Two weeks ago Mom mentioned that she wanted to go to Corning and Rochester for five days, did Evan and I want to join her? Well, the answer, of course, was yes. It was great to be able to get a last trip in before the babies arrive, and I was thrilled to give Barrett five days to himself. So last Friday Mom, Evan and I got in my new minivan and headed to NY state.
We drove to Rochester Friday, with a brief stop in Corning to drop a BBQ sandwich off for Bill Gudenrath. He’s a friend of Mom & Dad’s and the artist-in-residence at the Corning Museum of Glass www.cmog.organd loves the beef brisket from Skeeter’s BBQ in Shamokin Dam, PA. It was nice to have the brief stop so that Evan could stretch his legs and play with Owen, Bill’s 8 year old son, for a few minutes. We headed on up to our friends Tim & Michelle’s house in Rochester. Evan was thrilled to get to see and play with Alivia, their 12 year old daughter. Evan is very enamored of Alivia over the past couple of years.
Saturday, Mom & Tim went and blew glass for a few hours in Tim’s studio. I decided not to join them because of the heat involved. Scary…it’s the first time I’ve ever said no to a chance to blow glass, but it was the right decision. Mom & Tim said the studio was around 120 degrees that day. While they were at the studio, Alivia, Evan and I went to the Strong National Museum of Play. www.museumofplay.org Oh, WOW!!! It was one of the coolest museum’s I’ve ever been to. It was fantastic!! Geared towards encouraging learning and playing, I could have spent days in there!! There was a fantastic butterfly garden, a whole section of the museum that looked like the set to Sesame Street, the Beranstain Bears treehouse, a section dedicated to the evolution of video games (I got to play Pitfall and Pong!!), a rock climbing wall and lots of other physical things. It was so much fun to watch Evan and Alivia play! We stayed there for almost five hours and left happy and exhausted enough for naps in the mid-afternoon.
Sunday we drove on down to Corning in the afternoon. Tim was going to be assistant teaching one of the classes for the week, with our friend Alex. Alex can perfectly imitate crickets, even throwing his voice across a room somehow. Evan was thrilled to see him when he got there. We joined the incoming classes for their introductory dinner (even though we weren’t taking classes) and Evan got to sit with Owen and some other friends at a kids’ table while Mom & I got to talk glass with lots of the other people who were there for classes. It’s always nice to meet the other artists who come to Corning for glass. There are always a few familiar faces from previous terms, along with the teachers and staff at the Studio. I spent dinner talking with Martin Rosol, who is one of my absolute favorite artists. I took a class in cold-working with him about three years ago and I continue to be amazed by the glass sculptures that he creates. http://www.holstengalleries.com/artists/show/rosol-23
Monday morning was low-key and relaxing. Great breakfast at the hotel and some PBS for Evan while I got to relax and read. We went over to the Studio for lunch, then Evan got to make some glass. He designed and blew a small sculpture with the help of our friend Kurt at the walk-in workshop. He’s blown pieces before but it was nice to see that he was so comfortable with the whole glass set-up. He’s got good control of how much he inflates a piece, and listens very well to instruction in regards to the hot glass. After doing the sculpture, he got to make a fused glass windchime. He’d made one of these last summer, and showed it to his preschool teacher, Mrs. Auer, earlier this year during show and tell. She loved it! So he wanted to make one for her. I sat across from him as he designed it, and helped out with cutting small pieces of glass and gluing, but he completely designed the windchime for Mrs. Auer. He made a rainbow out of glass, complete with a pot of gold beneath it, made out of stringers and frit. He also made one piece of glass with grass and flowers growing, because Mrs. Auer likes gardening.
I am loving seeing how definitive his design ideas are. Whether he’s working with glass, crayons, paint or clay, he knows exactly what he wants to make. It’s great because sometimes he wants to do things that I don’t think are possible, but he somehow executes them…which just makes me smile and gives him such a sense of accomplishment.
That afternoon we spent at the pool at our hotel. Evan swam with Owen, Sawyer and some other friends for a while, then when everyone else went home he swam by himself. Evan’s been in swim classes every morning for the past two weeks, and has been very timid about a lot of it. Having the time in the pool to himself seemed to be exactly what he wanted. In the course of an hour, he went from wanting to cling to me in the water, to dunking his head under water, to trying to swim with his head under the water. It was great to see him stretching his abilities and his comfort level. Mom and I were just watching and occasionally telling him how happy we were for him, but he totally did it himself. The next day he spent another hour, getting even more comfortable with swimming!
Tuesday we went to the museum itself. There’s a fantastic show up right now, with some of the most beautiful glass I’ve ever seen. I love having Evan in the museum with me, because he has such a different take on the works of art than I do. Our friend Tina, who’s also the curator of the museum, walked with us as we saw some of the work. It’s always great to see Tina, who just makes me smile, and also to let Evan know he HAS to be slow moving in there, because all the glass is Tina’s. ;o)
On the drive home, we stopped at Clyde Peeling’s Reptiland. It’s a great menagerie of reptiles in Williamsport, PA that we stop at whenever we have Evan with us. There are huge gators, a butterfly garden, the most active and reactive tortoises I’ve ever seen, lots of beautiful snakes, and other reptiles. It was great to see so many friends and have a good weekend with Mom & Evan.
