Arrowmont Day 2 - July 16th, 2007

Monday was a long and busy day at Arrowmont. Kerry began the day with an explanation of mold making techniques. Each student carved a small image to make positive and negative molds from. We started with a little chunk of Sculpey each, carved it and made a negative mold with Alginate (dental mold compound).

Here are pictures of our talented group at work:
















After the molds were made, the students mixed up hydrocal/silica casting compound and poured negative and positive plaster molds. Here are pictures of the molds loaded with frit and billet. (Anyone have pictures of the fired projects? I somehow missed that.)
This was our morning project, the evening/afternoon was spent preparing cast images for our large projects. There will be a brief pause here while I figure out how to create a YouTube account, there are several good video's coming up and I don't want anyone to miss anything.

Arrowmont Day 1 - July 15, 2007

Slightly belatedly, here is an account of my week at the Arrowmont School of Art and Craft in Gatlinburg TN.

It all started some months ago when Kerry Transtrum offered me the opportunity to be his teaching assistant for a week long casting class at Arrowmont. The dates of the class were July 15-21.

After boarding a plane at a bleary 4:20 a.m. on Sunday, July 15, then spending a dismal layover in Houston, I arrived in Knoxville. The Knoxville airport is just delightful. I was absolutely charmed. The rental car agency (Enterprise) personnel were charming, the drive through the winding Tennessee roads were charming.

Then I got to Pigeon Forge. Pigeon Forge is NOT charming. At least the traffic wasn't. I didn't see a whole lot of the town itself.

Gatlinbug is 6 miles from Pigeon Forge, the intervening miles were beautiful, but Gatlinburg suffers the same traffic woes as Pigeon Forge. Here's a picture, although it is hard to see the traffic part.


Those green humps in the distance are the Smoky Mountains, which are beautiful, but I had a really hard time keeping track of them. They were so...hill like.

Here is a view of the Wasatch Range from my yard, so you get an idea of where I'm coming from. I'm used to mountains being BIG and easy to see. Maybe all those trees confused me.

At long last, here is the school, which is exquisite. And, our fearless leader.














The class was about casting with relief images in the glass. We started Monday morning bright and early by creating negative and positive castings. More detail in the next post...

Windbreak

Windbreak is a new piece, 10"x15" hand carved and slumped recycled glass tabletop.