3926

I have to give a quick mention to my brother Bryan (the oldest of us six siblings) for taking a photo of mine and turning it into something more. He uploaded it to Facebook where I immediately knew I had to have it for my new profile pic both there and here on my blog. A more realistic depiction of me I don't think exists.

Back to my brother for a moment. I would love to have just a smidgen of his photography knowledge and ability. He's able to find a photo opportunity where most simply can't and he's also very good at enhancing photos to create a work of art beyond what was originally there.

Rachel had no problems at all during her exposure to human cadavers at Mayo despite having had a greasy BBQ sandwich just prior to the viewing. She wrote an essay for her class about the experience and gave me the okay to post it here.

The stained glass project for our basement entertainment center is now complete. It was a little over two years ago when I finalized a design after kicking around a few ideas for the better part of a year. I spent most of yesterday putting the finishing touches on the remaining panel and took a few photos of the final phases of the process. A close-up of the detail before soldering; applying patina after it's been soldered to give it a darkened finish; setting in the frame; white plexiglass backing for an even distribution of the backlights; ready to hang; two 20W halogen backlights for each panel; and the completed project!

Here's a short video of them.

I have no idea how many hours I have into these windows (many hundreds for sure) but I do know how many pieces: 3926. I hope we'll be in our home for many more years to enjoy them because I'm quite sure that when we leave, there's no way the new owners will be able to appreciate them the way we do.

Tammy and I were in the studio at Foci both Thursday and Friday. If it weren't for Steve and his incredibly helpful guidance, I'm not sure where we'd be. He's been a God-send for us. I was telling Steve that a part of me wants to just stick to basics and continue to practice only what we've learned until I've got it down but there's another prompting I have and that's to push the limits of my abilities and learn from whatever mistakes I make while going beyond what we've been taught. Tammy feels the same. Steve offered a good compromise. He suggested using the first couple hours of our studio time to work on the basics and then using our final hour to experiment. I like that. We played around with adding color to our pieces this week. It adds a whole other dimension that I'll write about later. I hope to have some photos of our finished pieces in my next post. We're happy with them for where we're at with our limited experience.

Tammy was perusing glassblowing videos Friday night and came across one filmed at Foci. Foci is where we're taking instruction and being so challenged. I'd settle for half the talent of Michael and Andy someday but even that may be asking too much.


Glass Blowing from Travis Wermedal on Vimeo.