So I did not post monthly…but this year I will for sure!
Lots of things happened last year, this will be a brief recap of projects and moments that stuck with me.
APRIL
Collage night with friends 🙂 Vera got T boned 😦 Everyone was ok!
See she’s fine she even took me out for B day brunch. At the end of the month Vera had her final Medical Illustration showcase. Check out her portfolio its crazy.
I continued to do freelance CRT TV repair throughout April.
MAY
My parents trekked it up to Rochester! We went for a lovely brunch with Vera’s parents. Then later in May, Vera graduated from RIT. Ok enough about Vera, isn’t this my website?? (I was busy working and didn’t do anything interesting in May)
Ok fine one more. This is me and Vera at Rochester Lilac Festival.
In the middle of May I visited Hungary. We stayed with Vera’s family and her Aunt loves snails so I made her some glass snails.
We had some very cool adventures in Budapest, more pictures can be found under the pictures from my life (I will update soon I promise) page. The trip inspired some new directions in glass for me.
I made this bird a few days after we got home.
JUNE
June was filled with CRT TV repair for some reason.
I also had my first glass sale at the Sound Source Summer Flea Market.
Many of these pieces had defects or were first attempts so I sold each piece for a flat $5. I sold over 15 pieces and it was a ton of fun just to meet people and talk about glass.
JULY
Our attic was starting to reach its peak state.
I am really proud of how this unorganized chaos came together when the light was right. I already miss this space and the people who filled it. (oops we moved…keep reading!!!)
We had a lovely 4th of july cookout in our backyard! later in the month the band Bubble Scary came and played a show in our house! You may spot some Tomtsu members hidden amongst them.
At the end of July I started construction on one of my current projects – a glass robotic head. Pictured below are the eyes, nose and half of the mouth.
AUGUST
In August I was experimenting with larger, more colorful pieces. Above is a camel that I made for a friend. Unfortunately the camel cooled down too quickly and exploded. More color and scale results in less predictable glass behavior, at least thats the lesson I took away from this.
This was my first attempt at a shark. I added a new color to the fins and as a result only one of them survived. I was a bit frustrated at this point so I decided to take a break from glass for a few days and go on a side quest. My musician friend Evan had a birthday coming up and he had just graduated from RIT with a masters in environmental science so Vera and I built him a guitar pedalboard out of scrap wood and vera painted it to look like plant cells.
I think it turned out pretty cool but I posted it on pintrest and it got flagged as AI generated content so I guess the robot overlords did not agree.
SEPTEMBER
In September some of my color experiments started to yield results. I was able to get a really nice color out of my glass with no cracking or defects.
Always more broken TVs. Always.
Vera and I took a day trip down to The Corning Museum of Glass and I saw some really remarkable pieces that challenged my ideas about what is possible with when I work with glass.
OCTOBER
Work was super busy this month so I didn’t take a ton of pictures. We fixed lots of giant machines though and it was awesome. At the end of October, Vera received a job offer at Epic in Madison, WI and they flew us both out to come check it out. It was cold and beautiful and filled with cheese.
NOVEMBER
Fall arrived in Rochester in full force. Watching the leaves change in upstate new york is so special and I love how the sky just becomes littered with color. In mid November I took another glass class with Eunsuh Choi at Arc and Flame.
We made mostly sea creatures, focusing on sculpting and shaping techniques. This class was HARD.
After a few weeks of thinking, Vera decided to accept the position at Epic. The packing began.
DECEMBER
December was full of packing, heavy lifting, stressful evenings and finally relief.
We packed up all of our stuff and said sad goodbyes to our friends. It was time to move to Madison.
This was our setup on the first night at our new place.
Here is the start of my new music studio. Much decorating to be done!
We returned to Rochester for the holidays and to finish emptying our old place.
We made it back to Madison in time for New Years Eve.
Phew. That was a lot. I am sure I forgot to include something but for now we are settling into life in a new state. I already have 3 projects slated for the front half of this year. #1 Glass robot head. The pieces for this project were featured earlier in this post. The idea here is to make some kind of humanoid robotic head that has some electrically controlled movement and responds to inputs in the room, maybe it follows you as it walks or it talks to you when you pat it on the head. Still figuring out the function but I am excited about the build. #2 Glass musical tubes. I want to make some glass test tubes with a small hole at the bottom and then fill them with water and connect a pump with additional water to the hole. The idea is that the amount of water can be quickly raised or lowered, thus changing the resonant frequency of the tube. The water level will be set and then an air compressor will blast air over the top of the tube and a note will ring out. I plan to make a few of these tubes and try to write songs with this novel instrument. #3 I want to use glass tubing to recreate a seven segment display and then instead the usual way to display characters – lighting up or not lighting up specific segments in 7 segment display – I will fill or not fill certain areas of tubing with an opaque colorful fluid. I don’t know why idea came to me but it is completely ridiculous and possibly the worst way to display information I can think of. I intend to make a few of these displays and create a sort of clock.
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