The shift

I took my first stained glass class in March of 2001, and over the years created quite a few pieces of art. My creations varied from windows, stepping stones, mosaics, fused glass and pendants. Throughout the years that I was playing with glass I had fun with it. At one point I thought I could create a business, but it just wasn't meant to be in the overall scheme in my life. Over the last few months the EPA has had a major impact on the manufacturers of art glass in the U.S.A., and I agree that the environment is important to keep safe. With that in mind, I believe the government could help these businesses by providing some sort of tax break or grants to make the manufacturing of glass as safe for the environment as possible and keep these companies in business.

All of my stained glass windows, stepping stones and mosaics were created with Spectrum Glass. This company is closing it's doors after forty years in business. They were the only manufacturer that produced machine made glass, which made their glass just a bit more affordable than hand blown glass, with stunning color variations. Spectrums average retail price was about $6-$10 a square foot. They also produced  a line of System 96 COE for fusing glass, again a bit less expensive for the fuser. They stated that it wasn't just the EPA that affected the closing but the business never fully recovered from the recession. You can read the letter that the announcing the closure of Spectrum here.

Bullseye glass, my favorite glass that I use for fusing (90 COE), along with several other glass manufactures were all under a nationwide review by the EPA.  They were all ordered to install a filtration system to keep toxins from seeping into the environment, which they did comply. Now this past week the Governor of Oregon ordered a Cease and Desist order for Bullseye to stop manufacturing glass because of lead levels in the environment.  As of today May 23, 2016, Bullseye will have to start laying off people in their company, and have made this latest announcement, read here.

With everything that is going on in the glass industry, there will be a trickle down affect with all the small Mom and Pop glass retails shops, either their prices will be skyrocketing or they will be going out of business. I am hoarding my current glass supply and will not be creating anything with it for a while. I have a feeling that they way things are going I won't be able to afford to play with glass in the future.

My stash of powders

  

pretty in pink

As an artist I want to be identifiable by my art. I feel this shift in me right now that I want to delete everything I posted online and start over. But then I think this is who I am and this is what I put out there for the world to see and read. Good or bad it's out there. Who really cares anyway.

I am moving from glass to painting on canvas. I don't have the electrical outlets or space to create with glass right now.  Since I LOVE creating loopy designs I am going pursue it for now, maybe I will find success in it :)  I'm actually excited about this transition!.

Yesterday when I was looking out the window, I noticed that my neighbors blooming flowers match my pink bird house that is sitting on the fence post.  I thought it looks so pretty!    What little bird wouldn't want to live there? 

Music-Art

What does music look like? I'm sure when a person closes their eyes and just listens to the music, it "looks" different in each persons mind. In my minds eye, music pops with color and flows with the rhythm.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about that little drawing in my sketch book that I painted with water colors. I decided that I wanted to created a similar pattern on canvas, and ended up going much bigger than I first thought I would.  The canvas itself is 59" by 47".  It's not on stretcher bars but on the floor in my studio where I have been working on it every evening after my day job. This weekend I was able spend most of my Saturday working on it, and I just finished this afternoon. I will be making the stretcher bar frame for it, so a few inches will be lost on each side, but that's okay, I'm really happy with this painting!

Here are the pictures from the sketchbook drawing along with the progress and the finished piece.

sketchbook with watercolors

"Music"

Finished Piece!!! 

(I'm not sure which way is up yet, I'll figure that out later.)

This is what it currently looks like on the floor. I used step stool to take the pictures. 

busy bee!

Last weekend I laid out my plans for the "loopy" painting. I started with my wood, canvas and drawing.  I decided that I was going to make one panel rectangular with "floating" triangles of different sizes on either side. So on Saturday I went and purchased six 1" x 2" x 8' pieces of wood to cut into triangles. Well, my table saw only cuts up to 45 degree angels which means I had to think about this for a few minutes after I made a few cuts and they were all turning into square frames.  When I pushed one of the boards up from another board, walla!  go a 90 degree angle!  Now I'm not one to measure so everything was done by eyeballing cuts and I got the results I wanted, 6 triangle frames of different sizes.  

my first Triangle frame

with reinforcement

On Monday I ended up at Home depot on a late lunch break buying some sample paint colors for the canvas, oh yeah I forgot to mention that my canvas is actually a bit bigger than I first thought I was going to make, Anyway, as I turned around to leave, behind me in line was Michael, a young man that my daughter grew up with in the dance studio for many years. I hadn't seen him for about five years and he has turned into a very handsome young man. He is a professional ballet dancer and a wonderful young man. My daughter and I are planning to see him perform with the Joffrey Ballet this summer.