Stained Glass Stuff

Stained Glass Stuff’s Hot Glass Horizons April 2005 Road Trip

The HGH website for this event went up at the beginning of January, giving us 3 months to plan and organize ourselves. Announcements were posted on our website and through our New Stuff emails. Many were interested, but only 5 could commit to going. Everybody selected the courses they were interested in, and paid for it on their own. The cost of the 3 day classes was $675 US, which worked out to about $880 Canadian. That may sound like a lot, but if you check out any of the major shows, like one in Las Vegas, their rates are comparable. HGH runs 2 shows, in the Spring in Corning, N.Y. and one in the fall in Portland, Oregon. The Corning show is the smaller of the two, with 14 instructors and about 120 participants. The Portland show has about 20 instructors and about 180 people.

A week before, we organized our departure time and place, 12:00 noon at SGS on Wednesday the 20th of April. One of our brave adventurers had volunteered her van, which was very nice. Everybody started to show up around 11:30am, we loaded the van, and off we went.

The route was simple, down the 416 to the 401, stopped at the Wendy's for lunch, and then west to the Thousand Islands bridge. We had a brief scare at the border when the US customs agent said we were the lucky 100th vehicle that gets to be inspected, but when the agent saw that there was 6 of us, they waved us through. It would have been too much work to start searching all of our stuff. And that large STOP sign at the front of the drive through lanes is there for a very good reason. If they have to draw their firearms on the car in front of yours, they don't want you to be nearby. Thank you for that tidbit of information, officer.

Once past the border, we drove south on I-81 through Syracuse to Cortland, where we turned off and got on Highway 13. It was a local road through the gentle highs of southern New York State. Coming down the hill into Ithaca, at the base of one of the Finger Lakes, the view was nice, and would be spectacular in the summer on a sunny day. We pulled up to the hotel at 6pm, just in time for the Wine & Cheese Reception and Registration. We had 2 quad room booked at the Radisson hotel in Corning, so we split up, 3 to a room. The show did have a special rate, which added up to $105 US per night. Some wandered around the conference rooms to see what was done that day, and see The Store. There were Wednesday classes, but they tended to be shorter, more of a true beginner level, and our road trip was already an expensive undertaking. One universal comment was, "Boy, it sure is warm when you walk by those rooms with kilns in them" We reassembled in the lobby and headed out for dinner.

After a rather indecisive start, we finally ended up in a very, very nice restaurant, The 3 Birds, for a fabulous dinner. It was rather expensive, but we all justified it as the best meal we likely would have on the entire trip.

Thursday, April 21st

We all ended up down in the hotel restaurant for breakfast, which was again very good, but expensive, $8 US for a buffet. Class began at 9am, so we scattered to find our instructors. The 'warm room' phenomenon we noticed the day before had not yet kicked in, and the rooms were a tad cool.

EvenHeat was the kiln supplier to HGH. There were at least 6 Hot Box kilns and a GTS23.9 or a GTS 25.41 kiln per room. Evenheat also had a tech rep at the show to ensure everything ran smoothly. Having one of their employees at a warm glass show like this would allow them to see just what fusers do with their kilns, and what kind of improvements could be made in the future to their kilns.

Don Abel of Morton Glass Works was also at the show, learning about fusing and how his line of tools could be of use to the warm glass worker. Just about every classroom had a Mini-Board and the Portable Glass Shop set up on it for use. This not a freebie plug for Evenheat and Morton, but rather it was very nice to see manufacturers interested in getting feedback from those who use their equipment.

Most instructors started off with some slides, passing around examples of their work, so you could see what the possibilities were with their specific technique. Lunch was around 12, but depended on the flow of the class, and was for about an hour. We quickly discovered Market Street and all the neat little places to eat on it. You could be there are a week and eat at a different place for each meal.

Back to work after lunch, kilns began to be loaded up and fired, and that's when the rooms began to warm up. It was noticed that although the conference rooms all had sliding glass doors, they were all sealed shut, likely for the winter. This minor oversight lead more that a few people to dart back to their rooms to change into something a little lighter. The other minor detail that quickly became apparent was that the Hot Boxes were set up 2 to a circuit, and if you tried to turn them both on at once, they tripped the breaker, wherever it was. And with 35 Hot Boxes all running at once, plus the bigger kilns, the Hot Boxes just couldn't heat up as fast as they normally do. One thing that would help get everybody's work done before the sun set would be to make sure that at least some kilns were fired before lunch. Some classes did this, some didn't.

The SGS crew got back together and met in the hotel bar before the Dinner and Slide Show, which was included in your registration package. The dinner was just as good as every other meal so far in Corning. It was kind of funny to be sitting at al these tables, eating dinner, with a collection of EvenHeat 25.41's ticking away along one wall, and all the crates and packaging piled up in one corner. It gave you a sense of the logistics and planning that went into HGH. Gil Reynolds gave a short talk and awarded to everybody, based on the number to times they had been to HGH, a sample bottle of Fusion HQ's new Liquid Stinger medium. It was funny the way he went about it. There were various awards for things like the first and last people to sign up. The last person to sign up did so that afternoon, after wandering into the hotel for some reason. Gil then started the slide show by introducing all the instructors, and giving some background and history about HGH. Another instructor took over and did a silly presentation, something about rubber ducks and action figures. Most of the instructors disappeared, something about having to 'practice'.

Friday, April 22nd

Another beautiful sunny, if not a little crisp, morning in Corning, NY. A quick breakfast, and then off to another class. Everybody was starting to get comfortable, recognize faces from the day, and night, before. One interesting thing most classes did was at the end of the day, you most likely had something in a large kiln to anneal overnight. So, the class was to meet back in that room at 8:45am, to crack open the large kiln, and take a quick look at everybody's piece, and then take it with you to your new class. The new people for that day's class were also wandering in and seeing what was done in the previous day's class, giving them some idea as to what to expect. As we had come down as a group, and met for dinner every night, we compared classes and techniques. Almost all of us had signed up for Mike Dupille's Fritography, and the universal consensus was he was an absolute genius. You didn't have to at all artistic, and you could make a work of art with nothing more than F1 and F2 frits and a simple glass base.

The HGH Store was another highlight of the show. It was open at lunch and after class, and every time you went in there, there was new stuff to see and buy. There were new tools, every possible kind of dichroic glass available, books, gadgets, decals, and examples of finished pieces that used all of this great stuff, so you could see what it looked like. We never figured out just how it worked, but the price on the sticker was the price you paid, the tax must have been included. It was nice for us Canucks, as we could then figure out what we were paying for this stuff without too much trouble. The kilns used at the show were also for sale at good prices. All of the large kilns were spoken for before the show even started, and most of the Hot Boxes were snapped up as well.

Between eating out 3 times a day, and the HGH store visits, most of us were starting to run low on Yankee bucks, so we headed over to the local grocery store after class. It was a Wegman's, and it was without a doubt the nicest grocery store any of us had been in. They had everything, and lots of it, and cheap too! And a coffee bar to die for. As our hotel rooms has mini fridges, a few people bought some drinks of various kinds. At the checkout, the pleasant young man at the cash asked one of us for ID, as they were purchasing some Rolling Rock. "No problem, here you go. Why don't you ask the nice lady behind me in line for ID as well, you'll make her day" So he did, and got a happy kiss for his question. They ID you if you even possibly look like you're under 30. She wasn't buying any drinks and was not 30. That made her day.

Friday night was the night to go out on the town and visit the local glass blowers on Market Street. Two of them were operating and had snacks and drinks out for us HGH'ers who wandered in. One place, Lost Angel, had a special " basement treasure chest" that they would bring people down to. It was a little like the basement at the end of 'The Blair Witch Project', but nothing bad happened, just some good deals. We all ended up in a diner, and then called it a night.

Sunday April 24th

We packed up, loaded the van, checked out, and grabbed our Saturday pieces, some of which were still quite warm. We drove over to the Corning Museum of Glass, and spend 3 hours wandering around. It was full of all kinds of glass, from 2000BC or so, up to modern works. There were a few original Tiffany and Frank Lloyd Wright works, which were interesting. The Tiffany pieces up close were rather rough, lots of cracks, but the colours of the glass and their layout were amazing. The precision of the Wright panels was incredible, given the small size of the zinc came used. We ate in the museum cafeteria, excellent as usual in that town, hit the gift shop, and left at noon. It was a quiet ride back, with everybody exhausted after such an intense 3 days of learning and fun. The border was quick to pass through, lots of lanes were open. Our agent, said, "Corning, was that for the glass thing?" We clearly were not the first to head home across this border. We were back at SGS in Ottawa at 5:30pm.

We split up the cost of gas, which was about $20 per person, and divvied up the room bill among who was in the room. The hotel cost was about $400 US, which worked out to about $160 per person. So the total trip cost to go to HGH was $880 for a 3 day registration, $20 for gas, and $160 for hotel, for a total of $1060, more or less. Trip medical insurance was to be had for $11, well worth it. Food and purchases on top of that, but we did learn that hitting the Wegman's right away would help lower the food bill next time. There will be a next time, so contact us to book a spot on the April 2006 HGH Road Trip with us here at SGS. Every person who came on the Road Trip said they had a great time, learned a lot, met gifted instructors, and were glad they went.

The Hot Glass Horizons website now has lots of pictures and quotes from those who went. To read and see more of what it was like, click on this link:

www.hotglasshorizons.com