Here’s your latest “Best of” list from the Lampworking Blogosphere!!

Some COLORFUL posts this time:

• Dogmaw’s been experimenting with Glass Alchemy’s Jamboree lately.
• Karolen’s playing with Double Helix’s new Pandora.
• Kandice finds plenty to love in new and old Creation is Messy colors.

We have two artist interviews:

• Lori Greenberg chats with Jill Symons, and
• Melissa Lee speaks with Sarah Moran.

In the miscellaneous category:

• Lisa Liddy compares her current studio and her ideal studio at Collective Creatives.
• Lori Greenberg’s bead designs continue to evolve at Watch Me Create.
• Luann Udell identifies her legacy in the midst of cleaning her attic.
• Finally an anonymous Etsy Bitch Auxiliary member shares a different perspective on Etsy’s “Quit Your Day Job” series.

The fall issue of Belle Armoire Jewelry was on the stands at Borders Saturday afternoon.  When I picked it up, the first thing I turned to was the Letters to the Editor section.  It contained four very brief, nothing-but-praise entries — not even a breath about the negative responses to the Carter Seibels feature in the last issue.  I know that they received critical feedback from several people, including me, but you would never guess from the letters, nor from the Editor’s Comments, nor any indication of any response anywhere from the table of contents.

At first I was a little perturbed, but then I remembered that this IS a Stampington magazine.  In all the years I’ve read their various magazines off and on, I have rarely if ever seen a negative comment.  That seems to be in keeping with their whole editorial philosophy — much of their published artwork has a definite sameness about it; rarely do you see anything outside very narrow boundaries in there.  (There’s a reason I don’t buy many of their magazines any more — in truth they get boring quickly.)

Since they chose not to publish my comments, at the risk of being repetitive I’ll post them here:

Dear Editor,

My delight in seeing a lampwork artist featured in the Summer 08 issue of Belle Armoire Jewelry rapidly turned to dismay as I read Rice Freeman-Zachary’s article on Carter Seibels, for two reasons.  Apparently neither Ms. Seibels nor Ms. Freeman-Zachary fully understands the use of presses in making lampworked beads.  Pressed beads are indeed hand-crafted, formed one at a time at the torch, unlike furnace glass beads which are mass-produced using molds and then cut into individual beads.  In the hands of a lampworker, the press is simply another tool in their arsenal, allowing creation of forms that would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, without their use.  Let us not forget that “hand-formed” beads are actually shaped with tools, not actual hands, as well!  The quality of the resulting bead depends on the skill and vision of the artist, regardless of what tools are used to form the bead — whether pressed or hand-formed, a bead can be exquisite or merely ordinary.

Far more disturbing, though, was the paragraph where Ms. Seibels equates “middle-aged” beadmakers with traditional work, and younger artists with experimental and thus more creative work.  Such generalizations are dangerous! To many people, “traditional” implies boring, stodgy, and ordinary — words which no one wants applied to themself or their work. Had this ageist remark referred to differences in race or gender, I hope it would never have seen the light of print.  As a “middle-aged” artist myself, I hope that the editorial staff, Ms. Freeman-Zachary, and Ms. Seibels will consider their words far more carefully in the future.  Furthermore, I suggest that you take note of such creative lampworking visionaries such as Andrea Guarino-Slemmons and Lydia Muell, both decidedly older than Ms. Seibels herself and both of whom have abandoned eBay for other, more artist-friendly, sales venues.

Sincerely,

Okay, I admit it. I’ve been a slacker for a couple of weeks. My bad! First it was exams for summer term, then a week off when I was a total slug, then a week of meeting and advisement hell. So I am way, way behind on BotW, because people HAVE been posting good stuff!

• Mincot expanded on Rachel’s posting from last time about the costs behind artist-made lampwork beads.
• Lydia Muell shares a bit of the work behind the development of her first-ever lampwork tutorial. Look at the beads, then click over and get the tutorial itself — I highly recommend it!
• Need a quickie guide to the different types of lampworking glass?
• Michelle’s exploring mandalas in lampwork, and the results are fabulous!
• Want pink? Not sure how to get it? Lori Greenberg tells you the pros and cons of all the “pink” soft glass out there. Now if she’d just help me create a true pink in boro…
• Lori is also going back in time for a re-look at her creative process over at Watch Me Create.
• Cindy Gimbrone’s out there singing “I like big wire and I cannot lie…“
• Susan Sheehan recently discovered that doing a bead show isn’t as dreadful as she thought — in fact, it’s a pretty positive experience!
• For those of us who couldn’t make it to The Gathering, Andrea Guarino-Slemmons shares some pictures of Vittorio Constantini’s class.
• A lot of us lampworkers are introverted souls. We’d like to think we can torch all the time, but that’s really not feasible. So what can we do for fun without spending a lot of money OR dealing with those hated crowds of people? The Simple Dollar to the rescue!

The Eternal Tool Debate reared its pointy little head once again in the lampworking cyberworld recently, fueled in part by the same Belle Armoire Jewelry article on Carter Seibels that I wrote about a couple of days ago:

…there are all kinds of other shortcuts that bead buyers need to understand.  Many bead makers have turned to press molds, where the beads are formed by pressing molten glass into a mold, much like a polymer clay mold, rather than by forming unique beads one at a time, by hand, as Carter does.  For the bead artist, the process of hand crafting the individual beads is as satisfying as the finished piece itself; and the difference between a molded bead and a hand-formed bead is the difference between an off-the-rack dress and couture.  You can still wear it, and it will look nice; but the workmanship and artistry just aren’t the same.

There’s one clause in the quote that I don’t take issue with at all — the process IS as satisfying to me as the finished bead.  The rest of the paragraph, though, makes me think that neither Carter nor Rice Freeman-Zachary, who actually wrote the article, has a clue about the current generation of bead presses.  I rather suspect that they were both thinking of the Czech pressed glass beads, which ARE mass-produced, or of furnace glass beads, which are extruded complex canes cut into pieces and polished.  Neither of these is what most beadmakers consider a PRESSED bead.

Artist-lampworkers that use presses are indeed forming unique beads one at a time, by hand, since the press allows you to shape only ONE bead at a time.  Wind the molten glass on the mandrel, melt down, preshape in the flame, PRESS, back into the flame to reheat and add more glass if necessary, PRESS again, repeat as needed, with a final polishing in the flame to remove the chill marks left by the tool before optional surface decoration, then pop into the kiln to anneal.  Repeat individually for each bead.  Pay careful attention to getting exactly the right amount of glass, in the right place, with nice ends and no bead release flaking off to get stuck where you don’t want it.  Though there are other lampworkers as well that consider presses a crutch, they actually take time, practice, skill, and patience to use well.

Certain shapes of bead are nigh on impossible to achieve without the use of a press, especially heavily faceted ones such as these crystals made with the Zooziis Chunky Crystal Duo press:

Another example — this set of mine includes beads made with the Zooziis Gem press:

Lampworked beads shaped with a press can be butt-ugly, or exquisite works of art.  Lampworked beads shaped “by hand” (actually, with the use of paddles and poking tools made of brass, stainless steel, or graphite) can be butt-ugly, or exquisite works of art.  I’ve seen examples of all of them.  “Butt-ugly” or “exquisite” wasn’t determined by the use of press or no press — it was the result of the technical skill and the aesthetic vision of the maker, and neither method is inherently superior despite what Ms. Seibels has stated in a very public venue.

The debate will probably go on and on, both with lampworking and with other media:  machine knitting vs. hand knitting, computer-controlled weaving vs. traditional stomp-the-treadles weaving, pottery kickwheels versus electric wheels, oils vs. watercolors vs. acrylics, and so on.  No matter the media, it’s rather ridiculous — a tool is just a tool.  Get over it, people.  It’s what you do with the tools you use that counts.

Most of us know better by now than to make racist or sexist comments, at least in public.  Ageism, though, seems to still be considered fair game, at least among certain venues in the craftosphere.

First there was this little gem from the Etsy Forums:

Vanessa says

(snip) Here’s the thing. We really want to represent the older demographic of Etsy sellers. We are not looking for the hip, the indie, or the alt craftster seller for this one (though we love you guys, you know we do)! We are looking for the classic, traditional, old school crafter. We are dreaming of a charming, little old lady who has been quilting for 60 years! Or a blacksmith or a furniture maker whose techniques have been passed down through the ages! Lacemaking, whittling, miniatures (and there are so many more examples…)

If this is you or have noticed a shop like this on Etsy, (or your grandma or grampa or uncle that you’ve been dying to get on Etsy, now is the moment) and you’re in the area, this is your moment to shine!

I wasn’t aware that “classic, traditional, old school” was the sole province of “charming little old ladies.”  In my experience, “the hip, the indie, or the alt craftster” doesn’t imply young.  After all, it’s my generation, the early-to-mid part of the Boomers, that was the ’60s hippie movement.  If that wasn’t hip, indie, and alt, what was?

Other Etsy staff tried to backpedal, but it was too late. The word is out.  Etsy has to make special allowances, as it were, for the older folks who just aren’t as hip as the presumptive target demographic.  I wonder if the Etsy staff has any real idea how old their sellers actually are, or for that matter how old their non-selling buyers are?

Follow that with the recent interview with Carter Seibels in Belle Armoire Jewelry’s latest issue, which adds insult to injury: (emphasis added)

She stays on top of trends in lampwork beads by tracking the listings on eBay, where you can see a huge range of quality and style from the omnipresent mold-pressed beads to one-of-a-kind works of art, from the traditional colors and shapes of beads created by the typical middle-aged bead artist to the more experimental pieces being created by younger artists just starting out.

Does she know the ages of the bead artists on eBay?  I doubt it.  I’m aware of a number of rather young lampworkers selling on eBay that make what most people think of as traditionally colored and shaped beads, because there’s a decent market for them.  I’ve also seen many of the most innovative and creative bead artists that I know of, young and old, leaving eBay for other venues.

Carter was called out on Lampwork Etc. for her comments (not just the one above, but her dismissal of presses and other such tools as producing inferior quality beads — not true, but that’s another post for another time).  Unfortunately, I didn’t read the thread and it’s gone now because it turned rather nasty.  I have it from my reliable source, however, that her attempts to justify her words only showed that she actually believes that young artists are more creative and edgy, more artist-y if you like.  She’s apologized on her blog, but it comes across as damage control more than anything.

Odd, that.  Many of the lampwork artists that I regard as doing truly unique and experimental work left their twenties behind long ago.  Andrea Guarino-Slemmons, Marcy Lamberson, Pam Dugger — those are just three that come immediately to mind.  Their work, for me, is far more innovative than anything Carter Seibels showed in the Belle Armoire article, on her website, or in stock today at Matilda’s Garden in Alpharetta.

Would either statement have been taken differently if the speaker had used women vs. men, or Caucasian vs. African-American, instead of young vs. old?  Would either statement have even seen the light of day?  The fact that Madison Avenue constantly promotes youth, youth, youth does not mean that it’s okay to disrespect anyone over 40 — Madison Avenue is full of crap anyway.

Ageist remarks are just as offensive as racist or sexist ones.  You probably won’t ever change your race or your gender, but you damn well are going to become one of us “middle-aged folks” sooner than you think…and you don’t want to find out just what a bitch karma is when you get here.