Corning Museum of Glass

CMOG for short. Have you ever been there? It's a really neat place. The first time Lew & I went (long before we had kids and lived there) we spent 8 hours in the museum part on the first day we were there!! And we didn't even know about the Studio/Walk In Workshop and making your own project back then. We spent our whole visit in the museum half. Of course, we're geeks and Lew is a glass geek. So, OK, maybe you won't find double digit hours of fun there, but if you get a chance, you oughta check it out. There is a lot of glass history there! And, kids under 19 are free. Can't beat that!

taken Dec 2010, age 5... Carl loved this... he keeps asking to see the picture where "you are holding us like babies"

The "babies" he is referring to are shown in this shot from November 2006, 1 yr old. He loves seeing both pictures together. I haven't been in the museum part since the kids were 1, but I have been over to the Walk in Workshop area a few times since then. You can make things out of glass there. The gaffers help you make an ornament or a paper weight at the glass blowing station. Or wind chimes or a night light or frames or a sun catcher at the fusing station. Or a bead over an open flame. It's cool. Or I think so. My husband plays with glass for a living, so glass is considered pretty darn cool around our house.

Here is Carl standing by a big ol' glass cheeseburger! No one loves cheeseburgers more than Carl does. Well, except maybe the artist who sculpted a pillow-sized one out of glass!

We had been making ornaments there for several years before the kids were born. Then, once they arrived, we started a tradition of making them each a glass blown ornament annually. The first year, we made round ones that were red and green glass swirled together. They were the ugliest things ever! Well, they still are! The red & green together was a horrid combo that gave a brownish look. I believe, a few years later, they switched to a different style of red. Now you can use those 2 colors in combination with stunning results. But, I never re-did the ornaments. Those ugly ones were the first ornaments I made for them after they were born. Oh, I will dig around for a photo. I was still using film then, so I may not find one. And I did not unpack all those glass ornaments this year to snap a picture. I'll add a pic here if I can find one, though. (still looking - not one here on any digital files.)

The next year, we did another swirl pattern. Pink and white for Gretchen, blue and white for Carl. That was 2006. Let's see if I can remember the 2007 ones - oh yeah, Joey made Carl's and Claire made Gretchen's!! Colors are escaping me right now. Then, in 2008, Mom made a pink and green speckled tear drop for Gretchen and Daddy made a blue round one with ridges in it for Carl. In 2009, we commissioned Mom, Aunt Joanne and Aunt Lila to make ornaments for us on a fall visit to CMOG.

This brings us to 2010. And, it got to be the end of the year and we had not gotten ornaments done. That's when it dawned on us... they were now old enough to listen, sit long enough and follow directions! Why not go and make them ourselves??? So, we planned a day trip - with the new van, we could take Mom along and not need 2 cars. Loving that feature on the van!

Random woman in the parking lot who offered to take our photo did a nice job!

The kids were very good there. Phew. All the workers remembered us even though it had been almost 4 years since they saw us! They could not get over how big the kids were! Jackie told Gretchen, "I remember when you were still in Mommy's tummy!" I remember her once smiling at me as I rubbed my belly and she commented on how she missed that part of pregnancy.

The twins did great picking their own colors with zero coaching from me. They also chose the shape of their ornaments and whether or not they wanted ridges on them. Then we waited a little bit before it was our turn to get creative!

You sit on this wooden box and the gaffer gathers the hot glass on the end of a long metal pole. Then, when instructed to, you blow into the end of the tube. They tell you how hard or soft to blow and when to stop. Gretchen was a natural. The guy showed her her ornament and asked if she wanted it to be bigger or if it was all done. "Bigger, please!" so she got to blow into it even more. She chose a round, red ornament with white dots on it.

Carl struggled a bit more with actually blowing into the tube, but he did some. Jackie simply kept reheating it and letting him try again. When he was done, she asked me if I wanted to blow into it to make it big and I said, "No. I want it to be his ornament!" It is smaller than Gretchen's and mine, but it is so beautiful. He chose a tear drop shaped ornament with yellow and orange swirled on it. They ought to coach people to make tiny ones more often. They really look nice on the tree!

I made a round ornament with the ridges in it and a mosaic coloring pattern. Here are all three on our tree.

After they finish your ornament, they take it to the annealing oven where it cools down slowly overnight. There is time for a quick picture on the trip over. Here, Jackie is pausing with Mom's long enough to snap a picture. Hot glass colors do not show true, so you cannot see that this ornament is a dark green background with red and white dots on it. The colors come out when the glass cools. So, you don't get to take your work home with you, but they safely mail it for you if you wish. We got to see Mom's ornament and nightlight before we headed back to NC - it came that fast!

Here is her ornament hanging on her tree....

When we finished our ornaments, we had a chance to each do a fusing. That means, you lay pieces of cut glass onto something flat and glass. You use some glue to hold them in place while you are working and while they move it to the cooling oven. The pieces spend the night in the oven while the top pieces of glass melt (fuse) onto the lower piece. The glue burns off in this process. We each made something. Mom and Gretchen choose night lights, Carl made a black frame and I made a white frame for Kris's birthday present. Now, I have to part with it. That is always the hardest part when you make something cool out of glass for someone. Don't worry, I will mail it to her. Honest.

Gretchen did an awesome job on her night light. I wish we could go more often because she was really into it. Carl, not so much. He picked a black frame and since he loves yellow, he picked up 3 pieces of yellow glass. He placed those on the frame (I added glue to ensure they stayed right where he placed them) and added 2 long pieces of glass called "stringers". Then, he announced he was done. Minimalist. The frame is really cool, though!! I love it!!!!! the one I made for Kris has a collage look made with various blues and greens. She lives in MA near the ocean, so I wanted to give her a frame she could use for a beach shot of her kids.

I could have spent hours looking over this tree of ornaments in the museum building, but the kdis were pretty sick of glass by then. At this point, we headed over to Wegmans for lunch and then headed back to Albany after a quick drive through our old neighborhood to see our old house.

All of the fun opportunities that CMOG has to offer - and still, Carl's favorite thing is the ball and marble machine. I have photos of them as babies in the stroller enjoying this as their favorite part of the visit, too. I can say, although their interest has not changed... my photography skills have!

It was a lot of fun getting to make things there again. I can't wait for whatever move brings us back to Corning. It is such a neat little artsy community. I like that in a hometown. I would love to take some classes and maybe even be able to join the staff there someday.