Peer inspiration

One way to get inspired is to occa­sion­ally hang out with fel­low lam­p­work­ers.? I’m for­tu­nate enough to live near Atlanta, which is large enough to have a com­mu­nity of lam­p­work­ers and bead­mak­ers who come together as the South­ern Flames, which is a chap­ter of the Inter­na­tional Soci­ety of Glass Bead­mak­ers.? Peo­ple always come to the monthly meet­ings wear­ing their work, and bring­ing addi­tional pieces to show and receive com­men­tary on.? Where else can you, live and in per­son, see such a rich vari­ety of styles and approaches to lam­p­work but in a gath­er­ing of your peers?? (Well, there’s The Gath­er­ing, but I would expect that it goes beyond com­pre­hen­si­bil­ity to overload.)

At tonight’s meet­ing we held the annual Bead Swap, where when it is your turn to pick an item from those brought to swap, you can either “steal” an item some­one else already has, or open a new item.? There was a huge vari­ety of beau­ti­ful work there, from the adorably cute to the dain­tily fem­i­nine to the utterly stun­ning.? Every piece had inspi­ra­tion and tech­nique to offer.

I felt rather good in the end, because although my con­tri­bu­tion (a set of boro rounds) was one of the last few items opened, it still had a chance to be stolen from its orig­i­nal selec­tor! I was also amused to hear all the “what did they use?” com­ments as the set was passed around for every­one to see.? The guys (Brian, Carl, and Michael, who all work boro) fig­ured it out, but all of the women assumed it was one of the expen­sive hot-​thing COE104 sil­ver glasses.? Nope, just boro!