I know, I know....

So I have officially finished off in Canberra after what seemed like both the longest and shortest 6 months of my life. So, here is some of the work that I made:

 A few of the things that I worked on during the semester. Displayed out for my final critique.

 I was also fortunate enough to be able to visit Northlands Creative Glass in Lybster, which in in the Caithness region of Scotland right after I came home from Australia in June. ( I was only home long enough to do a load of laundry, re-pack into a backpack and head back to the airport a week later.. much lighter in luggage weight and wallet).

An Iconic building... Scotland was exactly how I imagined it to be... lush, beautiful, awesome.

An old church in Wick.

TEXTURE!!!!

Aannddd, Jane B. giving Dana a hand and some fashion tips when styling seaweed.

The sky was always changing and beautiful and was a source of constant inspiration and wonder for me.

The ACAD crew, Ashley in 2nd year, me in 4th, Dana, who recently graduated and Dave in 3rd.

As one who experiences vertigo and is deathly afraid of heights, I did something completely out of my comfort zone and was convinced by Dave, Jade (in the cream jacket) and a few of the others to literally clamber down the cliffside and go down to the waters edge to look at the ocean.... oh man, I almost peed my self, but in the end got some great photos and video of the crazies taking a dip in the frigid water!

 Dave putting on a happy face (if you had seen my face, it would have been something like this:

)

(this also happens to be my cousin's kid, who, when not making this face is as cute as a button)

on the waters edge by the harbour at sunset... spectacular.

 Besides all the fun and games, we did actually do some work in the shop... me pulling murrine...

and Natali holding up the stump once we pulled it all

the final product ( I left this piece as a marker of being there)

 Sand- casting a collaborative work by Alex and I.

We were really lucky to have batched some Bullseye, so all of the work that we made in the kilns (like my murrine) and other stuff could be then transferred into the hotshop and then be blown of reshaped and vice versa.

HAGGIS! 

yes I ate it and yes i liked it and yes I would eat it again...probably. 

(and i do know what it's made of)

my desk on the final day of the Location and Self Symposium, Lybster,  Scotland

My lovely little monkey playing hide and seek and below, a cheeky smile.

I ended up spending 6 weeks total in Europe, 11 days in Scotland (which is now my new favourite place to be, ever.), then off to Germany Portugal, Spain and jolly old England on my way home. :)

Well, that was the quick and dirty on my life in the last 8 months, but classes have started, so I'me sure there'll be more to share in a short while!

C

Classes have finally gotten under way!

After having survived all of the Occupational Health & Safety talks and meetings of last week, Maddison and I have hit the ground running!

This week we finally got the go ahead from our lovely tech Phil to actually go and start making work in the shop. Maddison and I were working on the forms from our hot shop class last week of some high bowls. They turned out okay, even though it seriously felt like I had never blown glass before!

The glass here is batched from a sand-like mix, whereas at ACAD, we use the spectrum pillows to batch our furnaces. This results in glass that's A LOT stickier and flexible. It has it's pros and cons, but it has been a steep learning curve to what I've accumulated as my base knowledge in my time at ACAD.

So, in short, the bowl i made weren't that fantastic, but I'm getting better at it! I also really like the format of how the School of Art runs their workshops as well as how the Glass Workshop is organized. Different, but good :)

Fulbright Scholar and our Kiln class instructor Matt Perez giving us a demo in the mould room.

Brian Corr doing a demo in the hot shop, assisted by Alex.

View from the assistant's chair. Madd working on a high bowl.

Me working on a high bowl.

Photo By Maddison Klein.

Cheers,

Charissa