New Zealand Glass Artists Exhibit in Akaroa

The beach at Akaroa

Yesterday, on New Year's Day, we packed into the car and drove to Akaroa, a tiny seaside town just about an hour and a half's drive from Christchurch. Under blue summer skies, we drove through long stretches of pasture country and sun-bronzed hills.

Akaroa is a quaint and colorful town with a obvious French influence having been settled by French immigrants long ago. Charming old houses line the hillsides, some almost completely overrun by prolific gardens in full bloom. Street names are all in French. Akaroa is situated on the edge of an extinct volcanic crater that makes up the Banks Peninsula. The Pacific Ocean invades the crater from the East, creating a calm and breathtaking body of water. It's one of my favorite places to go.

View of Akaroa Harbour

Charming Akaroa Home

My friends Kay Butler and Lisa-Jane Harvey, with support from the NZGBA (New Zealand Glass Bead Artists) organized a glass artists exhibition at a well-known local art spot in Akaroa, the Andrew Firth Gallery. Andrew himself specializes in glass art and creates some of the most wonderfully executed and graceful glass sculptures and pendants I've seen. Many of the artists are into lampwork, which is creating art beads by melting colored glass rods in a torch flame.

Andrew Firth (far right)

A couple of years ago I took a weekend lampwork course from Lisa-Jane Harvey and met Kay Butler through her. It was a wonderful weekend exploring an exciting new art and I came away with a long string of my fledgling attempt beads. See post.

Kay Butler with her jewelery (in glass case at eye level)

The New Zealand artists represented in this exhibit were: Kay Butler, Andrew Firth, Frances and John Hansen, Lisa-Jane Harvey, Karen Irwin, Justine McInally, Karen Mitchell, Helen Moore, Selma Rainey and Greg Smith.

It was exciting to see what everyone has been up to. I was impressed with how Kay's work has progressed from when I first met her. She had a few lovely necklaces on display and she called me up today to say that she had sold two of them! How exciting! It's always very gratifying when someone loves your work so much, they simply have to have it.

New Zealand still has a comparatively small lampwork artist community. But it is growing. Annie Rose in Whangarei and Lisa-Jane Harvey's studio in Auckland 'Born to Bead,' provide wonderful opportunities for people to learn this exciting art.

Kay (left) and my Mom, Ginny (visiting from California). Ginny is a glass artist in her own right, making stunning jewelery with Dichroic glass and beads.

After looking at everything and having some champagne and nibbles, my Mom, Antz and I went on to explore the area a little bit, enjoying some fun little shops and having a lovely lunch by the shore with a nice breeze cooling off the hot afternoon. It was unseasonably hot yesterday (about 90 degrees F and over 30 degrees C) and without air conditioning in the car, it made for a toasty trip. We had all the windows open, hair blowing every which way, my hand 'porpoising' out the front window. Perfect summer day!

Second Batch O Beads

Here's a few of the beads I recently made this week. This is called a 'jellyfish' design. I guess I can see why. It is made by wrapping a black molten bead in a thin sheet of sterling silver, then burning off the silver in the torch. The spots are made by a combination of silver and ivory glass.


These next beads I'm quite proud of because it shows how much more accurate I am getting at placing the dots (especially the black & white bead).


I tried my hand at a tiger bead. Lovely!


Actually, done a little better, the bead should actually look like it has tiger stripes.

A few more...




Just another reminder about Blogarithm. If you scroll to the very bottom of this page, there's a Blogarithm link. If you sign up you can get reminders about when I make a new post to this blog.

Have a great weekend!

Lamp-Working For The Weekend

My first beads. Lookie what I made!

If you are an 80's music fan and remember Loverboy, then the title of this blog entry title might actually be kind of clever.

It's been a while since I blogged, but I was away in Auckland doing some really fun stuff this last weekend. I took my very first lesson in "lampworking"...that is making beads from molten glass using a torch.

I took a class from Lisa-Jane Harvey of 'Born to Bead.' She has been creating beads and jewelery for about 3 years, but has just opened a beautiful studio perfect for teaching.

She and her husband are originally from South Africa. On the way from the airport, she stopped by a South African butchery and we picked up some Biltong, a spiced, dried meat and Droewors, a similar dried meat snack formed in long ropes...similar to beef jerky, but made using a different process and spiced uniquely. Really tasty!



In no time, I was at the studio and taking a look around. The beads are made from glass rods in a luscious array of colors. Ooooo, pretty!


This is me on the first day of the class getting used to working with the torch. It's an interesting mix of fear and coordination. The flame is extremely hot (well, it melts glass after all) and so there is a natural fear of getting burned.


Then with one hand you have to continually rotate the 'mandrel,' the metal rod that you make the bead on. It has to be rotated back and forth, at least 360 degrees, and perfectly horizontal (or the beads go lopsided). With the other hand, you manipulate the glass rod in the flame which wants to melt and flow away from you. See the white hot blob of glass on the end of the blue rod.


Now I'm not trying to make some sort of retro-uber-geek statement with my outfit here, but I had to wear these special UV-blocking safety glasses when working with the flame.


Once we got the hang of making a basic bead shape, Lisa taught us how to make different types of beads...ones with spots, little nubs called dots, spirals, and how to trap a bubble of air inside a spot (far right bead in both photos has a tiny bubble in the center of the spot).



Then we made a rectangular free-form bead. I didn't intend it, but this one just looks Antarctic to me. I see Ob Hill or Mt. Discovery at the top with clouds in front and some ice and stuff on the bottom.


Then we learned how to use silver leaf in beads, giving it a nice sparkle.



This one also has some silver in it. I particularly like the way the blue seems to glow on this bead.


The class was 2 days long, but I stayed for an extra day to get some individual tutoring on using dichroic glass on beads. For those that don't know what dichroic glass is, go here.

Dichroic glass is a bit challenging to work with. You can't put it directly in the flame and have to be careful not to overheat it. It has to be 'encased' in clear glass (in other words has a layer of clear glass over the top) to protect it. As a beginner, I had a tough time with it and after ruining three beads, I decided to stick with the basics, as least for now.

But I did manage to get one decent dichroic bead. I think it's lovely!



A few more lovelies...



The day of my flight, we had some time so Lisa took me into the city of Auckland. We had lunch at a terrific Italian place where every dish was $12, then we had some amazing gelato for dessert, then and took the ferry to Devonport for a bit of a look around at some shops.



It was a lovely weekend! I can't say for sure if I am hooked on lampwork, but I certainly want to do some more of it and we'll see where that leads.