Israel and Glass

I spent three weeks of this past January in Israel, "chaperoning" (for lack of a better word) a Hamline undergraduate class studying the Israeli Arab conflict.  We almost literally (and the writing teachers cringe) visited the four corners of the country, to say the trip was interesting is a major understatement.  Hamline instructor, Nurith, and our Israeli guide, Amir, lead the class.  Amir lives in a beautiful home with gorgeous big windows that gaze the outer edges of Jerusalem. Lots of light, even on the stormy day we visited, and I now had a plan.

Days later, as we traveled South on highway 90 along the border with Jordan, we stopped to visit a memorial, Andartat Habikaa, high on a hill and dedicated to a group of Israeli soldiers killed in battle near here in the late 1960's (pictured below) .

While our group gathered to hear the history of the area I spotted a green bottle halfway down the side of the hill on which the memorial stood.  Needless to say I climbed down and got that bottle.  With the exception of a dozen or so flies no longer among the living, the bottle was in nice shape, didn't even have a label I'd have to remove.  Then while in Tel Aviv a few days later I found a nice aqua blue bottle, I took that as well.  Now I would need just one additional color, this I would locate in the flea market in Jaffa the day we were to fly home, a brown glass cup purchased from a vendor for about $3.00.

Once home, and with hammer, I broke the two bottles and the cup into many pieces and melted all in my kiln.  From there the pieces were cut to shape and placed onto the frames as you see them below, the green bottle provides the stem, the blue bottle the petals, and the brown cup the bud (the background colors I already had at home).   It's not really possible to see in these pictures, but I think both pieces turned out nicely since the chunks of glass that make up the flowers are thicker, giving a bit of a 3D effect.  So from glass collected in the beautiful country of Israel come four beautiful flowers.  My first "international" pieces!  And my hope, the one in yellow looks nice in a big bright window gazing the outer edges of Jerusalem.

Red Stripe and Rectangles

My wife and I recently met up with a couple of friends we'd not seen in quite some time, so it was only fitting we all go to a bar in town we'd not been to in quite some time either, The Cabooze.  While there I noticed many people drinking enormous Red Stripe lagers, turns out they're 24 ouncers, and with a PAINTED LABEL!  If you've visited this blog in the past you may then know, old windows and bottles with painted labels always catch my eye, and I had to have a few of those bottles. 

It's a strange thing, sneaking empty bottles out of a bar.  I'm not sure "sneaking" was even necessary, and I don't know what I would have said had someone stopped us ("no, no, see what I do with them, Mr. 400 pound bouncer, is I melt them flat in my kiln and attach them to old windows"), they were empty after all, and between my friends, my wife, and me, we got four of them out, and it felt a bit odd.  But I can report that I've used a couple of my "smuggled" Red Stripe bottles, slumped them, and created a new strain of Sunflower to slip inside each.  From Red Stripe bottles comes the Red Stripe sunflower. All on a full sized storm window given to me by a coworker

Also new today, a series of colorful squares and rectangles on an old kitchen window that sat partially started for several months in my basement

And a small (about 14 x 8 inch) set of row houses on a frame of cedar left from the construction of a fence last summer