Haystack Part Glass

Cassandra was the glass teacher, leading only the second ever glass casting workshop at Haystack. She has SO much energy and took her students on trips to other studios to do guerilla alginate castings for quick studies. On this trip, she came alone with a bucket of alginate powder (the same kind of stuff dentists use to make molds of teeth) and wanted to take a few more casts.

She's casting a hanji hat here, and the duck is next (more on that later).

This pops right out of the bowl and then she cut out the bottom to remove the hat from the mold.

Like this. The alginate caused the dye in the brim to change colors, and was hard to get off.

Not quite enough fill in the brim but this is the final glass version (blue) next to the mold of the original. I can't explain the whole thing to you but it may involve plaster, investment molds, wax, or all of the above.

This is the sample of glass cast off of bark lace that they got a mold of during their class trip to our papermaking deck.

Now, the story of the duck...this is actually the second version. The one I originally made had a longer beak and didn't have the stripe (from drying wet on a surface where the brazilwood dye migrated). It was similar, though, and the alginate never properly released from it, leaving a lot of blue in the crevices. After a bunch of scrubbing with a toothbrush both wet and dry, I gave up and did this:

Sumi ink to the rescue! That covered most of the imperfections on both.

Then I ran over to the metals studio and had Damon Thompson, the jewelry teacher, help me put it on a brass stand for the auction.

Here's Cassandra! She showed me where her glass class jumped off of a big rock into the ocean. This was the session to do that, given how hot the days got. I had one student who swam every day. I wish I could have done that but it wasn't in the cards for me this time.

On our walk back to see slide presentations, Cassandra saw a tiny frog. Very jumpy, so I didn't manage a clear image.

This is the view walking out of my cabin every day. I hope to be back soon!