ISGB Bead Currents

Last year I vowed to enter more shows and submit to more publications. I'm happy to say that I've had very good luck with that. Everything I've submitted has been accepted. Of course, there were a couple of misses on the submission end of things.

I really wanted to enter Out of the Box, an interesting sculptural challenge with glass and beads that must fit in a clear plexi box 6"x6"x6". The show tours around the country, and I got to see it at Bead & Button. The night of the show preview I wandered upstairs and had it all to myself before the guard asked me to leave. It was fascinating and the printed catalog was nicely done, so I really kicked myself for missing the deadline.

Hence, I came home and entered Bead Currents, another juried bead show at the Gathering. The theme this year was currents, since the meeting is in Oakland near the ocean. I loosely interpreted the theme to mean either water or air currents and submitted both my painted fish beads and bird vessels. The acceptance came recently, several weeks after the supposed May 30 notification date. Subsequently, the beads are due to be received by July 15. Since the beads submitted were representative of the work and not required to be the actual submitted beads, I of course need to make some. I must send a minimum of six and a maximum of ten.

Eek! This week I've been trying to focus. I made a couple of bird vessels -- the transparent pale green bird turned out pretty well and the ultrasoft ivory glass was more challenging. Of course, I wanted those soft light colors so that I can paint the surface. Maybe I better make a few more in the stiffer transparent glass before I try more ivory or white.

I also painted seven fish tiles with black outlines and fired. Then I did the color painting on four and refired. Again, standing right there cleaning the studio, I slightly overfired by about a minute. That shouldn't have been a huge problem except that I then exacerbated it by using a cold pair of tweezers to pick up a couple, which cracked them in two. I also let a lovebird bead get irreversibly covered with soot because I forgot that I need to turn the oxygen way up when working Bullseye glass.

Sigh. All the little details I forget when I haven't done some things in a while. I'm relearning as fast as possible. After all, I need to ship the work soon.