Robert Gale Ongley

Month: February 2021

  • GLASSBLOWING–WHERE ART MEETS CRAFT

    Personally, I don’t think there is any more stunning work of art than blown glass. If art is meant to make you feel something, then blown glass sparkles in that category. Describing how it makes me feel is not easy. The visual impact puts it on an ethereal plane. A gorgeous piece with its sleek lines and translucent colors might have come into material existence through a portal from another realm, its unspeakable beauty too lovely for this coarse world. It can produce a sense of bliss. I’m practically giddy if it touches me deeply enough.

    In this post, we’re going to learn what blown glass actually is, how it’s made and what you can do to try your hand at it. Plus, we’ll get a look at a few spectacular glass sculptures.

    Ingredients

    Glass has three main ingredients: Silica, which is found in sand; sodium carbonate; and lime. There are some less important and some optional chemical elements that can also be added to enhance the glass, but that’s the primary makeup.

    The recipe for glass was first discovered perhaps as early as 3600 BC. There’s conflicting information on this, but somewhere between 3000 BC and 4000 BC seems accurate. Most agree it was probably first created in Egypt, although Syria is another possibility.

    The colors in glass usually come from metal oxides, chlorides or sulfides. For example, cobalt oxide lends a blue or violet hue. Interestingly, gold chloride makes for a red color and for yellow, cadmium sulfide is added. When a glassblower wants to add flecks of color to whatever color the existing glass has, he or she peppers in some colored crushed glass to the mix which is melted into the other ingredients. There are a number of other options available, including some fluorescent colors.

    The Process

    The equipment needed consists of a furnace that can reach temperatures up to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, a crucible, a smaller furnace known as the glory hole where the soft glass can be shaped, an oven where rods known as punties and other pipes are kept hot, and an annealing oven where newly formed glass can be cooled slowly to prevent breakage of the new sculptures.

    Those who make these creations deserve to be called artists or sculptors, so I will refer to them as such. To start the process, they insert the punty into a furnace and crucible, gathering a mass of molten glass. The punty is also the blow pipe. The sculptor rolls the glass on a steel table to mold it into a cylindrical shape. Before it can harden, the glass is then inserted into the glory hole, turning it all the while. There will be multiple trips to the glory hole to keep the glass malleable as it is being formed as designed.

    The piece is rolled into a pile of small or even powdered colored glass to give the new glass color as it’s being shaped. The added colored glass, now stuck to the new piece, is melted in place as all of it is placed back in the glory hole. The table is used repeatedly to keep working the glass into the desired shape. The actual glassblowing through the blow pipe is part of this shaping process. Opening a bubble is important to shaping the glass and the glassblowing will be alternated with trips to the glory hole as needed.

    There are many more details to the process, but not all can be covered here. One key step, though, is the separation of the glass from the pipe. As the glass blower seated at a bench temporarily stops turning the piece, another portion of molten glass is attached to the other end, using another punty. At the right moment, the artist raps the blow pipe and the molten glass breaks away, leaving the original piece attached to the second punty. Another piece of glass is attached as a makeshift handle. More shaping occurs and finally the sculpture is detached from the handle with another whack of the punty. The blown glass falls into a box with lots of fire blankets for a soft landing. After many hours of cooling in the annealing oven, the work of art is officially complete.

    Cutting handle off blown glass

    How to Learn Glassblowing

    To do this yourself, you will first need to find a place with the specialized equipment mentioned above. I would suggest you find a class on glassblowing and get properly trained. They will have what you need to learn on and the skill to teach you. If you happen to have all the equipment, I would still recommend getting a professional to show you how to do this delicate and potentially dangerous work. I have found a good reference on Wikihow that gives an illustrated tutorial on the subject. Here’s the URL: https://www.wikihow.com/Blow-Glass

    Blown Away

    For more information and an entertaining reality show, check out Blown Away on Netflix. It’s great for watching how it’s done, various techniques and some creative ideas. Enjoy the journey!

  • RECEPTIVITY AS AN ART FORM

    Being receptive and open isn’t always easy. Some would say it isn’t even a good idea. Being closed and shut off is effective defensive behavior for those so inclined. I would say the person who lives that way is missing a lot and would be better served to live openly. There’s a certain aesthetic in going about our lives open to what comes our way. The cultivation of that aesthetic qualifies receptivity as an art form.

    Receptivity and Creation

    I borrow now from the website, “3 Quarks Daily” and Dwight Furrow who wrote this excerpt from his post Creative Receptivity. “Aesthetic appreciation is often described in terms of adopting an aesthetic attitude, a state of mind in which one attends sympathetically and with focused attention to the aesthetic features of objects. Part of that aesthetic attitude is a willingness to be receptive to what is in the work, to refrain from imposing preconceptions on it, to let the work speak for itself. The viewer or listener must open herself up to being moved by the work and to discover all there is to be discovered in it. As important as this attitude of openness and receptivity is to appreciating art, it would be exceedingly odd if this aesthetic attitude was not also part of the process of creating the work. But if we take this receptive attitude seriously it shows the limitations of our assumptions about artists as ultimate masters.”

    Furrow goes on eloquently to reason that receptivity is not solely what makes an artist. Creators of art do create. Receptivity isn’t everything. I agree with him completely on that point, but to amplify it would take this post in a different direction than intended. I wish to enhance understanding of the importance of receptivity and to illuminate its suchness as an art form in itself.

    Why An Art Form?

    There are many human activities that qualify as art. Eric Fromm famously wrote of the art of loving. There’s the art of diplomacy. The art of conversation is an oft-discussed topic. (nudge nudge wink wink.) Obviously, these are not the creative arts, per se. Yet, when it comes to achieving excellence in some endeavor, a certain amount of serious work has to be put into it. Study is likely to be required. And practice, practice, practice. With most creative arts and their individual expression, a generous portion of finesse is part of the recipe.

    When one has mastered an art, it comes as second nature to perform it. The dancer dances with grace, the singer sings with easy control of the voice and the painter lays the paint on the canvas with strokes of virtuosity. So it is with the examples mentioned above on topic. Have you ever met a person who truly has a loving heart free of contradictory emotion? It may have awakened the same loving nature, if only temporarily, in you. The diplomat has the remarkable ability to navigate smoothly through treacherous waters of potential conflict to bring people together. An excellent conversationalist seamlessly uses their skills to make discussion easy and interesting.

    In the same way, receptivity can be cultivated to open yourself to everything the universe is offering you. Conversely, numerous pitfalls await in which we run the risk of closing ourselves off to what can be. Painful experiences such as abusive relationships, lost loves and failed goals can make a person recoil from living life fully. We can lose trust, faith and self-confidence if we allow negative experiences to take away our natural zeal for life. That is sad, indeed. If we find ourselves in that situation, it would behoove us to take one aspect of our lives where we have chosen to be unreceptive and change that decision, at least a little at a time.

    Pointing the Way

    “In order to reprogram the subconscious mind, you need to relax the body. Release the tension. Let the emotions go. Get to a state of openness and receptivity. You are always in change. You are always safe.” – Louise Hay

    Allowing the world in can pave the way for resolution of problems and unresolved conditions. “By surrendering, you create an energy field of receptivity for the solution to appear.” – Wayne Dyer

    When you’re receptive, you are in a position to create your day as you choose. It doesn’t mean you believe or act on everything you hear or see. It’s simply that you allow yourself to process it. With your creative brush and your receptive heart, you can paint a virtual work of art on that blank canvas before you.