "Reality Life" = Blogging

Although there have been no posts here, this does not mean that I have not been busy. Indeed, I have. For the past several days, I have been searching and reviewing other blogging platforms (I hope to share that info for others). There have been other features that I have been wanting to use on my blog that are not possible with blogger (at least the free version). So, I went on a search and read and read and read. I think I'm ready to make a change, but sometimes it is what the techies don't tell you that is most important. Anyway, I have to take the risky attitude of nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I hope you will take a leap over to the Tara GlassArt Studio blog. All things equal, I will start posting at the Tara GlassArt Studio blog tonight. This new blog also provides my own URL and more exposure for the blog. The blogger blogspot will be left up so that this link will be provided and hopefully we will have more people taking part in discussions.

Tara GlassArt Studio blog, I think will be more "real". After all, isn't blogging really "reality life" in writing. One thing that I hope will be enjoyed is that I have installed a blog casting feature and will be using that as often as I can. That freature will make it "real" and also provides us with more of what I call "texture" in our lives. If I can learn the technical part of the blogcast, I will provide a blogcast from the Alabama Folk School, the week of June 22, when I go there to teach and to learn from my students.

So, as they say down South, saunter on over to Tara GlassArt Studio blog and take a gander. It will be fun. And, please tell me what you think!

A Summer Art Workshop in the Catskills

My friends Cliff Simon , who is a set designer and supreme (no pun intended, he made Diana Ross' wedding cake, supreme(s), get it? Ok, it's time to go to bed) and Julian Hazlett just got back from the Catskills where Cliff took part in a workshop for painting of set designs. Cliff sent the pictures of his workshop at Cobalt Studios Cliff is really talented and I hope you enjoy the pictures. He is a professor in the Theatre Department at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.