First Blog, First Love

I'm admitting it. I'm addicted to glass. (I'm also addicted to popcorn, if that matters.) This is my first blog ever and I'll try to keep it up with stories about my creations, other people's creations, tips and tricks for glass artists, and photos of my work.

My real name is Cecilia, and most people call me Cec. I live in Israel and I am a glass artist. I have a small, packed, studio and dreams of expanding my space. When I first started working with glass, I was living in a very tiny house - less 40 meters (about 350 sq feet), with my 4 children - and there wasn't room for a studio, so I turned one of the bedrooms into a studio and put my mattress under my work table. Every night, before getting into bed, I had to shake off all the glass splinters and pick off any spatters of solder that had landed on my blankets.

What does it mean to be addicted to glass? Well, some women love shoes - I have a friend with perhaps 100 pairs in her closet. I might even have 2 friends like that. I, on the other hand, have 1 pair of decent tennis shoes, 1 pair of hiking boots with torn and knotted laces, and a worn pair of black dress shoes that I purchased almost 15 years ago. They serve me well. But if you leave my closet and wander on down to my studio, you'll find that I have at least 5 different kinds of glass, in every color imaginable. I have materials for creating stained glass, for lampworking and for fusing. I have rods, sheets, and old bottles. I have some really cool tools and lots of findings and things like crystals, fossils and some ceramic fairies that I once thought I might figure out how to incorporate into a lamp. I am insatiable, and sometimes impractical, when it comes to stocking my studio. I go without food when my bank account is low, but I never go without glass. I also cheerfully go into debt to buy glass but then, with the price of art glass (particularly here in Israel), how could it be otherwise?

If you're not yet convinced, I also dream about glass at night, fantasize about sucking on or even eating my lampwork beads, and hallucinate about melting glass in times of high physical and emotional stimulation (you work that out for yourself since this is potentially a family blog). I don't care about cuts, burns, getting stabbed while working - I once leaned over to examine something and effectively stabbed myself in the face with a drying mandrel - or the stains on my clothes. When I think of glass, none of that matters.....

As far as addictions go, I think this one is pretty harmless. In fact, I think I've made some pretty nice pieces and have even passed on my intense love of glass to many of my students.

You can see my "real" website at http://www.cdesigns-isr.com/ There is a gallery there, with some of my older pieces. There are also links to some of my internet stores and you can find my newer pieces there. And eventually - like, maybe, tomorrow, I'll figure out how to add photos to my blog!

Are you a glass artist? Please comment and query and let me know that I'm not alone in the universe!