The Opening Reception

There I am with one of my favorite bowls, Colorado Wildflowers. Dan took this at the opening reception on Friday night at Boulder Arts and Crafts.

It was a nice evening and there was a steady stream of people coming in to look at all the beautiful works. I had an opportunity to discuss my work with a number of visitors and it was fun to explain my process.

My work was paired with that of a silk painter and I thought it was a great compliment.

The show runs through September 5, 2010 and it feels like a dream come true for me.

I created a photo album on my Facebook Fan page. Please feel free to take a look and share your thoughts.

Until next time, aspire to be more as an artist and a person.

Scenes from the Opening Reception

Tri-Lakes Center for the Arts

I thought I would share some of the photos from the opening reception on Friday night at the Palmer Lake Artist Group's Fine Art Show at Tri-Lakes Center for the Arts.

As I have mentioned, I do like this venue. The turn out for the opening receptions continues to be good.

The Krucoff Clan fared well as each of us won ribbons for our works. Dan won first place in the Photography category.

Daniel Krucoff ~ First Place Photography

Mary received second place for her watercolor.

Mary Krucoff's Watercolor ~ 2nd Place in the category

I received a second place for my wire wrapped glass jewelry.

Bling Wire Wrapped Glass Jewelry by Kathleen Krucoff

And I also had the good fortune of receiving 3rd place for one of my glass bowls, Summer Days.

Summer Days ~ 3rd Place ~ Fused Glass Bowl by Kathleen Krucoff

Suzanne Jenne, a gifted artist, was the MC for the silent auction. I'm happy that I won one of the items in the auction. The proceeds from the auction go toward the scholarship fund to help art students from the area go on to pursue their studies in college.



Here are a few more shots of the variety of work at this show.







And here are a few of the Krucoffs. You will notice a photo of Dan in front of his work is noticeably absent....hmmmmmm he does like being the photographer!

Mary and her painting.

Me with my jewelry.

A girl and her glass..... bowl that is, with ... a glass of wine!

Oh yes, those are 'adult beverages' that Mary & I have. What's an opening reception without a little wine or beer?

We had a fun evening. Hope you enjoyed seeing a glimpse of the surroundings.

Until next time, aspire to be more as an artist and a person.

Summer Day

Summer Day
Photo credit ~ Daniel Krucoff

It has been a long winter and late spring here in Colorado. Wishful thinking when I created this bowl with thoughts of summer and the colors I recall seeing on those warm summer days. This bowl represents my thoughts about green grasses along with a smattering of dandelions!

This is one of my bowls that will be available at the Palmer Lake Artists Group's Fine Art Show starting this Wednesday, June 2.

I used all Bullseye glasses for this piece. There are a couple of new yellows & greens that I picked up on my recent visit to D & L Art Glass.

I'm happy to report that over the past week, the weather has warmed to the point where our Aspens have sprung to life with that lovely shade of new growth green. More inspirations thanks to the warmer weather.

Until next time, aspire to be more as an artist and a person.

Spring

Spring

The Seasonals Series

Photograph ~ Daniel Krucoff

At least my glass thinks it is spring even if our weather doesn't. I have photos to share of our blast of winter from this past Friday, April 23.

This bowl is a combination of Bullseye opals and translucent glasses. All shades of green. I wanted to have some of that beautiful light green you see as trees start to bud and young leaves begin to emerge. I opted for making this bowl 3/8" thick rather than the 1/2" I usually do as I wanted to add a little bit lighter weight bowl to the Seasonals. I truly can't resist making thicker bowls, but it is fun to go for ones like this too.

While I continue to look forward to the arrival of spring at our elevation (we're at approximately 7,500'), I know it will be a bit longer. This was clearly demonstrated this past Friday with quite the snow storm.

Drifts anyone?

This was the view out our back door at basset level. Dan cleared a path for them so they could venture out to the back yard. Once he did that, they had a blast playing in this new snow.

We want out!

Bueller (on the left) & Nocturne watched Dan through the doggy door. They do know better, but thought they could both go through the door at the same time. Silly bassets!

Freedom!

Nocturne and Newton are happy now that they can play in the snow.

Thank goodness for snow blowers!

Friday afternoon, Dan is removing the 3+ foot drift from our driveway as I had to get into the Springs to deliver glass work for a show that opens on Friday, April 30th. Our snow fences, in the background of this shot, did their job again! Silly us, we were thinking we would take them down this weekend. Hmmmm, I think we will wait til the middle of May now.

Both Friday and Saturday were quite the interesting weather days. Spring in the Rockies!

As I said in the beginning of this post, at least my glass thinks it's Spring.

Until next time, aspire to be more as and artist and a person.

Winter

Winter

Photo credit ~ Daniel Krucoff

Another in my series of seasonal bowls. Shortly after I finished Autumn, I knew I needed to create a bowl with the shades of winter. I envisioned it to have whites, clears, and soft grays. As I discussed this with Dan, we frequently bounce our respective ideas off of each other, he said it needed to have some blues in it too. And now you can understand why Dan & I discuss our work with each other. If he hadn't suggested the use of blues to convey the coolness of winter, I don't think this bowl would look right. The minute he said blues, I felt like I had a Homer Simpson moment of "doh!".

Each one that comes out of my kiln, quickly becomes a favorite for me and I really, really like the turquoise blue in this piece as I think it emphasizes the chill of winter. Like those beautiful blue icebergs you see in Alaska. The darkest glass I used was a deep navy blue. I kept with the idea of clears and whites. Coupled with the blues, I feel this conveys a sense of the calm and stillness of a winter day.

Until next time, happy creating all. Aspire to be more as an artist and a person.

Lexi's Dream

Lexi's Dream

Recently I hit "The Wall", you know, that period of creative block. My friend and mentor, Lexi Erickson, helped me to work through this block. One of the things that Lexi told me was that I needed to let go of some things in order to grow in other areas of my work. She felt one of the things I may need to let go of was some of my work as it relates to glass.

Now I truly love working with glass. Yet I knew deep down she was right and I have let go of some of my glass work. However, I feel that I will continue to create my fused glass bowls and the occasional stained glass window.

Here's the funny part....several nights after our discussion about needing to let go so I could grow in other areas of my work, Lexi had a dream. In this dream, I handed her a bowl I had made. She said it was glowing. And she said this bowl needed to be comprised of transparent glass instead of the mixture of transparent and opalescent glasses that I normally use. She was concerned that I would be upset about this dream after she had told me I needed to let go of some of my glass work. Quite the contrary, it just made me smile.

She described how the bowl looked to her in her dream. She said I needed to make this bowl. And I have. It's pictured above and I'm calling it Lexi's Dream. Now we shall see how closely it actually resembles the one she envisioned in her dream. I will be giving this to her later this week and I'll give you an update on her thoughts about it.

As a result of this work, I had an alternative idea for another bowl of transparents in the same color family as this bowl. It's currently in the kiln for its final firing and I will be posting a picture of it sometime this week.

Isn't interesting how ideas and life co-mingle at times, creating such fun twists and turns in our growth?

Until next time, aspire to be more as an artist and a person.

Hues of Nature - Complete

Hues of Nature is finished! I just love how it turned out. Dan made sure to photograph it so the light comes through the transparent glass in the piece and I think that effect is really cool.

It took a while and I definitely feel it was worth the work and the wait.

It will be one of my pieces that will be available at Coyote Creek Art in a couple of weeks.

The Continued Evolution

The blue bowl continues to evolve. I'm happy with the results. I like the addition of the rust colored stringers...they compliment the copper mesh inclusions.

The offending chip has disappeared and the edges are nice too. Now I will start the coldworking process again. I'll have to see how things look when I'm done coldworking the edge; at that point I'll have to decide if I want to do a fire polish. Once all of that is done, then it can be slumped into the bowl mold and then it should be done!

I'm thinking about calling this 'A Crazy Blue World'....or something like that. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Greetings and here's wishing all of you a very Happy Valentine's Day.

This morning I prepared the blue bowl for its second fusing. Here it is, in the kiln, ready for firing. Taking it back up to full fuse temperature may mean that I will not be able to see the results until later tomorrow afternoon.

I had great fun arranging all the curls on top of it. I believe I have made the right decision and I want to thank Deborah and Karen for their words of encouragement as I re-work this piece to become (hopefully) even better than the original design.

I took a profile view to show how these curls 'stand up' on top of the surface. During the fusing process they will drop and become part of the glass surface. They will retain their circles and curls, but become part of the piece in the fusing process.



The dam, to maintain its 3/8" thickness, is held in place with steel pins. A technique I picked up in Patty Gray's November class at D & L. I couldn't believe that I could use steel pins in my kiln, but I can. As an added safeguard I used some kiln blocks as additional reinforcements to the dam.

Last, but certainly not least, is a picture of two of our three bassets. As I worked on this piece this morning, they kept me company....sleeping on their beds. Newton is on the left, Bueller is the one on the right. As an added bonus, today we went to the big dog show up in Denver and saw lots of our basset friends. Couldn't ask for a better day.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Evolution of the Blue Bowl

You may recall that in my last post about the blue bowl, I stopped working on it as I was getting tired and started to make mistakes. One of the things that happened was the bowl slipped from my rubber gloves and hit the edge of the sink. A small chip occurred and I thought with the right amount of coldworking, I could eliminated it. Well, sadly the chip went too far into the surface and I don't want to cut down the diameter of the bowl that far. So I've decided to take another approach and the bowl is evolving.


The top picture shows my latest idea. I'm going to take some of the curled stringers I made this past weekend and add them to the surface of the bowl. I like the contrast of the straight lines and these curly stringers. This is just my initial pass tonight and I want to search through the stringers I created to find the best ones suited for what I want to do next. I believe that fusing this piece again will eliminate the chip and provide a nice surface. Of course, this means that I will have to create another dam for the fusing process, to hold the glass at the 3/8" thickness it has now. I'll take a pre-fuse picture to show how this will work. And I will lose all of the coldworking efforts I have put into this piece, but I think that is ok because I should be able to salvage the piece and the accident may cause this to turn into a much more interesting end product! I hope.

I tried to take a picture of the offending chip. It doesn't show up very well, but the yellow arrow is pointing to it. It's an imperfection that is just unacceptable and I will hope my attempt at fusing again will remedy it.




I also took a picture of the edge after I had completed some of the coldworking. It's much smoother, and has started to take on a nice mat finish. I will still have to redo this after the fuse, but that's ok too. I had planned on a fire polish to shine things up after the coldworking anyway.

So, as all of us have done, we learn from our mistakes and can sometimes turn them into something better. I certainly hope that will be the case for this blue bowl. I'm becoming rather fond of it. The more I look at it, I'm reminded of a beautiful blue planet with swirling clouds.

Order is Back in the Studio

I'm pleased to report that it actually took less time than I thought to re-gain order in my studio. Before I started this clean up, I didn't have one clutter free surface. Now my plan/goal is to keep things as close to this as possible. One of the keys for me will be to put things back as I use them. I have locations for things better defined. The peg boards were added this fall in one of my last attempts to reorganize and they helped, but clutter seems to multiply. I've conquered it for now.

Here's the tour of the studio.

This view shows my light table in the foreground. It doubles as a place where I do my wire wrapping. Right now it is set up for wire wrapping and I have the surface covered with the cloth I keep in place to prevent beads, tools, glass from rolling around. To the left is my large work surface (a Koala cutting table on rollers). It's the perfect height for me...I'm a little over 5' 7" and this is about 36" high so it keeps me from bending over too much to work. The floors are stained and sealed concrete, so I have a couple of anti-fatigue mats that I can stand on for long periods of time. BIG help. I have two grid glass cutting systems set up on that table, covered with a vinyl table cloth to protect the surface from water spray when I'm grinding. The grid systems are on either side of the glass grinder. To the right is another large work table. I generally use its surface as a spot to assemble stained glass windows or build items that are going into the kiln.

Another view of my two largest work surfaces. Lots of storage under each. I have an Ott-Lite on rollers that gives the best light of any, so I use it a lot for detail work.









This gives a better view of my light table where I wire wrap. I also use the light table to cut stained glass as it allows me to have a good idea of what light will look like coming through the glass. I can pick and choose which section of the glass will best represent what I want in a design.

Yes, I have a TV in here. I listen to lots of movies or music while I work. Depends on my mood. I can't and don't actually sit and watch movies as I just can't do that and work. I just like to have something on in the background. And when I need a break, then I'll watch whatever scene is on.... I get a lot of use out of DVDs.



This last view shows my overflowing glass bins. The sad thing.....this isn't all of my glass. Yep, I'm a glass-aholic! These are really great storage bins for the large sheets of glass. Dan and I built them a few years ago, from a design given in the book "How to Design Your Stained Glass Studio". Great little book, but I don't think it's in print anymore.


And no picture of the studio would be complete without one of our bassets. I think you can see Newton in the foreground of a couple of these.

It was time well spent and I'm very happy with the results. I've started working on the bowl in preparation for slumping it.

Now, if any of you are up to sharing photos of your studios, that would be GREAT! I know Tracey has. I'd love to see how your work spaces are set up.

Results - Bowl after 1st fuse

Fresh from the kiln, and after it cooled to room temperature, I took this picture of the bowl blank. I had a few 'surprises' and I'm happy to report I'm pleased with all of them.

The copper mesh remained copper color; I used clear glass to cap all but one. A few surprise elements are the red striker strips, which I think create an interesting balance/effect.

And I am very happy to see how well rounded everything turned out. I'll take it out of the steel ring and begin the coldwork phase. That can be time consuming, the rough edges need to be ground down and then the staged polishing of the outer edge. Once that is done, I can slump it in the bowl mold for the finished product.

I like the contrasts here and find the blue glass rich with color. Not sure what I'll call this one yet...may wait until it is complete.

The Weekend Project

I took this photo of what I've been working on this weekend, right before I put it in the kiln. This is my new design for a bowl. I'm trying one of the techniques I learned in the Patty Gray class I took in November of last year.

For this piece, I cut strips of glass and laid them on the 'side' rather than flat. This gives a different view and effect. I alternated two strips of a blue/clear streaky with one strip of clear glass.

Yesterday I was struggling with glass colors and designs. I started on this yesterday afternoon and after some re-working, this is the final design. I'm trying lots of new things with this piece. The most obvious is laying the cut glass strips on their sides. It proved rather challenging to cut them to be the right size as I was laying this in place. I had to re-work things a couple of time.

The other new approach is I have added copper screen inclusions. The photo only shows three copper inclusions well, but there are 4 (I know that digresses from the three point artistic approach). The fourth inclusion is in the lower right section of the circle and is hard to see because it is small and the flash obscured it. They are sandwiched between two layers of clear glass, top and bottom. It will be interesting to see how this copper reacts to the fusing process. It is my understanding that the copper should take on a rusty, red appearance, but after all I have read about copper inclusions, nothing would surprise me color wise...it could turn blue, or even black (I hope it doesn't turn black, but who knows, maybe I'd like that????).

I just hope that this turns out well and all of my time and effort creating the foundation for this bowl won't go to waste. The firing schedule is extra long because of the thickness; it's about 3/8" deep. I have cold working in front of me if this turns out successful, as that will allow me to finish the edges and make sure I have a nice circle for slumping it into the bowl shape. I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out....that moment when you open the lid of the kiln and go "Great!" or "Back to the drawing board".

Patty Gray's Class at D & L

Tonight I'm operating on information overload. Today was the last day of the three day Patty Gray class at D & L Stained Glass in Denver. Awesome doesn't even describe it adequately....and I can't come up with the right descriptor right now because I think I'm still processing information.

It was wonderful. I think my work has been bumped up more than a notch or two! I have TONS of pictures to post. I thought about taking my camera for the first day of class, but didn't. At least I have pictures from the last two days and I'm so thankful we could take photos.

The main purpose of the class was to learn Patty's technique for slumping thick bowls. Since glass likes to seek a level of 1/4" when it fuses, we build our pieces 3/8" to 1/2" and put fiber dams around them to keep them at that thickness.


I'm posting a picture of my bowl, after the initial fuse, but before the slump. First attempts at anything, for me, generally show me what I need to do the next time I try something. This is no different. I was going for three leaves. I needed to build them higher and add some black or sienna for definition on my next attempt. Pieces of clear glass were placed on top to form a mound and when fused the glass seeks a level. Mine isn't as thick as some of the others. For a first attempt, I like the colors. Once I get a picture of the finished bowl (which I brought home tonight), I'll post that next.


I can't thank Patty and the staff at D & L enough for this great learning experience. Here's a picture of me with 'da crew.... From left to right is me, the awesome Patty Gray, Mo (D & L), and Steve (D & L).

Signing off for the night, I'm one tired puppy as this picture confirms!