Accidental Art in Margaritaville

Recycling and being green are the big buzz words these days.

I drive my family crazy with my obsession with saving things, reuse, and generally keeping as much as possible out of the land fills. I compost my garbage, recycle every speck of paper and junk mail, and occasionally check the waste baskets and garbage at the curb.

Friday afternoon I was really tired from a late night at the studio, the heat, and playing in the dirt aka gardening. I was brewing some espresso for some iced coffee and forgot that it does not have an automatic shut off and stood there while it steamed and steamed some more, and then exploded. There was brown goo and glass bits everywhere. The reason I mention it is not because I saved any of the exploded carafe, but just to explain my frame of mind. Shortly after an hour of cleaning up, I opened the cabinet with the stemware and knocked over one of my pretty margarita glasses. It detached from the base. Oops.

So now I get to the good part of the story. With my kiln, I have the ability to melt any kind of glass, so I melted the margarita glass. Thanks to some on-line help from Brad Walker, the author of "Warm Glass", http://www.warmglass.com/. His web site had a firing program for melting bottles. In the days to come I will document my progress. Below is how it looks today.

It is now Sunday evening. After a visit to Grounds for Sculpture and some gardening projects, I have resumed work on a design for this transformed glass. I might paint and fire the spirals.

The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love

I attended a workshop at Artworks in Trenton yesterday: http://www.artworkstrenton.org/ . The morning speaker was NYC artist Jackie Battenfield http://www.jackiebattenfield.com/, a painter and the creator of the Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn. Her new book, still warm from the printer's press, was available, entitled "The Artist's Guide...". Her story was one of perseverance, determination and goal setting. There is magic in directed energy. Read her book and find out!

Above is Jackie's work, "Dark Water 1", 1997.

Stained Glass Classes!!

After years of requests, I have now scheduled Beginning Stained Glass Classes!
I will be using the studio space at Bloomers 'N Things To Do, at 24 S. Main St. in Allentown. Owner, Debbie Personette, has recently created wonderful studio space in half of the lovely old "Messenger Press Building". It is the only commercial building in the business district with a front lawn. Debbie, who can do anything, has recently learned enough to teach painted pottery, mosaics, and glass fusion. It is a walk in type of place or a great place for a party with an activity.
However, my classes will be Wed. evenings, the Late Spring Session starting May 27th, if I can get at least 6 students.
Go to http://www.karendeets.com/ and then click "Classes". Although I did not link it, you could pay by Paypal, or mail a check. You could cut and paste the Registration into e-mail or put it into a Word document and attach it and send to deets.nj@juno.com. So many options. I'm sorry I'm not "techy" enough to make it more streamlined. I am merely a Glass Artist, so please forgive me.