Glass Blowing Houston

Creativity…where does it come from?

Published August 2, 2017 | By Sally Moore

Creativity is a funny thing…Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it isn’t.  It’s erratic, nonlinear and unreliable.  It defy’s logic and often endorses the opposite.  As an artist one must jump from the right side of the brain to the left side and back again, all day long.  In order to create something “new” and different one must go from logical to crazy, irrational to ordered, regimented to chaotic.  Finally you get to a point where you are considered logically crazy and what you create is Art.

In order to be truly creative one must realize that exploring every logical, rational, ordered outcome is just half of an idea’s potential.  It is the random, spontaneous and unscripted moments that produce quantum breakthroughs.

Glass allows us to be creative.  It can follow the lead, but when it’s hot it can also take the lead..leading us to outcomes that make us better glass makers or give us new ideas.

Extraordinary is just the beginning – Glass Blowing @ Three Dimensional Visions

Published March 24, 2017 | By Sally Moore

Do you ever wake up and think, “Wow”! I’d sure like to do something ordinary today”?  Me Neither.

You my friend are in luck, at Three Dimensional Visions extraordinary is just a starting point.  What we do with You and Fire is incredible.  Let me describe the experience for you.

Think back to the last time you were sitting around a campfire with friends and someone breaks out the marshmallows.  Remember impaling the marshmallow on a coat hanger and sticking it into the fire?  The flames begin to soften the spongy white treat almost immediately and soon the edges begin to turn brown and get crispy.  You could barely wait to devour this unique treat.  Well, when you come here and work with our glass and guidance your experience is marshmallow sweet and the feeling you get warms your inside for a lot longer.

Have a good ordinary day.  We will keep the fire hot for you till you are ready for the extraordinary!

 

 

 

 

“Enriching lives through artistic self-expression.”

 

Glass Blowing, Childhood & Creativity

Published November 9, 2016 | By Sally Moore

Remember when you were a kid?

The world was yours to do anything:  a paper grocery bag was a space suit helmet, a cardboard box was a fort, a house, or a car; a tree was a castle.  Nothing stopped you from reimagining the world into any fantasy adventure.  Do you miss that fun?  Wish you could conquer the dragon, grab the treasure, create a new adventure and memories?  You can…our dragon never sleeps and you can create wonders that will last for years.

Come Make some Glass with us @ Three Dimensional Visions – Glass Blowing Houstondragon

Enriching lives through artistic self-expression.

Creative Process Observation

Published October 31, 2016 | By Sally Moore

I was just straightening and cleaning up the showroom at the studio today.  It is a boring, but necessary chore with absolutely no glamour to it.  The most interesting thing about it is to me is keeping a running estimate of how many granddaddy long leg spiders I have vacuumed up so far.  (By my estimate, the number is HUGE!)

Anyway, toward the end of the task I glanced out into the studio.  There I watched one of the gaffer’s working with a renter.  Together they had come up with an interesting glass blowing form, it was a geometric/ minamalist type look with an organic-like area at one corner.  The pattern, color, scale and formed seemed to be working well.  That is..until it was carried over to the crack off bucket, dunked in the water and shattered into a thousand pieces.

I could tell by their respective facial expressions that they were less than pleased.  Being the artist/instructor type person that I am I went up to the renter and voiced what were the good points about the form, in my opinion.  Then I told him it was an idea worth pursuing.  He perked up a little.  I felt good.  He felt good and then I thought to myself, “In the pursuit of knowledge, nothing is wasted.”

——————Michael Kerry Brown

Giving Birth @ The Hot Shop

Published October 19, 2016 | By Sally Moore

I was thinking about life here at the Hot Shop.  You know, glass blowing, teaching others and boldly going where I’ve not gone before.  Just the usual stuff.  Anyway, it reminded me of a line from a Bob Dylan song.  It went like this “Man not busy being born is busy dying”.  And that in turn reminded me of the first time my mother-in-law came to the hot shop and watched what we do here.  She said something like this, “Oh my, what you all are doing is wonderful…It’s so beautiful. It’s like giving birth.”

Perhaps she was right.  At times the ideas and efforts flow smoothly and at other times it is hard work.  I suppose, in our own way, you could say we create our little bundles of joy five days a week.  It is exhausting at times and at others very rewarding.  You know, kinda like raising kids…only not as expensive, or perhaps more so…

..Michael Kerry Brown…

When did glass blowing begin? a short version

Published September 29, 2016 | By Sally Moore

One of the questions that we are constantly asked is “When did we start blowing glass?”  Well, you can answer that in multiple ways, two of which are “When did we personally start blowing glass” or “When did human’s fascination with glass begin?”  We will save our personal story for another day.

Glass making began about 5000 years ago and glass blowing is much younger being only about 2000 years old.  People first created small cast objects of glass in molds or by shaping it with simple tools somewhere before 2000 BC in Mesopotamia.  A great place to get a more detailed view on the history of glass is on the Corning Museum of Glass – Timeline of Glass History==> http://timeline.cmog.org

Stone Age man used natural glass objects to fashion spear points  and sharp cutting tools. The earliest known man-made glass objects were beads, which probably resulted as an accidental by product of other efforts, like metal-working.  During the late Bronze Age in Egypt and Western Asia there was rapid growth in the technology of glass making including the making of colored glass.  There is a rich history of glass as a luxury item and then glass making developed slightly differently in each of the worlds culture.  By the 14th century the island of Murano was the center for luxury Italian glass making due to the abundance of pure quartz pebbles.

The American Studio Glass Movement began in the 1960’s when Harvey Littleton, a teaching ceramicist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, joined forces with the Toledo Museum of Art and held two historic glassblowing workshops.  Dominick Labino, a glass research scientist also participated devising a small, inexpensive furnace to melt and work glass.  After these workshops and learnings Littleton then started a glass program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  Some of the early students of this program (Dale Chihuly, Marvin Lipofsky and Fritz Dreisbach) became the innovative artists who led glass into its artistic forms of today.

Glass is literally involved in every facet of our lives today.  Come with us and join in the world of glass.  See it move, give it some color, give it some form.  Come be a part of the Texas glass blowing movement by holding a party or event at our studio or joining in on one of our Glass Blowing Experiences, Workshops or Classes.

Enriching lives through artistic self-expression.

Three Dimensional Visions – Glass Blowing Houston

Why Glass? Our view from a glass blowing , kilnforming studio

Published September 23, 2016 | By Sally Moore

We get lots of questions about glass in the studio, so I thought we might just provide some info to help you understand “Why Glass”!

For us glass is a state of mind, but in reality it a state of matter. It gets created when a molten material cools so rapidly that there is not enough time for a crystalline structure to form. In solids atoms are arranged in ordered lattice-like structures. In liquids atoms and molecules are able to move randomly, they flow. In glass, atoms are held rigidly – they cannot flow and they are not arranged in latices. Glass is called a rigid liquid.

When most people think of glass they think of it as a manmade object. But glass forms in nature:
Volcanoes spew molten rock which cools rapidly and is called obsidian.
Lightning strikes desert or beach sands and forms brittle tubes of melted sand that form fulgurites.
Meteors which fly through the earth’s atmosphere and then impact the earth with intense heat form terrestrial debris which cools quickly and is called tektites.
Silicious skeletons of marine creatures (algae, sea sponges) are shed onto the marine floor and form natural glass…

Glass is all around us. Think about it. What would our world be without glass?
It helps us control the temperature of our surroundings.
It aids our vision.
It facilitates communication through fiber optic cables.
It is used in packaging, tableware…
It helps express our identity in the form of art.

What does glass not do? Its applications are endless.

Most people think of glass as a solid. It’s fun to expose people to glass in its more liquid form. When we work with glass in the hot shop it is kinetic, it flows, it expands, it contracts and it dances with us. Glass is beautiful in its clear state, where you can take advantage of its optical qualities, and it is fascinating when it takes on color. Glass is a fantastic play material. You can make it into one form if you don’t like it you can remelt it and form it into something else.

Glass is paradoxical, it can last for thousands of years or be shattered in an instant.

Glass reflects the personalities of those who work it.
Michael’s joy is exploring his love for color and different forms in glass.
Patrick focuses on patters and the repetition of elements probably due to his strong musical background.
Glass is attractive to me as a scientist because when you work it in a logical manner, it is process oriented. Once you become competent at the steps and how to make the basic forms you can start to recombine them and make glass follow your lead. I look at boundaries as something to go beyond and try to mimic geological concepts with glass like a kid with a chemistry set and no instruction manual.I try to use everything, all my background and knowledge while exploiting all the resources at hand.

Without glass how would we recognize ourselves? Its reflectivity allows us to see ourselves as we truly are… Or maybe not.

Why not come out to the studio and learn more about yourself. See where working with glass may lead you. Believe us, it’s worth it and so are you. With glass the exploration is endless.

Three Dimensional Visions – Glass Blowing Houston
Enriching lives through artistic self-expression.

Summer is over

Published September 11, 2016 | By Sally Moore

Hmmm…Summer is over, the Olympics are over, the month of routine maintenance in our glass blowing studio is finished. So what’s next?

Well after a couple of days at the beach it is time to look forward. It is a time to assess our overall experience with our glass making in the hot shop and in the kiln forming studio: What works, what doesn’t and how do we improve. What can we do to provide a fresh, unique and enriching experience for all that come through our doors?

We offer a variety of aesthetic goodies for all tastes. There is a studio showroom filled with warm & hot glass art and there are two other gallery venues for the “armchair enthusiast”. We provide glass blowing demonstrations which are open to the public for individuals and then for groups we can do a demonstration and or a Make a Something event. There are educational experiences in the form of our demo/tour event, glass blowing experiences, glass blowing weekend workshops, kilnforming projects, as well as our six week experiences to learn how to blow glass. The demo, studio tour, and discussion about the history of glass and its place in todays society is great for field trips, social clubs, and large groups. For the smaller group we can do the demo and a Make a Something event where everyone who wants to gets to make some glass in the hot shop. Glass Blowing is a team sport and we offer “team building” opportunities to demonstrate how working together as a group can provide optimal results and that integrating and maximizing diverse potential in a group makes it stronger. And for the all out hardcore glass enthusiast we offer a line of six week sessions for glass blowing that build on one another in a logical progression.

If you can think of other things that we can do please give us your ideas. “Enriching lives through artistic self-expression” is more that just a “catch phrase” for us, it’s what we believe and want to achieve.

And remember, don’t just sit there…go make something!

Twistie Cups

Published September 9, 2016 | By Sally Moore

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