meaningful work

Last night we watched this Ted Talk by Dan Ariely titled "What makes us feel good about our work?" Ariely is a behavioral economist and it was fascinating to hear him talk about behavioral experiments and workplace themes. A lot of his points were things that I already at least sub-consciously think about. And in his conclusion he proposes a revised model of labor, which includes not just a salary, but also meaning, creation, challenge, ownership, identity and pride. And in that moment a lightbulb went off in my head that no wonder I agree so much with him, I've created this new model for myself by starting my own business!

Give it a chance, it's only 20 minutes long and very worthwhile for anyone who has ever worked... so yea, everyone should watch this. He is also the author of a few books, and I've added this one to my long list of books to read.

upon a star

last year I made a few custom moravian stars, but this 12 pointed version was always on my backburner to-do list.  yesterday I finally decided to skip my weekly to-do lists and just make this baby.  and I could not be more pleased.  it's kind of like the goldilocks of sizes, not too big and not too small, just right.

geode

working on new pieces for the holidays using the natural forms in nature

I know it's only September, but I'm pretty sure December is going to rush up and take me by surprise

experimenting

lately I've been experimenting. with new shapes, sizes, ideas... after one too many days of staring at all the terrariums piled on our one table, it occurred to me that some of the shapes could make beautiful lamps.  the first lamp I made looks wonderful, and it really makes me wish I had a place to put them, but since the table is full they're sitting on the floor for now...

next on my ever growing list of ideas : figure out fittings for a wall mounted light...



* Edit 8/3/12:  I will definitely be putting the lamp in my shop soon, I'm looking to have it ready for the fall/winter season.  I'm making it in two sizes:

Large measures 18.5" high (with shade).  The glass lamp base is 12" high and 11" at the widest part, and the shade is 14" wide at its base x 8.5" high. 

Small measures 15" high (with shade.  The glass lamp base is 9" high and 8.5" at the widest part, and the shade is 9.5" wide at its base x 6.5" high.

I'll be offering them in either silver or with a copper patina.  And I'll be offering the shade in either chalk white or light sand.  As with all my work, the lamps are handmade using glass and a lead-free silver alloy solder.
 
I'll start taking pre-orders soon, email me for details!

about me

I really like the new "about" page on Etsy that you can customize.  I recently added some details to mine, come check it out!

coins of glass

Whenever I'm making a large bubble lamp (like this) or nightlights I end up with hundreds of stained glass circles to organize by color.  If I'm in the zone I actually find this a really pleasing process.  And it gets me excited for putting them all together and seeing what takes shape, literally.  This photo is from a few weeks ago, but I'm gearing up for cutting another batch of circles soon.  Think of this as a mental psyching up.

Later tonight I'm going to get some pumpernickel bread baking, do some yoga and then Quizzo!  I had no idea what Quizzo was before moving to Philly, but it's a pretty serious thing for Philadelphians.  It seems like pub trivia to us, but I'm sure there are those out there who would disagree.  We're now in a team that meets just a few blocks from us every Tuesday night.  Coming up to the end of our first year here, it kind of seems appropriate we're now a part of this city game.

geometrics

new Dodecahedron lamp

I love playing around with geometric shapes and color combinations.  Someday I'll figure out how take a photo of myself sitting on the floor surrounded by sheets of glass, waiting for a few sheets to yell out "Choose us!  We'll be perfect together!"

In the meantime, what colors are your favorites?

p.s. yes, that is a woolly rhino in the background, who doesn't have a woolly rhino lurking in their photos?

bluebird

This week I've gotten out of December-mode by making a bunch of these guys.  I want to make a whole array of them in different colors - a) to just have around to take to shows and put in the shop and b) for a new project of mine that will require many, many, many small birds.

I hope your 2012 started well this week.  One of my main accomplishments this week was continually adding to my "to do" list, though now I feel that I need start checking things off!  I actually added a few things on the list today just so I could immediately check them off, do you ever do that?  Hopefully it's not just me...

happy weekend!

a new year

Hi everyone! I'm looking forward to getting back to work this week, I have a lot of new ideas and some new takes on old ideas, so hopefully I'll have lots for you to see over the next few months.  I actually finished this mistletoe the day before Christmas.  I had been hoping to have a few of these before my December shows, but somehow it never quite happened.  Everyone loved how this one worked out, so I'll definitely get these worked up for the next holiday season!

I do have a few goals for myself (in art and life) this coming year...

keeping track of ideas

On Friday I mentioned how I rely on lists to get organized for the week.  For the short-term To Do lists I like writing them on paper scraps and then throwing them away {recycling} them when I'm really done.  It's like a more extreme version of crossing things off the lists.  And I do vigorously cross things off... just to make sure I know it's really been done.

On the other hand, I want to hold on to long-term lists and ideas, so I write those in a little moleskine book, which I carry around with me.  I don't necessarily write in it everyday.  Sometimes I only write one line, just a short reminder to myself.  Other times I get prolific and fill pages with new ideas and sketches.  It's guaranteed that if I'm ever caught out of the house without it I will think of about a hundred things I want to write down, and resort to writing on receipts, which I then transcribe into the book when I get back home.

Oh, and I still cross things off.

productive mornings

jewelry :: commissioned "om" sculpture :: nightlight faces

I often make lists of what I want to accomplish at the beginning of each week.  There is usually one list of what I want to make before the next show, which is pretty loooong, and another list of what I want to finish that week.  For me, there is nothing like the satisfaction I get checking things off.  Often I don't quite manage to do everything, but I have to allow myself some flexibility for the unexpected... and there's always next week!

Look at all the things I finished off this morning!  All before noon!  

Check.

Chihuly's Glass Baskets

I saw the Dale Chihuly exhibit at the MFA in Boston last spring.  I have always liked Chihuly's work, in my eyes he has taken great strides in showing how glass can be Art with a capital A.  Most of his glassblowing is full of color and dynamic movement, but out of all of his work I actually find his "baskets" the most inspiring.

Grossmünster stained glass

The Grossmünster is a Romanesque-style church in Zurich, one of the three major churches in the city.  Completed in 1220 AD, the Grossmünster was a monastery church, and according to legend it was founded by Charlemagne, whose horse fell to its knees on the graves of Felix and Regula, the patron saints of Zurich.

The church itself is awe-inspiring, but I am focused on the more contemporary stained glass windows, which date from the 20th and 21st centuries.  There are two artists who are responsible for the newer windows, Giacometti in 1932 and Sigmar Polke between 2006 and 2009.  It is this later set that interests me the most.  And I think you'll see why...

photos sewed together for this post, this is not how the windows appear in the church

elemental platonic solids

Got a photo this morning of the Elemental Platonic Solids stained glass series that I mentioned in my post late last night.  These are smaller than the other sculptures I have been making, they measure from 2" to 3.5" high.  The smaller size makes them really tactile (the blue icosahedron in particular is just asking me to toss it around, but I'm restraining myself!)

To recap from the post - Plato assigned each of the five shapes to one of the elements.  

So, the tetrahedron symbolizes fire, the cube is earth, the octahedron is air, the icosahedron is water, and the dodecahedron is the universe, or sometimes the zodiac, as it is made up from twelve pieces like the twelve signs in the zodiac.

I drew from this to make this series, illustrating each element through the stained glass colors.  I will be selling this as a set, but I think that they would make great gifts if you correspond the shape to someone's astrological sign, so I may make some more of these as individual pieces.  

Check out my last post if you want to see which shape would correspond to your sign.

© 2011 ABJ Glassworks

All Rights Reserved

series: Platonic Solids

The more that I learn about the Platonic Solids, the more interesting I find them.  You may remember something about the solids from this post about the inspiration behind my stained glass series, but this past week I found out more about their relationship with the historic four elements: fire, earth, air and water.

The mathematical laws governing the tetrahedron, cube, and dodecahedron were first studied about 2500 years ago by the Pythagoreans. 

inspire: fallingwater

I find that the most inspiring places I go to for ideas are out in the natural world.  There is nothing more interesting than the shapes that nature can create over thousands and millions of years. 

These photos are a bit old now.  They're from a trip I took out to Falling Water (the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Mill Run, PA) with my friends.  You can see how Wright took care to make the buildings one with nature and to mirror the surroundings, often even bringing the outside to the inside, so that the house feels it grew from the rocks.  As interesting as the house was, I found the land that it sits on to be the most interesting.

For me it was all about the sandstone.  These massive walls created by compressed sand over millenia.  They are geometric and hard, and yet they undulate and seem to follow the river that has helped to give its shape.  As with most inspiring things, I don't know yet how these rocks will materialize in my work.  What new shapes or colors or play of light they will bring out.  But I know that for now this experience is sitting in the back of my mind and is probably already oozing into my new work.

I also liked this little natural garden, which was growing in a nook of the house's balcony. 

Here, nature is everywhere.

new work: lamps

right: Purple Cubes Lamp, 2011

center: Blue Marbled Triangular Lamp, 2011

left: Blue Pentagonal Lamp, 2011

The story behind these lamps is a bit funny.  At the first show I did on Headhouse Square here in Philly I seemed to get the same question over and over again, and it was very unexpected ... "do you make the lamps?"  The answer was... "well, no."

work: colored fragments

Seventy-two pieces of stained glass in seven colors

Often I love the way the pieces of stained glass look even before the sculpture is put together.  I can't help but play with the fragments before I cement them forever into their ultimate shape.

Twelve pieces of stained glass in seven colors coming together for a dodecahedron

Though, as much as I enjoy playing with the pieces, sometimes you have to stop taking photos and just put them together...

series: Platonic Solids

Cube No.1, Cube No.4, Cube No.5
Dodecahedron No.2, Octahedron No.3, Octahedron No.4

I have been working all week making new stained glass platonic solids to put in the shop.

You may or may not have noticed that the original group I listed at the beginning of the week have what looks to be shredded balls of paper inside.  If you have been to my shop then you will have already figured out what this is, but for those who have not, these are poems or excerpts from literature that I have selected.  Some are writings that I have always loved, some I have only come across recently.  

So what is behind the Platonic Solids you ask?  This series is drawn from a work I did about seven years ago.  I made a stained glass cube, like the ones above but more opaque, to house a poem I had written.  I did not really want to share the poem with anyone, but I wanted to harness the feelings in the poem.  I drew from the poem when selecting the colors for the cube and then I shredded the printed poem and housed it in its glass box.

In this way, I have done the same for these classic poems.  I have drawn from the poems of Keats, Coleridge, Thomas, Williams, and more when creating these sculptures; feeding off the emotion and energy all poetry contains when selecting the shapes, sizes and colors.  

I still hold on to the shredding of the actual poem inside because for me poetry is an intimate experience, grasping at the inexpressible.  I shred the poems so that others will only know what is inside if you choose to tell them.    If you have one of these then this will be up to you.

I have also created some hollow stained glass sculptures, which I will be putting in the shop today, as I believe that the shapes in themselves are interesting and beautiful as well.

As always, I hope you enjoy.  Feel free to comment and/or ask me any questions!

Click here to learn what a platonic solid shape is.

 

Cube No.2

© 2011 ABJ Glassworks
All Rights Reserved