glass work

June 2022: Studying Glass and Light by John Ritchie

I’ve been reading art and photography books lately that are inspiring me to try new things. That, combined with a visual rediscovery of some art glass pieces, prompted me to study lighting, glass and vision to produce these experiments.

Uta Barth’s thoughts on trying to see past the blindness of the accustomed way of seeing one’s own home to find new vision inspired me to play with seeing through the lens of a piece of art glass, as in “Crazy Eyes” below.

Light - Science & Magic” by Hunter, Biver and Fuqua prompted me to set up a lighting studio and play with dark-field lighting of glass, giving me the last two photos. The last photo - “Kelp Bulb,” part of a kelp sculpture - was a surprise, I’d been concentrating so much on lighting that I didn’t really notice the way the reflection makes it look like breasts until I was processing the photos, then it became overwhelmingly obvious.

April 2020: Building a Better Bong by John Ritchie

A lot has happened since the last Phlog article I published at the beginning of January. Of course the biggest thing has been the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted the whole world. But that’s not what this phlog is about.

My wife and I made a trip to Ethiopia in January. It was a great trip and I took thousands of photographs, which sidelined me for a month and a half after returning. I put up a separate set of web pages with a narrative and photos. That’s also not what this phlog is about.

Today I’m highlighting photographs I made in early January at Noble Glass in Eugene. I connected with Noble Glass via my friend Ben Silver, who created a fantastic glass sculpture for me. During one of the sessions I sat in on, Noble Glass was in bong making production mode, blowing and creating fantastic handmade glass bongs in an assembly line. These photographs track the creation of one of these glass masterpieces. Watching glass being worked is a great experience, and watching these six guys work together to crank out production glassware was pretty special.

Clicking on the photographs expand them and provide explanatory text.