torch question

Well, I don't want to be anywhere where there is an "implied hierarchy" like that. As for difficulty, stained glass and fusing are not more difficult than lampworking, so that can't be the reason. This kind of thing happens elsewhere, too - on the glass worker's boards and such - and it ticks me off. On some boards, you are considered a fluff or a wannabee if you make beads as opposed to glass sculpture. Why is one method "better" than another? It's ridiculous. There are more important things in life.

Really? I was aware of a heirarchy but I never considered stained glass to be at the top. I've heard so many times from people who work in stained glass that they feel as if their craft is perceived as "lesser" by lampworkers. (I certainly don't perceive it as "lesser", but it's so very different.)

When I was on RCG I did stained glass, fusing, and lampworking. Maybe that's why I received more respect then. I personally find cold and warm glass too passive to maintain my interest the way lampworking does... I do enjoy fusing, but more for the product than the process.

The specific problems I've had there involve a couple of people whose names I don't remember, one of whom loves to tear people apart and call them stupid if they're less experienced, and another who has all the asnwers and will viciously tear into anyone who has a differing opinion. It had very little to do with glass, in fact. There's so little traffic over there anyway, and I just got tired of reading their vituperative posts so I stopped. There's more content to be had elsewhere. Of course, everything changes over time, so I may check back in a few months.

-Kalera

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "Louis Cage" :

]there is an implied hierarchy in glass working that puts furnace work and ]stained glass at the top, fusing in the middle and lampworking at the ]bottom.

good grief!!!!!

(snip) There's so little traffic

It does change over there. I've been hanging around there for about three years. Mostly just lurking....Sometimes it does seem as if certain people have interesting "standards", but most of the people are OK. A couple of years or so ago there was a lot of good info being posted over there. I have pages of tips, data, stuff, that I downloaded and printed for the studio. You never know when an interesting tidbit will turn up.

Glass Notes! (Glasnost?) ~~ Sooz To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. ~~Joseph Chilton Pearce

The hierarchy is very old. Here is my understanding of how it works and where it came from. This is not meant as an endorsement of the views (as I am a lampworker myself), but as an explanation. Change is happening, I have seen it myself. At the Appalachian Center for Crafts I have seen people go from dismissive to interested and respectful of the technique. Furnace work is very physical and has a strong Italian history, so there is a lot of "machismo" involved. This has changed somewhat since the studio glass movement started, but still you are comparing 30 years or so to 1000 years of tradition. I know some women my age (late 40's) who have blown glass and they said when they started 20-30 years ago that the men treated them poorly and told them they weren't up to the task, etc. But put that in context of what the rest of society was going through and it becomes a little clearer. Stained glass has a very artistic tradition, particularly the painted and fired glass. There is the stained glass technique, plus you had to be able to paint as well as a canvas painter. So it gets a high billing. There are those who rank sg above furnace blowing because it is less functional; and there are those who rank blowing ahead because it is sculptural. Fusing is relatively new, at least from an artistic standpoint so it gets lower billing than the other two. Lampworking was originally "women's work", with all the lack of seriousness that that implied two hundred years ago. The old woodcuts of lampworkers usually show women making beads. Of course beads being small, nonutilitarian and often made in production style, they were considered less important than other more "serious" pieces. Lampworking also has a "carnival stigma" associated with it. Itinerant lampworkers have been in traveling shows at least since the 1800's making novelties (although the old glass steam engines are quite precise and amazing), so other glass artisans preferred to distance themselves from this. And there are the scientific lampworkers who make boring, inartistic, utterly utilitarian pieces. You may have noticed that glass is one of the few materials that some art critics and gallery owners feel is incapable of producing **ART**. Many glass artists consider being take seriously is hard enough without being lumped in together with carney workers, bored chemists, and yes there are still those who don't particularly like women in the workforce. As I said earlier, Ginny Ruffner has helped probably more than anyone to get lampworked glass to be taken seriously. Paul Stankard is really more a lampworker than furnace, but since his paperweights are finished using furnace work, his lampwork is viewed by the uninitiated as mere prepwork. All in all, I have found the crowd over at rec.crafts.glass to be a helpful bunch if you have done your homework and stay on topic. But they are not nearly as much fun.

I appreciate the well-thought out response, Louis - thanks. May I ask where you get some of this information? Is this from personal experience, reading, from others, or....? I am just curious where these ideas are coming from. I can understand the bits about furnace work, and about Italian tradition, etc. But beads have been around for a lot longer than most of the other glass stuff - hundreds of thousands of years, and have even been used as currency.

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "Louis Cage" :

]All in all, I have found the crowd over at rec.crafts.glass to be a ]helpful bunch if you have done your homework and stay on topic. But they ]are not nearly as much fun.

thank you for the explanation, Louis!!!!!!!

i'm wondering where my combining lampwork and metal will fall.

Well, the *art crowd* would probably consider you a metal artist and put you way ahead of glass workers.

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "Louis Cage" :

]Well, the *art crowd* would probably consider you a metal artist and put you ]way ahead of glass workers.

you're kidding, right?????

Probably not.

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "starlia" :

]Probably not.

IF not, that's crazy!!!!!!!

i mean, i'm enjoying what i'm doing. and i'm learning a LOT. but it's not hot glass . . . .

No, I'm not. You would not believe the amount of prejudice against glass as a medium that exists out there. So if you work primarily in glass, but your pieces have other materials involved and your work is interesting you will be classified by the other material or you would be considered "mixed media". Somehow you can hang a urinal on a wall and declare it *ART* and the critics will call you a genius, but if you use the same stuff they drink from and look out through their windows, you are at best an artisan. It is changing. I have seen it in the 18 years or so I have been working in glass. Not only is glass more accepted in the art world, but lampwork is being accepted more as well. There are some holdouts however....

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "Louis Cage" :

] No, I'm not. You would not believe the amount of prejudice against glass ]as a medium that exists out there. So if you work primarily in glass, but ]your pieces have other materials involved and your work is interesting you ]will be classified by the other material or you would be considered "mixed ]media". Somehow you can hang a urinal on a wall and declare it *ART* and ]the critics will call you a genius, but if you use the same stuff they drink ]from and look out through their windows, you are at best an artisan. ] It is changing. I have seen it in the 18 years or so I have been working ]in glass. Not only is glass more accepted in the art world, but lampwork is ]being accepted more as well. There are some holdouts however....

hmmm. okay. i have to say that the jeweler i'm apprenticing to looked at me rather oddly when i was trying to explain to him what i wanted to do. the more lampwork i show him, the more interest he shares. [Thank you, Tink, Kalera, Nicole, Lynda, et al] of course, he was used to working with stone and precious gems [the likes of which really make me catch my breath, but that's not where my first interest is].

it's a shame, tho, truly. i'm educating them as fast as i can, Louis!

LOL! No, he's completely right. It's a wierd dynamic. "We don't get no respect".

-Kalera

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from Kalera Stratton :

]LOL! No, he's completely right. It's a wierd dynamic. "We don't get no ]respect".

well, you certainly do from me! i'd say starting a whole new business just to show off lampwork should count for something!

Thanks, Vicki! {{{{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}}}

-Kalera

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from Kalera Stratton :

]Thanks, Vicki! {{{{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}}}

My information is mostly word of mouth, experience and observation (we have a critic for the newspaper here that wouldn't consider a glass object as art if his life depended on it), reading (particularly the parts about how glass is the redheaded stepchild of art) and thinking about it (in that order). Think about this though, beads have been around a long time, but jewelry (whether beads or gems or whatever) is traditionally what is considered art, if it is considered at all. Beads have generally been thought of as fairly common commodities, even when they were used as currency. Coins are currency and can be beautiful and amazing well designed and crafted, but don't get a lot of respect from the art world. After all, currency has to be common enough for everyone in the society to have experience with it and recognize it. Remember, even now the vast majority of beads are production pieces, not one of a kinds. So trying to get an art critic (who was trained in painting and sculpture, not in glass or polymer clay or whatever) to pay attention to a bead can get a knee-jerk reaction of "It's just a little bead, why would I pay attention to that when there are paintings and such for me to critique?". Also (and I am not trying to offensive here, but just reminding people of the way things were) items made primarily by women (beads, quilts clothing, etc.) have for a long time been given little respect. For that matter, respect for contemporary artisan craft in general is really a new concept (does William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement strike a chord?), even so items mostly made by men got respect (furniture for example) earlier than traditional female crafts. Although art museums and such have long prized ancient Greek urns for example, the Greek potters were very low on the social scale and their work was considered disposable by the ancient Greek society. It is thought that the only reason for doing the elegant designs on the pieces was for personal gratification and a kind of "one-upsmanship" among the potters. There is even one piece with an inscription that says something to the effect of "this pot was made by me and so-and-so down the street could never do anything this good".