I think I just invented enamel granulation, at least in the New Age Material I’ve been using with what amounts to a cheese fondue dish combined with a professional hair dryer and a few common kitchen utensils — clearly, that’s where the paper enameling technology that I buy and use must have first spawned, and if you look at the products typical of the art form, you’ll be disappointed in the very ordinary kind of products — things that amount to “VANILLA” in any language, meaning that there is absolutely no exploitation of the Fine Art effects that can be brought out of the medium.
I know I’ll hear from the Vanilla Bean Protective Society about that remark, but you know what? If you wanted me to care what you think, you’d have written your own blog.
You can easily achieve granulation in a super-hot kiln at a few thousand degrees, if you’re willing to look at it through the peephole to see how the melt is going, then reach in with a pair of tongs to pluck the thing out of the fiery furnace without harm to the delicate surface. Good luck on that last. It’s easy enough to create a granulation effect in a kiln, but what about with the new age plastic stuff called “Gorby Goo”???
As an artist, I’ve long thought that there’s some angle, some drift, some vector that one can take away from the pedestrian nature of paper and copper enameling in general, and achieve something more along the line of Fine Art rather than Folk Craft, although I don’t mind being counted in either category — both are wrong. As a matter of fact, all generalizations are untrue.
If you didn’t get the joke, you need to review your use of common English. If you read that italicized line in a translator, you’re on your own there. I have no idea how these ideas translate into other languages and as a matter of fact, I have a good solid indication that it’s the same in any language. Why didn’t I listen to Empedocles when he said that thing that everybody remembers him for — you know what I mean. Maybe it wasn’t Empedocles. Maybe it was Aristophanes or Euclid. The names and personalities all run together in a kind of meltdown of their own. Euripedes? Milton? Herb Caen? Someone out there must know. If you do, please keep it to yourself.
For the past few nights, I’ve been doing enamelware — not cloisonne, that was my mother’s primary artform, not mine — for the past 70 years since 1944 — we had our own electric kiln at that time — and I’ve made thousands upon thousands of enamelware items, but they’ve all involved very very high very dangerous temperatures and conditions, goggles and faceplate, almost as if I were welding, and the new technology doesn’t require any major heat.
The temperature is nowhere near that of a kiln, sitting at about the same temperature of a very hot hair dryer, with a very slow airflow. The cooking dish used to melt the primal goo is, like I said back a few paragraphs ago, very similar to a cheese fondue pan, the electric kind, with a sliding temperature setting marked with various crafting effects.
As many folks know, Lily Nova and I made 24k gold granulation beads back in the 1980s, but we don’t do that anymore — however, the result is that I am able to see the value in granulation effects, and when I stumbled onto the same effect in the Gorby Goo Melt Art products, I began to cultivate it, to see if the effect could be deliberately induced.
Well, with a hell of a lot of effort and a LOT of experience and a LOT of luck, it can be.
I want to teach this method to those interested in learning it. I don’t value secrecy, so I give away any “secrets” I might have uncovered or acquired or learned to others so they can use it, too. It’s not what you have, it’s what you do with it.
I will make some videos and put them onto a DVD for anyone who wishes to learn these paper enameling secrets. That’s right, I said “paper enamling” secrets, and I meant it. You can work on paper, papier mache, cardboard, wood and even copper plates and bowls, and this stuff looks absolutely incredible, but when you see what it will do as a Fine Art Form, you will be amazed.
Send for my new latest hot off the presss totally amazing video, SECRETS OF ENAMEL GRANULATION. We start shipping the video as soon as I’ve made it and it gets squeezed onto a disk, so you can safely ORDER TODAY, at a mere — gosh, I have no idea how much those things are or whether it’s gonna be disk or download or something entirely other. My grasp of the new media technology is about as up to date as my spiritual concepts. Old, old, old.
Fortunately, I wrote the rule book. You can order that, too.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby