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#glass

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Back in 2015, I had the privilege of interviewing workers at the Pyrex plant in Charleroi, Washington County. Here's my interview, recorded 10 years ago:

almanac.tubecityonline.com/pod

Today, the plant is closing for the last time, another victim of corporate greed and private equity. Foreign countries aren't destroying American manufacturing — American investors are.

Found a nice vitricolous lichen yesterday in New York. I'm assuming it's some sort of rock shield (Xanthoparmelia) but not sure which one. Per Harris (2004) there are 15 different species in the state. #lichen #glass #nature #fungi #algae #inaturalist inaturalist.org/observations/2

iNaturalistrock shield lichens (Genus Xanthoparmelia)rock shield lichens from Putnam Valley, NY, USA on April 9, 2025 at 10:17 AM by Colin Purrington. On glass.

I am so excited for this Mind Benders neon class I am gonna start teaching tomorrow. Running till Sunday, students of all levels will get to learn neon bending, inkscape pattern (neon template) design, and a few programming things to make the neon blink (using microcontrollers).

Also trilled for the Embracing Fallibility exhibition going along with it. Mostly about human "error"- and loving the errors. April 11th it opens, and its up through July 19th. Here are a few install shots. Every piece is interactive- by physically pressing buttons, or by joining a wifi network that the pieces emanate, or by visiting

sticks.weblink.ooo/

from anywhere in the world. Okay, that last one is a little buggy- I programmed em all myself with some ai (mostly run locally) help. The LLMs are a a crutch, but I am learning more about #programming with them.

Here are some install shots of the show, and me connecting the sticks chandelier to the studio wifi.

Visited with students and gave slide talks two days ago- and pulled tubes with some very talented students yesterday. Gonna give another demo for UW glassblowing students today.

It's like my birthday came early with the tubes. Gonna make a video at some point to share the glassblowing fun- but Amber Mans an Skye Xollo were SO helpful, with Amber having blown glass since they were very young, and learning to pull tubes from my favorite tube puller in Tacoma.

I saw wonderful undergrad and graduate student work, seen here are Amber's "two truths and a lie" tubes covered in black glass powder and resist sandblasted through (I pulled some of that black/ brown). A studio visit with Morgan, a third year grad student was very neat- their ceramic and neon sculptures playing with texture, dementia, memory, and structure- integrating the neon and clay quite nicely.

Fascinating world of ancient #glass: A #Roman glass model of a #boat, dating 2nd c. AD. It was found in St. Aldegund in a 4th-century woman's grave. Six of such boats are known. We don't know their function: Were they used as women's urinals, as components of water clocks and sundials, as drinking cups?
Further information on glass boats:

web.archive.org/web/2022101307

Photo: GDKE Rheinland-Pfalz

I visited Jacob Fishman and the new Lightwriters public access neon studio in Chicago. I learned lots from his "Neon Engineers Handbook" and he has been one of my neon heros for years.

Of course, I was dazzled seeing all the Bruce Nauman pieces, patterns and rejects (Jacob is Nauman's main neon fabricator)- and I am a big Bruce Nauman fan. That copy of "mystic truths" has been all over the world and is the "living template" for the piece.

Jacob makes me wanna play more with radio.

I loved seeing the Bing neon happy sad outlets at Light Writers. It's so exciting that there is now a public access neon shop in Chicago - it's been needed for years with SAIC and UW students graduating and not having a place to work for years. I am gonna send some class proposals to Jacob and Zoell (his daughter) to return one day an teach a class :)

Next stop- Madison Wisconsin!

Wrapped up all my commercial projects and final mirror world class, along with working on a new hanging chandelier sculpture with @alifeeney . The stick sculpture runs a #webcam server with GPIO controls so that anyone can view and interact with the sculpture from anywhere in the world.

It's website is down currently, as it's the sculpture is my minivan with me as I drive cross country. I visited some old friends in Corning last night, and am staying with an exceptional neon bender who bent a lot of work for Bruce Nauman in Chicago tonight.

My show, "Embracing Fallibility" opens along with my "Mind Benders" class at FOCI, in Minneapolis in a few days. Until then, I will be driving a bunch listening to radio drama's and chatting with students as a visiting artist at UW Madison.

Oh it's hectic, but it's nice to be on the road again - the voice an stories of Joe Frank keeping me company