Humbling Art

Here's what has been happening at the glass shop this week.

I'm currently out of batch. Batch is a premix of silica sand, potash, soda lime and other stuff that I melt at 2350 degrees and it turns into glass. It's basically the same thing that happens when a volcano melts different elements in the earth and creates lava, just on a much smaller scale. 

Well, I couldn't wait to try melting more glass so I melted down a bunch of the scraps from my previous melts. It wasn't a full pot but it was enough to make a couple of antlers.

My antlers seemed to be improving a lot. I was excited with the ones that I put in the "box" for annealing!

The "box" is where I put the glass after finishing a piece.

After making a piece of glass, it needs to be annealed, or cooled at a controlled rate. If it isn't controlled and doesn't soak at the annealing point long enough or cools down too quickly, it will crack. 

For annealing, I use an old pottery kiln from back in the 70's.   It doesn't have a temperature controller on it, but when it is set on low, the temperature holds right around 900-915 degrees, which is the perfect temperature for annealing the glass that I use. After the glass soaks at that temperature for a while I can turn off the kiln and it will cool down at a super slow rate.

Well to make a short story longer, let me add that my daughter is playing high school volleyball. We homeschool our kids. Part of homeschooling in MD is that you need to report what you are doing with the board of education or some higher education that is under the board. Even though we homeschool, by being under the umbrella of a local private school our daughter can play sports. This is great as I believe sports can be a great way to learn some very important lessons such as working with others, encouraging others, how to handle being humbled, how to celebrate victory, and even more importantly, how to get back up when you get your butt thumped.

Well, back to the antlers. I had them in the "box", soaking at 915 degrees while I was getting ready to head to the game. Right when we left, I turned the kiln to what I thought was the off position. I was excited and told Jenelle that I couldn't wait to check them out the next day.

We went to the game and it was a good matchup. Our girls won but even better, they had to battle hard to do so!

When we returned home I went down to the shop just to check the temperature and make sure everything was ok. The temperature was 1398 degrees. Oh no! The slumping temperature of this glass is 1250 degrees.

I pulled open the lid and there went my pride. All of the antlers were melted into a giant pretzel!

This time I double checked and made sure that I turned the kiln off instead of to medium.

The next day  was frustrating as I pulled out my blooper. The pieces had insulation and grit melted into them and so the glass wouldn't be suitable for remelting. I threw most of the glass in the trash but kept a funky looking piece from the center.

I hate sharing things like this to the public, especially when it involves my own stupidity. It's so easy to follow culture and just paint a rosy picture on social media. My hope is that this story can resonate with someone. Part of what we want to do is to share our story as an encouragement to others who find themselves on a similar path.

Several people have told me that the slumped antlers look really cool. Maybe even modern art.

I plan to keep them as a reminder to double check and make sure that I turn the kiln to off and not up.

I think I'll call it humbling art.