And now for a taste of things to come....

So, I've decided to go ahead and try entering A&S this spring.

I've been rather open, at least on Facebook, about my frustrations with deciding whether or not to enter. A great many people whom I respect, Laurels and skilled artisans, have strongly divergent opinions on A&S. I hear that it's such a great experience, that no one will see your work because everyone is too busy, that it's great feedback, that you never get a judge who knows your art well enough to give feedback, that you will do such networking, and that everyone is too busy to chit chat.

!?

I've come to the conclusion the only way I will know if it is worth while is to enter and find out for myself. I realize my art is not quite as common as, say, brewing or C&I, and that will make it a bit more of a challenge.

Still, I want to minimize my own impact on the experience. I want to do a full court press and really strive for a serious score here. That way I can't dither later on "Well... well... they didn't understand..." or whatever. I want to enter my ridiculous best effort. To that effort, I've got several battles going at once, with upcoming blog posts.

I want to cast my own lead cames, as many as possible.
I want to use period paint brushes for my painting
I want to use period glassworking tools (dividing iron, grozing iron)
I want to mix my own formulations when possible, measuring them in a period fashion.

The last one is especially important, since I have a second entry that is my silver stain research.

So, I've purchased some metal stock to make a dividing iron or two, to make a grozing iron. The supplies to make some brushes per Cennini. The molds to cast my own cames. A scale and some minerals for mixing tracing black (I hope!). A lead knife for cutting cames and some porphyry and a file for grinding and shaping.

I'll cover some of these activities in blog posts coming up!