So, what was the question?

Catharine Newell is more than an exceptional artist. She’s one of the most sharing, inspirational and encouraging teachers I know. Classes by teachers of this caliber are what will keep our “industry” vital.

The last time that Paul Tarlow posted a comment to my blog I ended up writing a reply that was so long I never posted it. He’d commented weeks after the blog had drifted 40,000 leagues below the main page and I figured I’d be babbling alone in the underworld. This time – because Paul’s comments touch on some critical issues – I’m going to turn the answer into a blog post itself.

OK. First, go read Paul’s comment. It’s no. 7 on the last post (“Mystery Shopper”).

In short, Paul asked 1) “what Bullseye sees as the market drivers…for the kilnformed glass ‘industry’” and 2) whether we think that our online ordering program is going to be perceived as a threat by “independent studios” (by which I think he means teaching studios that also retail supplies).

No. 1: The Market Drivers

To repeat myself, these are the components that I believe will create and maintain a healthy future for our field:

Inspiration: this kiln-glass “industry” (if, at its current size, it even merits that title) needs, before all else, a public face that is awe-inspiring. The works it generates need to be shown and seen in museums, art galleries and stores merchandising good design wares. People need to want to create in this glassworking method and to know that they can.

A once-in-a-lifetime retrospective by a major artist in kiln-glass like Klaus Moje at a major venue like the Portland Art Museum doesn’t happen every day. But why not? Our field has artists in it that are worthy of this sort of public exposure. We can make it happen. We must make it happen.

(But before anyone is intimidated by Museum Art, take a look at some of the fantastic work showing up on Etsy recently. This is Good Design, dreamy – and affordable – kilnformed glass jewelry)

Education: our community needs local teaching studios that satisfy the interest created by exposure to good quality kiln-glass. Paul operates just such a studio – Helios – in Austin, Texas. Top quality teaching studios are the gateway to our field. They should also be gathering points for people sharing this common interest. Internet communities are useful but they are not a substitute for face-to-face personal interaction and hands-on experience in the craft.

When was the last time you got to suit up in yellow slickers and headphones to enjoy an Internet bulletin board session on coldworking? There is no substitute for the bricks and mortar classroom.

Availability: once introduced to the medium, the end-user needs to have quick and easy access to the materials and supplies. This is often more difficult for the small teaching studio to supply. The largest wholesalers in the stained glass industry have historically been poorly stocked in fusible glass and supplies. The situation is only aggravated at the local retail level. Online availability fills a need and keeps the user active and engaged in the field.

The sheer variety of materials and tools demanded by enthusiastic students and artists in our field can be a challenge to small retailers. Online supply can fill in the gaps sometimes missing in local supply.

If those three elements are in play – inspiration, education, and availability – they will drive a healthy future for our field.

No. 2: Online ordering as a threat to bricks-and-mortar retailers

I’m a Mac-fanatic. I can get anything I want to feed my addiction online. But my idea of a Great Shopping Experience is a visit to my local Apple Store, in person, in The Flesh. Why? Because it’s teeming with People who can answer my questions. I go there to learn, to get my hardware fixed and my software explained – personally. The place is CRAMMED with people – customers and staff – talking about the activity and the products that excite them, signing store visitors up for “One-to-One” sessions, giving advice at the Genius Bar, selling stuff.  And while I’m there I too buy stuff. I wouldn’t ONLY go to buy. But my interaction with that staff and the electricity of that community stokes my passion and encourages me to pick up something I usually didn’t even know I needed.

And a lot of the time, it’s having seen something online that drives me to the local store – to see it for myself, to talk to a specialist face-to-face.

“Online competition…putting brick and mortar stained glass retailers out of business?” My opinion? Absolutely not. Quite the contrary.

Local stained glass retail stores have been struggling since I first worked in one 35 years ago. That was long before the Internet. This blog is long enough already without my opening that particular can of worms.

Is Bullseye a threat to retail by selling online? Not even close.

The greatest threat to this fledgling industry is a newcomer becoming inspired and educated, then not having access to the materials s/he needs to keep growing and learning. If those supplies are available locally, to be seen, handled and explained by savvy sales staff, online is not a threat.  If the products are not available locally or are constantly out-of-stock, both the end user and the retailer are headed to a dead end.

Paul, as far as I can see, your teaching studio is doing a great job of providing inspiration and education. And you’ve already said that Bullseye’s online operation isn’t a threat to your ability to sell product.

So again, I’m kind of confused by your question. I think that YOU (& Helios) are your own answer.

Last week I got an email notice of a new podcast that promised to “Expand Your Mind and Explode Outworn Beliefs!”

It was a podcast of an interview with Henry Halem in which the podcaster promised that Halem would reveal “…the truth about COE and its limitations in calculating compatibility!”

Of course we are delighted to learn of this brilliant new information since Dan’s been yammering about it for the last ten years. If you too have been living under a rock all this time, you can read the original under the title “TechNotes 3: Compatibility of Glasses on the Education page of this website.

But don’t let that stop you from buying Henry’s book – it’s got lots of other good stuff in it. Some of it is even his.

Seriously, we love the guy. Join us next summer when GAS gives him the Lifetime Achievement Award. And we buy yet another copy of Glass Notes.

Just Looking. Dan feeling alone together while drinking away his resolve to pinch pennies…

We missed the auction last year, the first time in a decade. So why this year did everyone hit me with: “it’s so good to see you coming to the auction again” like we’d been on some interminable boycott until this weekend??

It’s because everyone watches everyone at this thing:.

• Artists watch their work.

• Artists watch people watching their work.

• People watch other people watching the work they want.

• Husbands watch wives watching work they’re afraid she’ll buy.

• Wives watch husbands watching them watch the work they’re going to buy no matter what he says.

• Finally, you don’t even need to be there to have your not being there watched.

Just Playing. OK, so some artists would rather dink with their own choo-choo trains than watch the action.

On the train ride up to Seattle from Portland my own husband declared emphatically “we’re NOT buying anything this weekend.” (He’s still whining about the week in the Tuscan villa for 10 that we’ve owned for the last week because I adore a certain animal hospital.)

Dan’s heel-digging prompted me to put a guaranteed bid on the first item I couldn’t live without in the silent auction, a Jiri Harcuba monoprint.

Dan doesn’t know how lucky he is. I saw lots of other stuff that I liked a lot, but either I bid too low or only watched.

Just a few: Stacy Levinson’s kilnformed and slumped forms; Barbara Muth’s Color Sketches; Dick Ditore’s tectonic stack; Els VandenEnde’s stacked cairn.

(That’s barely the tip of the kiln-glass iceberg that was pretty imposing at the auction this year. For brevity’s sake, I’m skipping mention of the artists regularly shown in our gallery and the awesome group of Bullseye past and current employees with works at this year’s event.)

I was close to doing more damage to Dan’s credit card (what, register MY card at the express pay desk?!), when I glanced across a small island of pedestals and, through the haze of my third champagne, saw him in one of those intensely trivial conversations with a stranger.

She: “So, is that YOUR number below mine on that bid card?”
He: “Yeah, whatchya gonna do about it?” (Did he really think he could egg someone else’s wife over the Guaranteed Bid edge?)

She: “This, Buddy.

The room started to spin as the disembodied voice overhead rumbled “…4 seconds left to bid on items in the red section…”

He: “I know guaranteed bids and that’s not one. Here, watch this, Honey!”

Granted, it was only a minor skirmish in an evening of much bloodier battles. But, as the quality of my photos show, I was losing all focus. And Dan was losing the battle of will over wallet. Maybe we’ll skip it again next year. Watching can be expensive.

“I understand that you are strictly ‘business’, we will have to reconsider our alliance,” he wrote. In spite of his teachers having requested Bullseye for their classes, he made it clear that his program “… will be going with another company.”

Strictly business. The sinister, money-driven devil percolating at the heart of Bullseye.

Bullseye receives hundreds of requests for donations each month, most soliciting glass for classes. The donation requests far exceed anything that a small business can afford. We do offer preferential pricing to schools (as we did to this one) and provide educational materials at no charge. But we can’t always give to the degree that is requested.

Besides not having limitless resources, we also want to be confident that if and when we donate, the teacher using Bullseye really knows the material. Minimally, we expect that someone teaching with Bullseye regularly uses it in his/her own work.

Why is this guy teaching with Bullseye? Strange but true, Klaus Moje – when he teaches – teaches with the glass he knows and uses in his own work.

No glass is magic by itself. We are proud that ours is used brilliantly by countless numbers of world-caliber artists in their work. We run a gallery that represents only the tip of this iceberg. We donate regularly to a lot of programs, that include many of the best in the world, from North Lands to UrbanGlass to Pilchuck and beyond.

Nevertheless, at times we have to decline donation requests from even the best. Sometimes it is simply the sheer volume of material being requested (“Does every student really need $200 worth of glass for your workshop?”) But more and more it’s because we haven’t seen evidence that the teacher is familiar enough with our glass to provide the level of instruction that we believe students deserve.

Home grown. One way to be sure of the caliber and content of teaching is to grow our own. Bullseye trains a specialized staff in the technical aspects of working and teaching with our glass.

Any glass is only as good as the teacher. That is not to say that all glass is equal. Good glass used in workshops taught by an unqualified instructor looks as bad or worse than a lesser glass in the hands of a teacher who is experienced with its idiosyncrasies.

The best artists and teachers know that no glass is magic by itself. It is the combination of the material and their experience with it that forms the basis of good teaching. We are not looking for programs to use Bullseye instead of glass from “another company” just so students will be exposed to Bullseye. The exposure that we are looking for – and that the student deserves – is a good education in which our glass is one element.

Two of the best in the field. Don’t misunderstand. We don’t think that teachers can only be grown at Bullseye. Remarkable teaching artists are out there: Steve Klein and Jane Bruce teach regularly in many international programs and at some of the best US teaching studios like Vitrum in Maryland and Helios in Texas.

Unfortunately, we cannot take someone else’s word that “our teachers are perfectly qualified – they came out of XYZ school program.” We need to see evidence either in their work or – better still – by their having attended one of our regularly scheduled teacher training programs.

Getting the dirt at BE. Erik takes a forum of visiting educators from around the world through some basic coldworking methods.

Sadly, this news sometimes irritates – as it did the writer of last week’s email who felt our suggestion that his instructors attend a teachers’ forum at Bullseye was unreasonable.

To get an angry letter from the head of a program we have previously supported (when the workshops were led by artists we know), saddens me. The last thing we want to do is to burn bridges. But if we are concerned about the foundations of that bridge, better that it burns than a student gets burned by it.

BTW, in over two decades of watching glass programs, I have only twice contacted a school to personally question the qualifications of its kiln-glass teachers. One of those times was to alert a school program that they’d hired an instructor whose history of giving incompetent technical advice (in addition to using false identities on Internet bulletin boards) was well-known in kiln-glass circles.

Ironically, last week’s angry email, assuring us of the high qualifications of his program’s instructors, came from the head of that same program.

BE Director of R&E ambushing teachers at 58th parallel. No, we don’t know everyone who is teaching, who is doing it well or not. But our people go to extreme lengths to find the best – existing and potential – and to make available to them more than just free glass.

Finally, we are not omniscient. I know that there are exceptional artists and teachers that have not yet come onto our radar. In the meantime, we have to work from our own experience. If YOU know of an artist who uses Bullseye and whose teaching is also exceptional (the two do not always go together), please let us know.

Clearly I dropped the ball somewhere between Day Three and Day Eight. But the class didn’t.

On the afternoon of the last day, participants shared their results and discoveries. Looking back at the first day of sketching and note-taking, I was truly impressed at how many of the early images and ideas had been transformed into glass – sometimes substantively, occasionally literally, always quite personally.

Lorraine’s early sketches and paper models of rocky seaside cliffs came into a new and engaging life even in the small scale of her cast glass tests.

While David’s pre-course work showed a clear interest in the interaction of nature/time on the man-made, I read his captivating glass links between the granite stones as a statement about human engagement – something that definitely fueled this class.

As Shelagh explained her translations of a worn farm implement into a series of smaller and smaller glass models, it was impossible not to reflect back on the family snapshot that she’d shared with the class days earlier. “The details in the glass increase as the forms increase in size.” The fading photo of her father and mother standing with Shelagh and her siblings in front of the family farm was suddenly there, in the glass, in the aging process, and very much in the moment.

I could blather on endlessly about the work that came out of this group, but I’m in London and across the street at the V&A is the promise of Surreal Things. It had better be good. I’ve just watched a magic act at North Lands.