Omaha Glass Class

Had a great time teaching my first glass class this past weekend. Twelve students from three states: Nebraska, Iowa and two brave ladies all the way from Portland.  I must say these two made me a little nervous, coming from Portland, the glass “mecca” for fusers. Which brings me to my only real fear in teaching a class…. that I wouldn’t be able to bring anything new to these folks who had put out good money and traveled here to take my class.  Years ago when I was just beginning to learn about glass, I took my one and only class. The teacher spent most of the time talking about safety, much of which related more to blown glass than fused. He gave us some 4″ pre-cut squares and scrap we were to assemble using really poor quality tools, and that was it for $100! I was so outraged I asked the local community college for my money back and got it!  After that I invested in a lot of good books and taught myself.

Well, no one asked for their money back at my class and I learned a few things too, so guess it’s all good. First of all I learned that one of my missions in life is to make fused glass into an accepted fine art form. I also learned that the hardest part of teaching is expressing in an intelligible language so that others can understand things that are intuitive to me.

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Started out with a couple of photos. Next, we talked about editing sketches for glass and how to use compositional basics like the “golden section,” color balance and value to keep the view in the composition. Then we took the piece step by step, learning how to layer transparent glass colors to create new colors with the depth and richness of a good painting.

Students create color samples, learning color mixing & blending with crushed glass “frit” and pose with smiles in a group photo.

Final creations are fired in Anne’s kiln.

Next class: April 23rd at Ed Hoy International, Chicago. http://www.edhoy.com

Hope to see you there!

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