Neon Class Underway

The last few days have been packed full! Hence the lack of posts this week.

Richard's planned some great little activities for us. We've done early morning yoga (though I suspect he was just amusing himself, watching us do everything he told us to. I don't think he's done yoga a day in his life), walks down to the harbor, drawing expeditions, various hot shop and flameworking demos and exercises and late-night, neon photography sessions.

Richard and Handsome Will (our TA), planning out our cane excercise

The cane can be used as neon tubing, which is great cause you can get all sorts of colours and effects into the surface of the neon using various colour applications in the hotshop.

A couple of nights ago, both classes were really fortunate to be invited Lani and Daniel McGregor house for drinks and a tour of their glass collection. Lani and Daniel are the directors (and founders, I believe..) of Bullseye Glass.
Their manor house is PACKED to the brim with work from kiln form glassies, most of whom have gone through Northlands at some point as a teacher, TA or resident. It was SO generous of them to have us all. Their collection was breath taking. And the Aussies were well represented!

The McGregor's Scottish home - "Latheron House"

Lani and Daniel

This is one of the pieces in their collection - a kiln-formed chandelier by... Dante Marioni! Who knew he had a kiln former hidden in there somewhere!

These are from our walk down to little Shalligeo beach at the end of Lybster. What started as a drawing walk turned into a really lovely swim in the crisp North Sea and a doze in the sunshine.

Soaking up the glorious weather on a one-off sunny day

Richard wrote up some riddles for us and planted them for us on the way back to the studio.

Can anyone work out the answers? Comment below if you think you've worked them out ;) 

Back in the studio, we're getting into the swing of neon.

Sasha, working on some tubing, and a bunch of our tests in the annealing rack.

This is one of Richard's demos. The pressurized tube is filled with glass beads which causes the electricity to crackle like lightning as it finds its way through the vacuum.

I've been working on script because its one of the harder things to make with neon.

This is my first word!!

Flame-worked glass tubing, waiting to be cleaned, pressurized and filled with argon!

This is the pattern for my word. We work backwards so that the face of the lettering sits flat.

This is it lit up with helium during processing!

This is what happens mercury (which sits in a little trap during processing) gets released into the argon-filled tube.
Argon is a pale lilac colour, and when it gets exposed to mercury vapor it turns bright icy blue!
Richards being careful here when he's shaking the piece because exposed live wires are connected to it.

More photos to come when we start making and photographing more exciting pieces!

Kicking off class #2 - Richard Wheater and Neon Whimsy

Today we begun the second class with the brilliant (and dapper) Richard Wheater.

This class is sensational. I feel like we've been whisked into another world. Or at least, back in time 60 or so years.
For a start, Richard is quite a character. Dressing in an array of two piece suits and suspenders that wouldn't be entirely out of place at a swing dance retrospective, and playing a constant soundtrack of gentle jazz, Wheater's classes are something of a performance. Which doesn't surprise me, given the performative nature of his work. (Definitely check it out, if you're not familiar with it - http://www.richardwheater.com/)

For another thing, the studio is so BEAUTIFUL. Instead of using standard glass cutters, there's bespoke cutters with the "neon workshops" logo carved into the wooden handle. Instead of regular steel workbench frames, everything is powder coated a fantastic colour. Instead of enclosed machinery, the fancy neon equipment is encased in perspex so you can see the cool mechanisms. Instead of old icecream punnets or tupperware containers, electrode samples are kept in old cigar boxes.
This is a beautiful, BEAUTIFUL studio set up to be working in.

The next fantastic thing about this class is old friends in new places!! Wonderful Billie Crellin, who I overlapped study with at the Sydney College of the Arts glass studio, has been doing the Glass Gypsy thing for the last couple years. And - lucky me - his travels have brought him to North Lands!!
Australia, we will have some beers and toast to you.

And of course, there's the neon. I can't get over this stuff. It's fascinating!
We spend a good chunk of the morning learning basic lamp working, which I've never given a decent stab at before.

Richard, giving demos

and giving Sasha (and the rest of us) a hand with our first goes.

We spent the afternoon exploring Lybster, the harbor and headlands. We've a few generators, so there's interesting potential for outdoor or site specific neon works... watch this space!

Found this fierce fella in town

Straight back to it tomorrow. I can't wait to start sharing our neon masterpieces!

Conference!

This weekend North Lands hosted it's annual international conference.
Unfortunately I got a bit distracted by everything going on so I don't have lots of photos to share with you.

The conference had about 100 or so attendees. We listened to some amazing speakers:

Kristiina Uslar and Richard Wheater's talks

 - Petr Stanicky who taught our class in the last session.
- Helen Maurer who taught the other class last session
- Richard Wheater the fantastic neon artist who's teaching my next class!
- Kristiina Uslar, an incredible pate de verre artist, teaching the other class next session
- Dr. Joy Sleeman, a senior lecture at UCL who deals a lot with "the place" in art (i.e. lots of site specific work, environmental interventions, etc)
- Elke Western who is doing quite amazing commission work out of the incredible German architectural studio, Derix Glass Studios
- Dr. Sven Hauschke, director of glass department at the Coburg Art Collection and judge on the panel of the Coburg Glass Art Prize
- Lisa Autogena, the artist behind the incredible Autogena Projects.

The talks were all really wonderful, all speaking around the theme of "the place and work".


We had a really great time at all the meals. It was a fantastic chance to meet lots of international artists, curators and educators. (Of course, I kept getting myself into silly conversations with terribly important people, like the director of the V&A, or the founders of Bullseye Glass, without realising who I was talking to, and probably made a fool of myself a number of times!)

At both of the dinners we had really great Scottish entertainment from the local area, like singers and dancers. We had a bit of a traditional dance night too which was great fun. The Scottish dancing is mostly similar to Aussie barn dancing, as far as I can tell, so I was well prepared to strip willows and swing around partners' elbows. A VERY kind bloke even taught me to waltz.

Richard's class starts this morning. We had an orientation dinner last night to meet our class. I'm super excited! We pestered Richard a little to know what we'll be doing, but he's playing it coy just at the moment, so none of us quite know what to expect.

Very keen to get right into it :)

Finishing up the First Class

Yesterday we finished Petr Stanicky's class.
Everyone's work came together really beautifully!

This is Audrey's piece mid-setup. It is sand-cast Caithness stones installed in window of a ruin in a nearby harbor.

The precarious installation of Jeff's cane-work structure, with the help of Petr.

Jeff's completed work. The linked cane draws connections between the man made structure and the natural rock of a cliff face.

Patty's completed sea-suit.

This is a snippet of her performance on the beach, which ended with her walking right into the water.

This was our end-of-class feast, the final meal for this bunch of North Landers.

I've just been hit with a hefty cold. My body was kind enough to wait till my day off, and I've happily spent the day in bed, resting up for the North Lands International Conference which kicks off this evening.

Several people have suggested this remedy - hot water with whisky, lemon and honey. Typical of the Scottish to include whisky in all their cures!

I've given it a go, and it might be my new favorite hot beverage..

My Dry Stone Wall Project - completed!

 This is the wall half built, with my wonderful helpers!

Will, Emma and Jim

 Laying the last stones

The finished wall!

From the other side

The glass inclusions

We used every last stone that had tumbled from the original wall.
This is the shadow on the grass from where the big pile of stones had been sitting for so long.

Interesting things happening around Northlands

Chickens in the hot shop

Experimental music making using double bass and cello bows

This is Carrie Fertig, who's taking the other class running at Northlands.

Carrie does stunning performances where she flame works percussive instruments live and hands them to musicians who make music on the spot. Usually her instruments are played with soft mallets, so perhaps the bows will be a new addition in her performances!

This is one of Carrie's performances

Gorgeous William, the Assistant Techie

Will also happens to be a luthier - someone who makes string instruments!! We sat down and had a really great nerdy chat about making my glass instruments and the problems that I came up against, like getting the angle of the neck right.

This is him presenting me with a neck-angle-ratio sheet the next day!
What a man.

Hot glass paparazi

This is the other class, run by Helen Maurer, is focused on images and projection. They have been using mirrors, reflections, filters and light tricks in their image making. This is Jim making some interesting optical glass objects in the hot shop for them to photograph.

Big dinners with both classes

We've been going ot all the restaurants in the area to support local businesses.

More mock-installation adventures with Jeffery

  

Jeff was pulling pretty hard here. The chain snapped about 2 seconds after I took the photo. 

 

Me taking a stab at modeling

This is where he's decided to install his final project. He's putting glass eyelets into the wall and cliff to connect the two surfaces with a glass web-like structure

Lights Out glass blowing

 

 

Hilarious park jobs outside the little grocery store in Lybster

 ~ ~ ~

I've settled on a final project! I'm going to restore one of the dry stone walls that is tumbling down, with some glass blobs oozing out from various cracks in it. 

This is the bit of wall I've picked.

 

I've been watching lots of videos about dry stone wall construction and am ready to give it a go

 

This is the cross section of my wall which you can see now that I've cleared all the higgledypiggledy stones from the top.

Emma, the TA for our class, gave me a hand building up the field side of the wall yesterday morning. We made quite a bit of progress! We had to take down the stones to ground level in some places so they could be relaid flat.

You can see the newly build bits quite clearly because none of the freshly-laid stones have lichen on the outside. It should look quite striking when we're finished.