New Cups

Unlike my struggle with trying to get my molds to work (which is actually going a lot better since I got some advice from different people after my last blog post, so thank you for that), my work in the hotshop has been way more productive.
I kind of used it as a get away after feeling annoyed by working on my other project and it has worked out.
Besides feeling that I am getting my old glasblowing skills back (not that there where a lot but still), I have made some nice cups. Here is a little sneak preview of what you can expect to find in my little gallery, when I visit the Netherlands in January!

Struggling

I haven't posted for a bit now, and this is mainly because I have been struggling with my work. I am having a hard time to get the molds that I made to work and had to redo and redo and redo them. I have tried many different ways and found that something else went wrong each time. I am still not sure weather I am being able to pull it off right now but I think I am getting there. My problem is the precision I am trying to work in. Having the basic shape cut out by a laser cutter to then fill in with the glass later on seems quite challenging. since the silicone rubber mold has a tiny bit of shrinkage that cannot be prevented and the wax does even more of this it is pretty much impossible to achieve what I want. you could say why not just make the glass first and then cut out the wood to fit it but if I want to make a series of these a working mold this way could save me a lot of work in the end (lasercutting the board will be a lot quicker than hand cutting the shape out every single time besides the fact that the shape is actually quite complicated and detailed).

I will show you some pictures of some of my pathetic attempts to make this project work.

Casting Wax

Today I started to try and cast some wax in my new mold. It took a couple of try's as the mold is quite large and the wax pot only takes a certain amount of wax. I messed the first one up a little and destroyed it due to being impatient. After that I decided that I had to leave the wax to dry overnight so hopefully it will be ok tomorrow morning. A lot of thanks to Austyn (who is a 3rd year student) for helping me out and taking these great pictures!!!

New work

I got a lot of inspiration at the end of last week thinking about the possibilities with all the new equipment the college has and some of the new techniques I learned. I am going back to some ideas and works I made when back in the Netherlands but never really had the chance to get further into during my MFA. Now that I am an artist in residence and don't have to do all of those annoying assignments which just took up time, I can finally fully go for what I want. This got me really excited and I am happy to show you a little sneak preview of perhaps the best looking mold I made so far (now lets hope it does more than just look good).

Saitama classic car meeting

Ok it has been a while and I know I promised so here are finally some pictures of the Classic Car meeting I went to when in Japan. The meeting isn't really official and is just organised as an morning cruise each month just 5 min from where my parents in law live. It's nice to see how many different classic cars there are in such a small area and how people take the effort to come and meet each month.

Royal Scottish Academy

Another thing I found out this week is that one of my screen prints is selected to take part in the open exhibition from the Royal Scottish Academy. I got convinced by Jeff who works at the glass department to try and put some of my work in and I am happy I did. The show will open this Friday and is definitely a little different then the one I have up at Urban Outfitters. I had to pick up one of the 2 prints I submitted as they only took one of them for the exhibition, and was lucky enough to already see my other one up on the wall.

This is the Building where the exhibition is being held. Definitely something else.

Opening at Urban Outfitters

I'm very sorry for those who are waiting on more car pictures but there is lots of stuff going on at the moment that I want to mention (they will come eventually don't worry).

I had the opening of my show at Urban Outfitters last night and it went very well. I had lots of support from friends an colleagues and of course my lovely wife. I got some great compliments and am very satisfied with the overall look. It will be up until the 14th of January so lots of time to go and see it in the basement of Urban Outfitters in Edinburgh.

 

Solo Show at Urban Outfitters

I know I'm still not done with all the pictures of Japan, but I have to mention my new upcoming show at Urban Outfitters here in Edinburgh. They have been so kind to offer me the exhibition space in their basement. The show will officially open this Friday (with drinks) at 5pm (until 7:30pm). In case you don't know Urban Outfitters yet it is at 124 Princes Street, Edinburgh EH2 4AD.
The show will run until the 14th of January so there's plenty of time to go and see it.

Cars in Japan

As promised here are some pictures of cars I found while in Japan. Ok not all of them are amazing (or classic in my book), but I did feel they stood out and to find a Renault 4 in the middle of Tokyo was quite exciting even if you don't like the car.
I also went to a classic car meeting but I will make another post about that later (I don't want to put too many pictures into one story).

Ok so the first one isn't really a car, it's pretty cool though.

I think it's an attempt of making it look like a classic (still no idea what it really is though). 

Renault 4 in Tokyo

Perhaps going to be in one of my new screen prints, let me know if you know this car!

I'm pretty sure this is a Skyline 2000 GT-R 

Finaly something about Japan

I already got back and realized I haven't even posted anything while in Japan. This had to do with the fact that it was a very very busy trip this time meeting lots of family and friends. The trip was amazing and I start to love it more and more over there. I am even learning how to read Hiragana (one of the 3 types of characters they use to write in Japan). We officially went for my wife's best friend's wedding but of course met lots of other people as well as just enjoying being over there. I did take lot's of pictures but haven't been working as hard on that as last time (I will make a separate posts about the cars I found this time).
It is amazing how quick time always goes by, but at the same time I feel like I have been away for a year. I think staying over with my parents in law rather than at a hotel makes it feel like you actually live there.
One of the highlights of this trip was visiting Nikko where we went to see an amazing shrine. This site is famous for it's autumn leaves and even though we went on a Monday it was still extremely busy.

Vintage and Reclaimed

One more small update before I'm off, as I got surprised by the offer from the store owner below my apartment. He has a vintage and reclaimed store and asked me if I was interested to put up some prints there. As I am going to Japan now and they would be just standing in my spare room I was quite happy to do so. You can check out the shop at http://www.vintagereclaimed.co.uk/ (nut sure if my works will be added there as well or not).

Busy but pictures

After a very Busy week there came another one.
We had a special team coming in to break down and rebuild the furnace I have been working on with Ingrid (Glass Technician), earlier this semester.The first couple of days I have been helping out and trying to see how they did it as much as I could. for the rest of the week I have been busy with preparing a glass enamel screen printing introduction for the third year and some MFA students. I have to say that it went better than expected so far and I am happy to see there is a lot of interest.
I also gave another talk about my work and this time for the whole department. I was quite nervous about it and forgot to mention a lot of things. Fortunately we had a very long discussion at the end of my talk which gave me another opportunity to explain things.
This Monday I will have another screen printing day to help out the 3rd year students and after that it's of to Japan!

Kiln Rebuild:

the leaked out glass: 

Glass enamel screen printing project with students: