While we've been paid wedding photographers for over 9 years, we've been blogging here on our work photography website every Wednesday since some point in 2015 a few years ago when we re-branded and made the new website, so we think it's pretty appropriate for this week on our 150th Blog Post that we're blogging about the creation of true Fine Art. Many people in the wedding and portrait industry inappropriately label their photo work as "Fine Art" when it couldn't be further from Fine Art. There's a massive difference between Fine Art Photography and most Lifestyle Portraiture which can be sort of hard to explain, but we've already gone into great deal in past blog posts on what constitutes lifestyle and commercial photography vs fine art so we won't go in depth on this today.
Here's a minimalistic two sentence synopsis on the difference though: Fine Art Photography has really nothing to do with stock photo-like client portraits (no matter how "artsy") and everything to do with in depth concepts (contemporary or otherwise) conveying of some idea outside of the obvious. TRUE fine art photography is generally not a landscape or flower photo, portrait, or the like, but could be a more abstract image with text on it or any interesting piece you may see in a museum. We love many forms of Fine Art ourselves with Jenny MUCH favoring contemporary or modern conceptual work (and NOT male gaze driven white-centric classical paintings) and Jason preferring anything created with the highest skill level (even including classical commissioned painted works).
Though you may not know it (though you should because we've mentioned it enough), we both have high formal educational degrees in Fine Art: Jason with his Bachelors in Fine Art (BFA in Commercial Photography) and Jenny with her MFA (Master's in Fine Art Photography). This year we had the pleasure of finally going to the infamous Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in March right before our Society for Photographic Education conference in Philly, so that was a huge treat as well. We actually love many types of artistic expression, fine art in general, galleries, museums, and the like, so we love that many museums in Ohio are FREE and absolutely amazing (with the Toledo Museum of Art and Cleveland Museum of Art being two of our favorites). Last year we found out that the Toledo Museum of Art has a Glass Pavillion across the street which is not only a glass museum, but also an AMAZING location for fantastic fine art workshops-! We did one workshop last May wherein we made glass sculptures of donuts which was a bit challenging, so we decided to again do a glass workshop this August!
A week and a half ago we made another trek over to the Toledo Museum's Glass Pavillion to make Labino-style glass. Some backstory: Glass working and sculpting has been around for a very long time (dating back to the 5th Century BC), but the glass was made primarily for utilitarian purposes such as bowls, cups, and the like, it was made by teams of people, and was made in factories. Historians claim that Toledo, Ohio pioneered creating fine art glass: glass that was not utilitarian, rather an artistic expression. Artists started working with furnaces in studios rather than factories and experimented with shapes, colors, and creating interesting glass objects. Our project a week and a half ago in our 3 hour class was to create a glass fine art piece in the style of the artist who pioneered that style: Dominick Labino.
The process requires that we wear 100% cotton OR denim clothing for safety, so you'll soon see that our wardrobes are very limited when it comes to that (lol Jenny's outfit). This round of glass sculpting was much more labor-intensive than creating the glass donuts that we made last summer, but not extremely difficult this time and very gratifying. The class consisted of 5 women and 4 men and we were taught mainly by Kelly who was assisted by a younger man named Eamon. The class began with a short walk from the hot shop (the name for the furnace room) over to the museum's glass study room. Here our teachers showed us a few Labino pieces and told us a little of the history and technique behind the iconic process. After returning to the hot shop Kelly and Eamon both worked together to show us the many steps required in the process, quickly creating a final piece.
Generally for the bottom first layer of color you want to start with the darkest color so as to not obscure the other colors. By having your lightest color last (covering the other layers) you're still able to see the other layers below. They instructed us to do 3 dips of color for each layer, but neither of us did so. Jenny by choice started with 3 layers of a midnight navy blue, moved on to one layer of purple, then ended with one layer of a light pale pink. Jason started with a lighter blue, moved to a green, then ended with yellow and did only one layer per color. Jason also wanted a concave shape with a pointed curved tip which required a few extra steps of shaping and cutting during the piece's creation.
The process itself is rather straightforward, but requires many repeated steps of gathering glass, reshaping and forming the shape at the marvering table, coating and recoating with colored oxides, shaping with cord paddles, and finally scoring and sheering the final piece from the pole. All the while you must constantly spin the piece using gravity to counteract falling of the molten glass. Once a piece has been finished it must be placed into an annealing chamber for a few days to be allowed to gradually cool over time. If not allowed to cool in this way the piece would succumb to thermal shock and break to pieces.
We absolutely love how our pieces turned out and are so happy to now feel even more comfortable sculpting glass. We deeply wish that we had any closer option than 2+ hours away to create fine art large glass pieces at, but until we find something similar and not of a lower calibur, we'll continue to create at the Glass Pavillion that we love!
We hope you enjoyed this delve into creating glass fine art and that you also do or take up some fine art creating of some sort and that you continue to challenge yourself, hone your talents, and go outside of your comfort zone to try new materials and sorts of art. Not all art can be deemed "fine art," so to all of those who do practice and subsist off of your fine art alone or teaching high-level art and also selling your art, we commend you! Without people like you we would not be able to hone our talents, learn from some of the best, be in constant awe of your amazing artwork, and/ or be inspired by those who create magnificent pieces and work! Below are some magnificent glass pieces Jenny has collected from various artists throughout Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, and California. We learned the method of how to make the jellyfish when we asked Kelly, the bowl is huge and vintage (and heavy!), the paperweight is often an option of what to make at the Glass Pavillion, the bracelet is custom fit to Jenny's wrist (there were only a few size options, the necklace has a marble-like quality to it,and the colored glass jar has a neat marble-like glass flower sculpture on the front!
Unrelated: This weekend we will be capturing 3 Portrait Sessions (families & infant!), editing all of those Portrait Sessions next week, blogging teasers of one of the Family Portrait Sessions next Weekly Wednesday (the first who booked with us), and also celebrating OUR anniversary (with ambrotype portraits in Seattle) as well as our doggy adoption 2 year anniversary-! Today is the 2nd anniversary of living in & purchasing our current home, so August is a bit of a momentous month for us! Jenny's birthday is in a few weeks (the start of September) which also marks when we moved back across the country years ago to return to the Midwest, so this time of year has always been pretty busy and life-changing for us! It's a stressful time, but always a time of growth. (Previously in life it'd be back-to-school time, so many other people also feel the stress, but progress at this time of the year.) We hope that everyones' kids have a good transition back to school, continue to grow, love to learn like we do, and go on to do big things in the future. They say that if you can get a child to think about the future and prioritize it (by asking them if they can wait a few hours for a treat rather than get it Now-Now-Now) that they will learn to hone these great future-prioritizing habits and become the most successful adults! It's a very interesting study and definitely one to take into account in this NOW-NOW-NOW Instant Gratification culture. Anywho, have a great weekend and we'll catch you next week with our clients' Family Portrait Session! Be peaceful, be calm, be content, and take your time on things this semester of life.