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!

Two New Pieces Today

It's been quite a while since I did anything new for myself. Today I managed to put together two new pieces using the faces I sandcasted two weekends ago. I usually combine the glass components with old "found objects" have been laying around the studio, waiting for me to have an inspiration about what to do with them. Today, I picked out an old copper oil lamp base that was great with the head of Zeus, which I molded from a terra cotta mask I borrowed from my friends George and Jackie. They got it when they were in Greece. We were over there for brunch, and I noticed it on the patio of their condo. I borrowed it and promised to make them one in glass, which I did. I made a silicone mold from theirs from which I did a plaster reproduction from which I can now make as many as I want.

The other piece I did used the same little face I have used in so many of my pieces in the past. It is mounted on an oval sandcasted glass base. I have included the jaw bone of a wild boar my friend Bill shot at his hunting camp in north Florida. The whole thing is mounted on some old heart pine beadboard left over from the remodeling of our house. I plan on donating this one to the annual Dunedin Fine Arts Center Garden Party auction. I post some pictures, when the pieces are totally finished.

"Who did your website?"

I received an email inquiring about who did my website. I was flattered because I did it myself. It's my feeling that everybody should have a website, and anybody can put together a very presentable website fairly easily. The easiest way I know of is to join Yahoo and go their Geocities site. (Since this blog is part of Google, I hope they don't get offended and shut down my blog!) Follow the directions and voila, you have a website. One thing though, you have to spring for an extra 9 bucks a month to get a site without all the Yahoo pop ups.

That's not how I made my site though. I am by no means a professional web designer, but I have been putting websites together for a few years now. I originally started with a program called Bullfrog, which is, as far as I know, defunct. About 3 years ago, I started using Front Page and am fairly pleased with it. I have not had the time nor the inclination to switch to what the pros mostly use, which is Dreamweaver. I use Adobe Elements for my graphics and pictures. I also have bookmarked, Bellsnwhistles.com a handy site for all kinds of free graphics. Another great resource for me is HTML Goodies. It has great tutorials and scripts to use on your site.

As far as uploading new stuff to the site is concerned, there are three ways I can do it. I can use the Geocities file transfer, upload directly from Front Page, or use an FTP program. Most of the time I use WS_FTP. It is not the newest thing around, but I have used it for years and I am comfortable with it.

Super Bowl Sunday in the Studio

Kickoff in one hour!

We just finished casting a furnace load of hot glass into our new graphite molds. If anyone needs these, I highly recommend Weaver Industries of Denver, PA. These folks are great to work with. We got three molds made for a new series of glass sculpture Laura is doing. They will be similar to some of the sand cast masks, she has done in the past, but instead of pouring into a traditional sand mold, we are using the graphite. Sooo smooth and fast! We have about a dozen small, medium and large faces in the annealer, and they will come out on Tuesday. Laura will have plenty of work to do decorating them with fabric, beads, feathers, etc. We will send some to our photographer Steve Meltzer in Seattle to photograph. He is the absolute best. Steve and his wife Diane are good friends. They used to live nearby in Sarasota, but last year they moved way cross country to be near their kids and grand kids.

Short entry today. I've got to shower and get ready for the big game. I can't decide who to root for. We love our former Bucs coach Tony Dungy, but as a one time Chicagoan and avid Florida Gator alum, I would like to see Rex Grossman shut up all his naysayers and play a great game.
Here's some trivia: Peyton Manning and his Tennessee Vols never beat Florida.

By the way, yesterday, my son Tony and I went to Gainesville and saw our Number One rated Gator basketball team absolutely CRUSH Tennessee. Go Gators. . .

The Turning Point

If you want to know more about my glass bio, please check out my website at the "Artist" page. Pretty much everything is there.

The significant turning point in my glass career was very much a serendipity. In 2001, I applied to go back to Penland to yet another glassblowing course. At Penland, there are a lot more applications than there are people accepted. The long and the short is that I did not get in. I was totally bummed, because my summers at Penland were my escape valve from the stress of my law career. Laura suggested that I apply to Pilchuck. Pilchuck Glass School is the "Harvard" of glass, and I never considered myself to be anywhere near that caliber. Anyway, the application deadline had already passed. Laura made me call out there anyway to inquire about any cancellations or openings. They told me they had an opening in a sandcasting class. I never considered sandcasting to be something that I would be interested in, but Laura, my muse and constant encourager, urged me to go. She probably felt it would be better than me moping around the house all summer.

I got out to Pilchuck and almost immediately had an epiphany. I had never been to Washington state before, and was captivated with the beauty of the Pilchuck campus and the entire aura of the place. My instructors were two terrific artists, Cathy Chase and Kelly McLain. Pilchuck, which was the brain child of Dale Chihuly, also had a very unique and wonderful custom of inviting two emminent artists from media other than glass. I was very fortunate to meet Italo Scanga. Itlalo was a preeminent mixed media artist and close friend of Dale Chihuly. At the time, he had just turned 70, but still full of energy and enthusiasm. We immediately hit it off.
Italo was on the faculty of University of California San Diego, and had done several important public sculpture projects all over the world.

I was so excited about Pilchuck, that when they announced an opening in a course in the following session, I volunteered Laura to fill it. I was only home a day or so before Laura had to leave to fly out to Seattle. A few days later I received a phone call from her telling me that Italo had suffered a fatal heart attack, while working in his studio back in San Diego. Please visit the Italo Scanga website to learn more about this amazing man and his work. All of what I do now in art is directly influenced by him. One of my favorite pieces is entitled "Homage to Italo" and can be seen on my website.

My Early Days in Glass

I got started doing glass about 10 years ago. My wife, Laura was already working in kiln formed glass in a studio in our former house across town. We went out to Portland, OR where she was going to attend a national glass convention. Since we had never been to the northwest, we went out a week early and rented a car to drive down the coast staying in B&B’s and taking in the sights. One day while passing through Bandon, OR, I noticed a sign that said “See live glassblowers at work” and we pulled into the studio. I had never seen glassblowing before. The studio was owned by a glassblower named Dutch Schultz (no relation to the notorious mobster in the 20’s) Dutch and his team were in the process of making one of his signature large vases. I was totally captivated. We bought one of the vases, which I still have. I was determined to learn more about glass and glassblowing.

When I got back home, I signed up for a one day glass paperweight workshop at Susan Gott’s studio in Tampa. My first effort at gathering hot glass from the furnace was inauspicious to say the least, but the experience was enough to make we want to do more. I met a great fellow and now long time good friend, Ed Kozlowski. Ed had a small glass studio at his home. He agreed to teach me how to make glass paperweights and ornaments. I spent a few Saturday mornings learning the basics of gathering hot glass from the furnace, adding color and shaping them into round globe paperweights. Summer was coming on, and many glass studios in Florida shut down because the summer heat makes it too unbearable to work. Laura suggested I try to enroll in a class at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. I was fortunate enough to get into a glass taught by an outstanding glass artist Richard Jolley. That intensive hands on experience was the inspiration I needed to make the commitment to set up my own studio.

We already had a couple of kilns and other glassworking equipment for Laura’s work, but a glass “hot shop” would require a serious investment in several more fixtures including a glass melting furnace, glory hole, gaffer’s bench, and marver table. Fortunately, Laura had been collaborating with a master welder and metal artist, Jim Fasting, who was able to make me a wonderful bench and marver table. Because of zoning restrictions, I could not install a gas fired furnace since our studio was attached directly to our home, so I opted for a turn key electric glass furnace from Denver Glass Machinery Company.I also went ahead and purchased a Denver glory hole, and a Denver polisher/grinder.


The furnace arrived on a semi tractor trailer. The furnace had been seriously damaged in shipment and had to be sent back. A few weeks later, the furnace again arrived. It weighed well over a ton. Fortunately, it is on wheels. When I measured the width, I found it was a couple inches too big to fit through the door from the garage to the studio. Fortunately, by removing the door, it could just squeeze through. My furnace is the same one my friend Ed has used for years, so he was able to get me up and running with a minimum of problems.
So in early 2000, I was now a novice glass blower with my own studio.

Welcome to my new blog

Welcome to my first blog post. I'm still feeling my way along on this, so please bear with me. This is a test post to see how it looks. I Len Vincenti and I live in a wonderful little place tucked away on the Gulf Coast of Florida called Ozona. Funny name, huh? Back at the turn of the century, the little fishing community was called "Yellow Bluff" after the sandy hills visible from the Gulf of Mexico. There was an outbreak of yellow fever and the locals feared that the name would have a bad conotation with tourists from the north, so they changed the name to "Ozona" since ozone was thought to be healthy stuff.

Fast forward a hundred years or so and today Ozona is an eclectic little heaven in the midst of the hustle bustle of the booming Tampa Bay area. About 7 years ago, we bought a wonderful little hundred year old "Florida Cracker" house.