First day of glassblowing
Jeannie and I went to the first session of our Glassblowing 1A class. We had met our instructor previously, when we did a Groupon class, and he remembered us, which was cool. Right away, though, he dropped a bombshell - he's moving to New York City at the end of the month! I mean, that's awesome for his career as an artist, but he's such a great teacher and after tonight's class, I'm sure we'll miss him.
Side note: July is a dreadful time to take a glass class. It was probably in the high 90s or low 100s outside when we arrived at the studio, and the heat from the furnace and the glory hole made the indoor temperature even higher.
Esteban and his assistant, John, talked us through the basics of handling glass. There were six of us in the class, so they split us into two groups and we practiced pulling glass out of the furnace and manipulating it into flowers. I can't say that I performed all that well; in fact, I'm pretty sure I suck at making flowers. I burned myself on the first flower (first injury of the class, woo hoo!) and I had a lot of trouble maintaining a good grip on the tweezers, so all of my petals are uneven and horribly misshapen. They are horrible Frankenstein flowers, and I have no idea what on earth I'll do with them, because I can't even give them away.
I also seriously need to work on my upper body strength. Since we were working with little blobs of glass, I didn't think I'd have too much trouble maneuvering the punties and pipes, but they get heavy after a minute or two! It got really difficult to hold it straight, which made my glass flowers even wonkier.
But the class is really fun, and hopefully next week I'll do better.
Side note: July is a dreadful time to take a glass class. It was probably in the high 90s or low 100s outside when we arrived at the studio, and the heat from the furnace and the glory hole made the indoor temperature even higher.
Esteban and his assistant, John, talked us through the basics of handling glass. There were six of us in the class, so they split us into two groups and we practiced pulling glass out of the furnace and manipulating it into flowers. I can't say that I performed all that well; in fact, I'm pretty sure I suck at making flowers. I burned myself on the first flower (first injury of the class, woo hoo!) and I had a lot of trouble maintaining a good grip on the tweezers, so all of my petals are uneven and horribly misshapen. They are horrible Frankenstein flowers, and I have no idea what on earth I'll do with them, because I can't even give them away.
I also seriously need to work on my upper body strength. Since we were working with little blobs of glass, I didn't think I'd have too much trouble maneuvering the punties and pipes, but they get heavy after a minute or two! It got really difficult to hold it straight, which made my glass flowers even wonkier.
But the class is really fun, and hopefully next week I'll do better.