Lesson 1

“There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons” – Denis Waitley

My first real lesson started in an unexpected way, reminding me of something I have learned over and over again in my life.  Mistakes happen. 

I called Annette on the way to my lesson to tell her I was going to be 5 or 10 minutes late.  Most people probably wouldn’t think twice about this, but in my world, five or ten minutes can mean the difference between life and death, and being five or ten minutes late is unacceptable, so I call.  She picked up on the stress in my voice, and, although unbeknownst to me, she was dealing with her own personal disaster, she told me that art is supposed to be fun and not something I need to stress about.  She was right, and in the last few minutes of my drive, I tried to relax and get in the proper frame of mind. 

When I arrived, relaxed and rearing to go, it was clear that my teacher had turned her own shade of frazzled.  “I’ve got a bit of a problem,” she declared.  She had accepted a commission to make pieces for a charity to be given as a thank you to the charity's major donors, but something had gone wrong during the final process, and the pieces were showing signs of stress.  It wasn’t anything that could be seen with the naked eye, but she knew they weren’t perfect and, therefore, she was not about to let them out of her studio.  Through an optical filter, she showed me the imperfections, betraying themselves only as polarized light emanating from the designs. The pieces might be fine, but they would be susceptible to breaking if left as is.  The benefit dinner was just 48 hours away.  To fix the problem, the pieces were going to have to be re-annealed, which meant slowly reheating them to a temperature just hot enough to relieve the stress without actually allowing the pieces to melt.  Given the time constraint, it had to be dealt with before my lesson. On the plus side, I was about to receive my first lesson in annealing. 

Annealing is a process of slowly cooling glass to relieve internal stresses created as it was formed.  Glass which has not been annealed is apt to crack or shatter when subjected to small temperature changes or mechanical shock.  I learned about annealing charts and how to program the German-made annealer.  I point out the heritage of this machine because, although I consider Germans to be a highly intelligent group of people, their thought processes, and, hence, their products, are not always the most intuitive.  The annealer was no exception, and instincts, alone, would not have helped me succeed in this task. Annette decided on a course of re-heating and cooling that was going to take nearly 30 hours.  After double and triple checking our programming, the process was underway.  Since the pieces needed to be delivered in less than 48 hours, there was no room for error.  Working under duress is dead in the center of my comfort zone and I was happy to have the opportunity to help.  After about 2 hours of fretting, we were finally on to my lesson.

My first "set" of glasses

As you can see, I created a set of glasses today.  Yes, they ARE a set!  Not exactly alike, but, perhaps, more like brothers and sisters, each with their own unique and wonderful qualities, not exactly alike in any way, but created by the same two people and bonded together for life.  I love each and every one of my glasses and look forward to to opportunity to make more!