Here are a couple more quilts from the Tanana Valley State Fair. Alaskans need warmth! (Though not right now; it was 80 again yesterday.)
Category: Art
The chemo seems to be following the same pattern as last time. Maybe I can at least count on it to stay consistent.
Friday is infusion day. All five hours of it. Not so bad, if boring.
Saturday I feel fairly well, but my basal insulin goes crazy, up to twice normal. My balance is getting shaky, but I feel well enough to spend a few hours at the fair, with the aid of a rolling walker. Took in the quilt show, but the horse show grounds were too rough to handle.
Sunday the need for basal insulin crashes – 90% normal. By 7 I’m ready for bed, and I sleep until 9 Monday morning, and crash again after breakfast.
Not that I have an appetite, but I drag myself out of bed for an unwanted snack and nausea meds by 1. Joints and feet hurt. If I continue to follow the pattern of the last round, my insulin needs will rise again Monday, but I won’t feel like getting out of bed until Thursday. I did get dressed this morning, though — it has not rained, the forecast is close to 80 today, and I have to water.
Anyway, here are a couple of quilts from the show.
While I was visiting the Corning Museum of glass, they were having a special exhibit on beads. As it happens this is the one aspect of glass art I have some experience with, through a friend who makes glass beads and has given me several. Hers are in the category the museum called wrapped beads.
These beads are made on a mandrill, which is a metal core coated with something that makes the beads release easily. Glass heated to a taffy-like consistency is wrapped onto the core. Blobs of glass may be added and either used to form a shape (like the moose, one of my friend’s beads) or to produce color. But producing color isn’t simple, as the bead is glowing orange through this process! An experienced bead-maker may have a pretty good idea of the finished colors, but I certainly don’t by watching!
Small “seed beads” are most often made by cutting hollow rods of class into small lengths. In this case, the artistry is in how the beads are combined into the finished piece.
The museum had exhibits of all kinds of beads, and explanations of how they were made. I’ll content myself with photos of an exhibit showing numerous kinds of beads mounted in a pattern on the wall, and a closeup showing a few of the beads in more detail.
I’m home from the hospital, but my energy level is still pretty low. So once again you’re getting pictures from the Corning Museum of Glass.
Most of these sculptures are my height or more, especially this one.
A beautiful example of making glass look like fabric.
I debated over including this one, because of the the reflections on the case. But it’s a beautiful piece of work, especially in three dimensions..
Well, if sitting in a hospital bed with unfamiliar wifi, a laptop that seems determined to fight me to the death and half my passwords/logins missing (they’re on my computer at home, some 350 miles north), isn’t an excuse, what is? So since I did download lots of pictures to iPhoto on the new machine before I left Fairbanks, you’re going to get pictures.
These really struck me. They’re made of colored glass fibers slumped over or into a form. Beautiful, no?
A totally different type of jar, made with a completely different technique
This one has to be just to show it can be done. It’s foamed glass, made to look like styrofoam that’s half melted.
Blogging from a hospital bed is not exactly the greatest, even with a familiar laptop. with a new machine and new form of control, it’s just about impossible, so figure lots of pictures for the near future. These are from the Cornell Glass museum. Enjoy!
A pair of jugs that caught my eye.
Here’s a chess set made of glass.
And so far I’m surviving the removal of the epidural. Time for another walk.
cornell
glass Museum.
Shipping box and bubble wrap. When I put the bubble wrap back in the box,, I could barely close it.
When I got home from a week each in Ithaca and at the Harvard reunion, there was a box on the living room floor. A large box, big enough to make a playhouse for a small child. I couldn’t remember ordering anything that huge. But then I saw the “glass” stickers on all sides, remembered I’d done some shopping at the Cornell Glass Museums store, and had the store send my purchases to me. Surely I hadn’t bought that much!
All that box and bubble wrap to ship these.
When I opened the box, all I could see was Styrofoam pellets. Even after I scooped out half a trash bag full, I could see nothing but Styrofoam. Digging through the pellets, I finally felt bubble wrap and pulled out a book – heavily cushioned in bubble wrap. Then another, the Corelle dishes I’d bought (they aren’t in the stores in Fairbanks), the jigsaw puzzle of one of Chihuly’s chandeliers, and finally two small glass paperweights. Everything was cocooned in bubble wrap.
Close-up of the two small paperweights.
Obviously the store clerks were used to packing fragile items to withstand the tender handling of FedEx! At any rate, they beat me to Alaska and arrived in beautiful condition.
One of the places I love to go while visiting my sister in Ithaca, New York is the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. It’s about an hour’s drive away, and really too large for an oldie like me to cover in a day. But I did get some pictures. Unfortunately I did not get all the details about the artists, but enjoy a few pictures.
The sun rose this morning at 7:31, and will set after 12 hours and 52 minutes, at 8:24 this evening. We’re gaining 6 minutes 44 seconds a day, and the sun on the snow near noon is blinding. I regret to say that while it may be spring officially, there is no melting in sight here. For the ice park, this in wonderful. I personally am a little tired of almost 2’ of snow still on the ground, with more snow today. (It was snowing when I went to bed last night, and by 8 this morning we’d accumulated another 3″.) Still nothing like I hear the middle of the lower 48 is getting, though the south coast of Alaska is scheduled for a foot or more.
Speaking of the ice park, I went through the Youth division Friday. This division is for artists through 18 years of age. I’d say they did a pretty good job.
Fuego, 1st place Youth division. Artists Josh Lundy and Anand
Enkhbold.
Stargate, 2nd Place Youth division. Artist Tane Timling.
Cygnus Olor, 3rd place Youth Division. Artists Joe Plett and Jed Hall.
It’s officially the first full day of spring, but with 20″ of snow still on the ground and temperatures well below freezing it’s had to tell that from the local weather! Mainly photos today, with the rest of the multi-block abstract placers.
Singing in Unison, 3rd place abstract. Vitaliy Lednev, Russia, Mario Amegee, Monaco, Junko Yanagida, Japan, and Speareo Stephens, USA.
On My Way Home, 4th place abstract, multi-block. Tian Zuo Wei, China, Linda Heck, USA, Qun Li Mu, China, and Ling Zhi Zhang, China.
The Dream of the Sky, 5th place abstract. Sergei Zinner, Viacheslav Maksimov, Andrey Koshelev, and Evgenii Gorbunov, Russia
Breaking news: I found out just this morning that there’s an A to Z theme reveal going on, so I signed up at the last minute. My theme? I’m doing my A to Z blogs from my books, both characters and background information. For characters I’ll introduce them quickly, say what point of time they’re talking from since their situations change drastically through the books, and let them talk. The format of background information will vary according to what I’m talking about. Bold type will indicate that more information has been or will be available in another A to Z post. All of these blogs will be scheduled to go live at 6 pm Alaska time.
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