Enamel

Mary Beth and I got up early yesterday to go to these classes at the Metal Museum. We got up and are ready to go out to the first one, which is early, still in the morning. But then a few factors combined, the first one was really just a repeat of the last one we took: copper roses. Also there was one hour between the two classes, an awkward amount of time, too long to really just wait and too short to go do anything else in between. And with that and the feeling of, eh, let's just stay in, we skipped the first class. But we went back out in the early afternoon for the second class. This was for making enamel pendants. I'd never known exactly what enamel is! It's crushed glass (into a powder) that spread over copper and heated til it's melted in layers. Since it was a time-limited class, they'd started it off by making the first layer on each side for us (one or two layers). Then we made another base layer on the front and back and then added art to the front side. These were little circular pendants. You put out the colored glass powder with little sifters and have to wear a mask because, you know, you're handling powdered glass. Anyway, for my design I made a little Mondrian! They had these stencils for patterns, and I didn't use any patterns, but I used the edges of a couple stencils for my straight lines in delineating the squares. I had a big red square and a little yellow square (background layer white of course, and my back is blue). There's also this weird goopy black paint, often used for highlights and I used it for the solid black lines. They were a bit big and thick for this paint's purpose, so it's a little wonky but it worked out alright! A few bubbles came up in the paint in the baking. But I'm happy with my first attempt. Mary Beth used an acorn stencil and she also used two colors for the bottom and cap of the acorn. They were pretty close in color but you could tell the difference before she added the paint for detail. She painted the lines on the cap and then a shadow on the edge of the bottom of the acorn. The shadow detailing is very impressive! Her colors were kind of this light purple (lilac?) on an almost-neon green. It's very nice! Anyway, making the enamel was a lot of fun. I think this was the most fun of the classes we've done. The person running the class did all the messing with the actual oven, so it was of course baby steps we took. But I'm like, man, I wish I could make enamel more often!

Then we looked at the museum's exhibit. It's their last exhibit before they move! It was works by this guy who's one of the founders of the Metal Museum and then on the top floor works from his collection. There was some nice stuff. They move to Overton Park in the fall so this may be the last time we visit the location by the river! (They'll still keep that for residences and events and stuff, but not the museum itself, it is a great location, though it's also good that something artistic is still keeping the old MCA building alive in the Park.) After that we went and ran an errand out east and then back home.

Got the rest of our Criterion sale order in the mail. I got: Eyes Wide Shut, Rumble Fish, Return to Reason: Four Films by Man Ray, The Trial, Targets, and Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser (the last was another gift from Mary Beth). Mary Beth got a bunch and a bunch that I also would have gotten had she not already (these are just those highlights as she got more stuff that I'm less familiar with): Risky Business, Killer of Sheep (plus another by Charles Burnett that I'm not familiar with), Working Girls, My Own Private Idaho, and Kiarostami's Koker Trilogy (plus another of his I'm not familiar with!). So good stuff and between that and the Varda box set, a surplus of movie watching!

At night, I made another dumb list challenge thing for the books I read in 2004. So going back a good way into the past and making myself feel pretty old!