Going to Pilchuck

I can't seem to stay away from Pilchuck Glass School. It's a special place where I can get my creative batteries charged. When I saw that my old mentor Mitchell Gaudet was teaching this summer, I had to apply, and I was lucky enough to get in. Besides, the beautiful Pacific Cascade Mountains of northern Washington is a great place to get out of the stifling Florida summer heat. I took Mitchell's class at Pilchuck in the summer of 2002. The sand cast glass mixed media sculpture I have done ever since stems form that experience. This piece, "Coming of Age" was the first one I did of the type of work that I have done ever since.

In glass sandcasting, you are always on the lookout for interesting shapes and objects that can be pressed into the sand mold for casting. Mitchell has been part of the Pilchuck family for years and years, and he is a keen detective in finding interesting stuff. He takes his class on a couple treasure hunting trips to the junks shops and antique stores around northern Washington. It was in one of these junk stores that I picked up this odd looking old wooden "thing" for a couple bucks. I had no idea what is was nor what I would do with it. I took it back to Pilchuck and traced the inside negative space onto a thick piece of styrofoam and cut it out slightly smaller on the bandsaw. I casted the shape into a sand mold and got a couple more pieces out of Mitchell's "toy box," a small plastic doll of a young girl, and a small plastic Venus de Milo torso, and pressed them into the bottom of the mold, and cast it in hot molten glass. It was very well received by my teacher and the other members of the class. No one had any idea what the unique object I found was, until John Reed, the director of campus operations, and an expert horseman identified it as an old harness maker's vise. The rest, you might say is history.

Thanks to Ebay, I grab these whenever they come up, and have made several interesting pieces with them. I am also always on the lookup for other interesting objects, especially those with "negative space" for me to put an interesting glass piece into.

Lately, I am thinking I should start to move in some other direction and have been experimenting with some new ideas. I can't wait to try some new thing at Pilchuck this summer!