Model Citizens NYC 2011

It's that time of year again!

NY Design Week(end) and ICFF are just around the corner May 13-16th. Once again I will be participating in Model Citizens NYC, a dynamic offsite show founded/organized by the amazing Mika Braakman.

I wont have a booth this year, but will be selling three different items in the Pop-up Shop: Acorn Pods, Stampo Cups, and BB Rattles.

I'll updating my website and posting some process photos by the end of week so stay tuned! 

If you are in the NYC area or will be coming through for the design circus, Model Citizens NYC is a show not to be missed. Also, There will be cocktails Saturday night May 14 4-8PM so stop by, grab some booze, and say "Hi".

Model Citizens NYC
2011 Exhibition
The Chelsea Art Museum
556 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10011
(212) 255-0719

Friday May 13: 10AM – 7PM,
Press Event 4 – 7PM
Saturday May 14: 10AM – 8PM,
Cocktails 4 – 8PM
Sunday May 15:10AM – 6PM

http://www.modelcitizensnyc.com/

Event flyer and more info after the jump.

Flesh is Material Too

The image above is a picture of my right hand taken several days ago (Note: I apologize for the graphic grizzle sports fans, but I am trying to make a point! There's a little more after the jump, so you've been warned.) Looking at this image makes me think about Conan's "Riddle of Steel". In the epic John Milius movie, Conan the Barbarian, Thusla Doom told Conan that the answer to the riddle was "that flesh was stronger that steel". Thulsa was right (sort of), but to see the picture of my cut hand you would think he was wrong, and not because correct because it was glass that actually cut my hand, but hold that thought!

The Internet and The Death of Craft

 

Last month I took a trip up to Saratoga Springs NY for the Northeastern Woodworkers Association Annual meeting. It was the first woodworking event and it was very interesting in many ways reasons. 

Firstly, I was clearly in the minority age-wise. I wouldn’t venture to guess what the average age of the attendees but the predominant hair color was grey. Secondly, I saw with mine own two eyes a handful of woodworking personalities that had previously only existed as photonic apparitions of pixels or merely in printed matter. Yes, Peter Follansbee does exist and his beard is glorious!
Thirdly, I got to hear a firsthand account of the state of craft and the gospel according to Chris Schwarz (who, I was also pleased to confirm actually exists). Chris’s talk on “The Anarchist Toolchest” was certainly the highlight the weekend (Follansbee’s beard being a close second). Chris touched on a wide range of subjects, many of which resonated very strongly with me and that I that I have been mulling over in the past weeks.  In addition to the practical aspects of designing and building a toolchest, Chris delved into the philosophical and subversive aspects of tool storage (I love that sentence!). More specifically what tools do you really need, what you will make with these tools, and what these tools will mean to future generations. Anybody who has responsibly enjoyed beverages with me in the last year knows that one of my favorite topics of discussion is “toolchests and the apocalypse” (fyi: that’s one topic not two) Sufficed to say, this talk (and his upcoming book on the subject) was right up my alley. I’ll get into the apocalypse in the near future, but for the subject of this blog post want to speak to some of Chris’s points about tools for future generations and the state of learning craft.

Scale and Scalability

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email asking about a coldworking job. An artist had a large belljar blown for him and needed a punty removed. Not a problem. I wrote back I would be happy to help and asked how large the bell-jar was. His reply was VERY large: 36”x36”x36”

I thought to myself, “yeah right” (big fish), but the next week when I saw the crate in the back of his pick-up, was like “right on”. I didn’t measure it, but it was just about 30x”30”x32”, which in terms of blown glass is off the charts.

This is where I should tell you that I sort of hate coldworking.

Check Your Pulse

Take a look at the image above. If your heart doesn't beat a little faster, you might be dead.

More quarter-sawn wood porn after the jump:

Feynman Friday: Guessing at Chess

It's interesting to think of how this analogy can be extended to any pursuit of knowledge or skill. You might try to learn how to play a game having been given one set of rules. You spend some time learning to play your game with and get quite comfortable playing with your rules. After some period of time you go somewhere else and see people playing your game, but the rules have changed or perhaps they have a very different interpretation of the instructions. At this point it would seem you have several options: Do you dismiss this new game, or do you try to play along and learn some new rules?

In Practice

These days I haven’t been blowing glass all that often. I have some time at RISD on Tuesdays this semester, but so far I haven’t really had anything specific to make. In spite of this, I still make the effort to make the hour drive back and forth to Providence from Boston to exercise my glassblowing muscles. Like many manual skills, glassblowing is nothing like riding a bike. Sure, you can not blow for a year and you will still know which side of the pipe to gather on, but there are millions of little subtleties and reflexes that don’t come back so readily. That’s why there is a big difference between me and someone that handles hot-glass 5 days a week.