Rant and a few laughs...read at your own risk

[Geri Comstock]

Over the weekend, I participated in the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Although this is supposedly one of the top food shows in the country, the level of sophistication about contemporary art and craft among the attendees is not particularly high.

I do this show, despite the high booth cost, terrible heat, long hours and not very good sales, because it benefits a number of charitable organizations in Santa Clara County where I live. Each charitible organization is awarded money based on the number of hours of volunteer labor donated to the festival by its members. I think it's a wonderful way for these organizations to benefit. Anyway....

This was my second year and so I thought I was pretty much used to the customer questions about whether my work is plastic, etc. But I got three NEW ones this year...two which made me laugh and the other which didn't.

Let me start with the not funny one first, get my rant over with and then move on to the funny ones.

I was sitting in my booth when a glassblower and his friend came in and started looking at my work. The friend asked the glassblower if my work was glass and he told his friend it was. The blower described the process by which he believed we make kilnworked glass. He said we take strips of glass, lay them over a mold and fire them until they flow together and make a shape in the form of the mold. I kept my mouth shut at this description of fusing, which isn't even possible, hoping they'd just leave.

Then the friend asked him if it took any skill to do fusing. The blower said dimissively, "oh a little, but glassblowing is takes much more skill" or something to that effect. Okay. He finally pushed the wrong button and I couldn't keep my mouth shut any longer.

So I explained fusing and slumping to them...how it's really done.

At other shows, I've heard this same description from other glassblowers of how fused work is made. Where is this strange idea about how kilnworking done coming from in the glassblowing community? What they're describing isn't even possible. You'd end up with a giant misshapen blob at the bottom of the mold if you tried to do this. Why don't some glassblowers know enough about the properties of glass to realize that this doesn't make sense? Grrrrr.

Okay, I'm done ranting. Now for the funny part.

In order to clearly show customers the prices of my inexpensive lines of sterling/glass jewelry, I bought little cubes of plexiglass and put price stickers on them. I put a little cube next to a grouping of jewelry pieces at that price. When I started doing this last year, the concept seemed really obvious to me. Apparently it isn't. LOL.

At this show, I must have had 50 people ask me why a little plastic cube cost $75. A bunch of other people asked me why one plastic cube was $45 and another was $75 even though they were exactly the same. LOL. One guy asked me if I was trying to rip people off by selling these little pieces of plastic for huge sums of money.

I had to laugh. One of my neighbors, who is also a jeweler, said that I should start offering to sell at a 50% discount, the little cubes to the people who asked why they cost so much. Too funny.

The other funny thing was something I said to a customer. I'm embarrassed but hey...who better to share it with than you guys?

A customer was looking at a sterling ring I made with a piece of glass mounted in it. Anyway, she asked what the image on the glass was. I told her what it was and explained that the glass had been made in the 1920's or 1930's.

She asked, "Did you make it?" I was trained to be an English teacher. I thought the word "it" referred to the anticedent, which was the piece of glass. So I asked her, "Do I look like I was alive in the 1920's so I could have made the glass?" Eeek! I'd have to be at least 80 even if I made the glass piece in grade school. LOL.

What she meant was to ask was if I'd made the ring itself. LOL. I was so embarrassed. But it gave me my biggest laugh of the entire show.

Whew! Customers aren't the only one who say dumb things. LOL.

Geri with foot in mouth

[Paul Tarlow]

Karen (my wife) and I attended the Gilroy Garlic festival about 8 years ago. We had a great time and Karen bought some cool cast sterling silver jewelry. Mostly we just enjoyed the food -- never can get enough garlic. Did you try the garlic ice cream

- Paul

[Geri Comstock]

LOL. Yes, I tried the garlic ice cream last year. Wasn't my thing.

Years ago, I tried some of the garlic wine that Rapazinni sells. After having a taste of that, I wanted to go out for a big steak dinner for some reason. Heh. Were you able to try it there?

Did you try the garlic chocolate?

If you like garlic, it's sure the place to go. They have garlic with everything.

Geri

[Paul Tarlow]

You have to understand, my favorite restaurant in the world is:

http://www.northbeachshop.com/pages/stinkingrose.html

Funny story...

Years back I was in San Fran for a computer conference. I was scheduled for a red-eye flight back to the east coast. Before going to the airport I went with a group for dinner to the Stinking Rose. I ate roasted garlic cooked in hot oil and spread on Italian bread. I had garlic salad. I had garlic seafood stew. I had garlic ice cream. I had garlic wine. Then I went to the airport and boarded my flight (which was packed).

I'm one of those people who seeps garlic out their pores.

Five hours later, I arrive at BWI airport where Karen is waiting to pick me up (at about 6 AM). As I walk off the jetway -- when I'm still about 10 feet away -- Karen gasps and says "my god, you stink".

Imagine the poor souls sitting near me on the plane all night long.

Now I'm hungry.

- Paul

P.S. There was an east coast garlic festival in Maryland a few years back -- someone there had garlic beer. It was (quite unexpectantly) very good.

[Dani]

Don't y'all grow great garlic in Texas? I thought I just read that in a China Bayles novel... a few garlic fans at my house, too!

[dee]

Over the weekend, I participated in the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Although this is supposedly one of the top food shows in the country, the level of sophistication about contemporary art and craft among the attendees is not particularly high.

I do this show, despite the high booth cost, terrible heat, long hours and not very good sales, because it benefits a number of charitable organizations in Santa Clara County where I live. Each charitible organization is awarded money based on the number of hours of volunteer labor donated to the festival by its members. I think it's a wonderful way for these organizations to benefit. Anyway....

This was my second year and so I thought I was pretty much used to the customer questions about whether my work is plastic, etc. But I got three NEW ones this year...two which made me laugh and the other which didn't.

Let me start with the not funny one first, get my rant over with and then move on to the funny ones.


{SNIP]

Whew! Customers aren't the only one who say dumb things. LOL.

Geri with foot in mouth

ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i have evidently not run into the glassblower crowd while doing a show ;P good thing - i'm not always diplomatic ;P the pricing thing is hilarious - and i agree, offer it at 50% off next time before explaining it's real purpose hehehehehehehe

the ring oops is wonderfull! i know next time you'll clarify which part they are referring to hehehehehehe

D

[Bert Weiss]

I want to go to the artichoke festival. Artichokes are one of my favorite foods.

Back in the olden days before I had the internet to converse with intelligent, knowledgeable people, I would ask glass blowers questions. I usually got their three word answer "I don't know". Basically all they knew was how to do what they were taught to do. Finally I met Henry Halem and he had answers for my questions. It was with Henry's encouragement that I built my big kiln, without ever having seen one.

[Geri Comstock]

Bert -

Are you talking about the artichoke festival that's held around here somewhere...Salinas or Watsonville or Castroville or somewhere? Or are there others?

Artichokes are also one of my favorite foods. Maybe I'll have to go to that festival as a customer sometime. YUM!

Geri

[Paul Tarlow]

Bert -

Are you talking about the artichoke festival that's held around here somewhere...Salinas or Watsonville or Castroville or somewhere? Or are there others?

Artichokes are also one of my favorite foods. Maybe I'll have to go to that festival as a customer sometime. YUM!

Geri

Please don't let there be any artichoke ice cream...

[Cynthia]

...a glassblower and his friend came in and started looking at my work. The friend asked the glassblower if my work was glass and he told his friend it was. The blower described the process by which he believed we make kilnworked glass. He said we take strips of glass, lay them over a mold and fire them until they flow together and make a shape in the form of the mold...Then the friend asked him if it took any skill to do fusing. The blower said dimissively, "oh a little, but glassblowing is takes much more skill" or something to that effect... Where is this strange idea about how kilnworking done coming from in the glassblowing community?

Geri

My most recent gallery encounter as I delivered my work went like this. The gallery rep said to me, "Fused glass takes a lot less skill to make than blown glass."

It was a statement, not a question.

It was all I could do not to get all defensive after I spewed my coffee out of my nose at her, but instead I politely explained the process yet again. She'd already come to the studio and seen some mock ups as well as work in progress of how the work is done. Her companion was tracking, but this gal was not.

I offered an analogy of throwing a pot and handbuilding a sculptural piece in clay, or dipping a pot in glaze or hand painting it. Which do you find more technically challenging, or does that really matter if the work is solid? Still, the myth that blown work is a more artistic and skilled labor prevails. I'm not anti hot glass, nor think that what they do is less skilled either, just tired of the misconceptions about kiln fired work. I'm also a bit peevish about the fact that I know more about their process than they do mine, or so I think I do. And so it goes.


What it seems to really come down to though is wether the work is appreciated without an understanding of the process. If we can educate about the process, then that's the icing on the cake.

Maybe we should find out who does Dale Chihuly's marketing. That person is a genius.

[Bert Weiss]

The spiel I have been using goes like this:

"Warm glass has the greatest potential for growth or any form of art glass" There are so many things that we can do with surface decoration that can't be done with furnace glass. New technologies for glass making are available in the marketplace and corporate support by the glass making companies has thrown our medium wide open. A kiln can be much larger than a glory hole which allows us to work bigger. Because we are doing our work cold, much more time and attention can be paid to working our surface. Multiple firings are also practical. We can work in any thickness from very thin to very thick. Today's cutting edge work is being done in kiln work. The glass blowers are really just doing the same thing they have done for centuries over and over."

[Bert Weiss]

Bert -

Are you talking about the artichoke festival that's held around here somewhere...Salinas or Watsonville or Castroville or somewhere? Or are there others?

Artichokes are also one of my favorite foods. Maybe I'll have to go to that festival as a customer sometime. YUM!

Geri

Please don't let there be any artichoke ice cream...

I think it's in Castroville and they serve french fried artichoke hearts. When I first heard about that, I couldn't believe it.

I think my favorite artichole dish that I have been served was stuffed with gorgonzola and bread crumbs and cooked in chicken broth.

[ellen abbott]

Here's my rant...

We also do architectural etched and carved glass. We describe ourselves as being an art studio. I get designers who want plain sandblasting or stripes or grids (none of which we do). Some of them get a little attitude when I tell them that. Finally one day, I was trying to explain why we didn't do plain sandblasting to one of my good designers. In frustration I asked her would she commission a muralist to paint her walls white? That she understood.

Ellen

[Pat Zmuda]

Cynthia:


FYI--Dale TAUGHT marketing at RISD, or so I was told by the jeweler Etienne, who said he was in Dale's class.

Pat

[/i]

[Bert Weiss]

Cynthia:


FYI--Dale TAUGHT marketing at RISD, or so I was told by the jeweler Etienne, who said he was in Dale's class.

Pat

[/i]

Ettienne designed, then advertised in Interview Magazine (full page), diamond studded stockings. They were pricey and to my knowledge didn't sell.

What Ettienne did was bring Michael Good's jewelry in to the market place and place his price point way above time and materials. Once established Michael went out on his own.

[Don Burt]

...clip "oh a little, but glassblowing is takes much more skill" clip

Geri

clip
The gallery rep said to me, "Fused glass takes a lot less skill to make than blown glass."
clip

Neither glassblowing or warmglass craft require much skill. Neither require anything more than equipment, rudimentary demonstration, and a bit of safety instruction, to execute the craft successfully.

Playing piano requires no skill either. One presses the keys down with one's fingers in the desired sequence, with the desired emphasis, and the notes appear with almost guaranteed reliability.

[Kris Weber]

Neither glassblowing or warmglass craft require much skill. Neither require anything more than equipment, rudimentary demonstration, and a bit of safety instruction, to execute the craft successfully.

Yes, with a heavy emphasis on the "execute."

Kris

[Laurie Young]

another good festival in the area, if they still have it, is the Santa Cruz calamari festival, people dress up as squid to eat squid, play squid music and do a fashion show with all the garments made out of squid. One year they had a booth where for a mere dollar you could kiss a squid.....

[Bert Weiss]

another good festival in the area, if they still have it, is the Santa Cruz calamari festival, people dress up as squid to eat squid, play squid music and do a fashion show with all the garments made out of squid. One year they had a booth where for a mere dollar you could kiss a squid.....

The best magazine I ever read was called "Wet Magazine The journal of gourmat bathing and beyond" (I think it was late 70's or early 80's) It was mostly beyond. They had a photo of dresses made of squid. Probably the same ones you saw.

One of my other favorite photos was a guy skiing behind a jeep in the middle of the desert.

[Paul Housberg]

Cynthia:


FYI--Dale TAUGHT marketing at RISD, or so I was told by the jeweler Etienne, who said he was in Dale's class.

Pat

[/i]

He never taught a course specifically in marketing at RISD to my knowledge. I was there as an undergrad (71-75) and a grad student in the glass program (77-79). He left soon after. (This had nothing to do with me.) He did offer seminars in professional practices which were generally given by other established artists and designers in a variety of fields, not necessarily glass.

As far as his own marketing goes, I think he's simply a natural. Also ambitious, fearless, charismatic (yes!) and does extraordinary work (yes, again!). He has stated—or it's rumored that he stated—that his heroes are Tyffany and PT Barnum. And I don't think he admires Tyffany for his work, but, rather, his marketing, productivity, and operation. Just my guess.

Certainly, we can learn from him, but not being a natural marketer (speaking for myself) and with the contemporary studio glass movement now a good 30 years old, anything even approaching his kind of success may not be possible.