Glass Farmers Market at the Corning Museum of Glass, 10/08/2011, Q. CassettiPicture perfect day. Alex was up early to get on a gorgeous bus to take him to Ohio to ride the roller coasters, “enjoy” the buffet breakfasts, and hang with the bros. He had a nice evening with friends back from college—a catch up with the new freshmen and all they are experiencing, missing, confounded by. Great to hear it a year or so in advance.

Rob and I tootled down to the Corning Museum of Glass’ Columbus Day spectacular, the Glass Farmers Market. It was a gorgeous drive with the color finally beginning to pop. There was grape in the air…in the warm, humid air that made it even more sweet. A lovely drive with pumpkins, yard sales,and produce..the last of the tomatoes and the beginnings of beets, potatoes and carrots.

Yes, The Corning Museum had all sorts of gourds and pumpkins in glass available to take home (and they do not stink, mold or rot). I bought a few for friends and a tortoise shell one for me. I have a little collection of them…and its fun to add to the grouping. Many of mine are clear (from the Studio Sale) but I have some orange ones, a green one…and now brown. I love this one so much, I could see doing tortoise shell ones entirely. I fess up, I LOOOVE tortoise shell. I cannot say why, but the aesthetic is one; the history of how we have tortoise shell is two, and just how it works…for me. It was fun mixing it up with my museum friends, seeing the enormous numbers of asian and indian tourists (and how smoothly the whole thing was)—An amazing hat trick that these lovely people seem to do with great humor and aplomb. They had great wooden boxes filled with apples (as a give away) inspired by the Tully Cross Country event we attend every year and how the great treat are the free apples. The crowd loved it (Tully and today).

On the way back, we stopped at the Seneca Lake microbrewery, Two Goats and were impressed by the packed deck, the piles of cool people and the tasty brew offered. We ran into some old Corning chums full of good energy having come back from helping with a grape harvest for a friend.

And now, lakeside…the cats scamper. There is manure thick on the air….but the rosy sun is setting on the lake and its not quite 7. And the year rolls by.

Twinnies, Q. Cassetti, 2011, pen and inkSunny with a chance of spring. Lawnmowers mowing. A Zillion chicken bbqs roadside this morning. Alex up and early for the SATs…girded for battle with his batteries, pencils, pencil sharpener and peanut butter sandwich. We had breakfast and more coffee at Ithaca Bakery (always a big treat to see what yummy they have concocted for all of us using the best of local, local, local). After buying a few loaves of bread and a dog biscuit for our black friend in the car (Shady Grove) we cruised up to Pesco’s Barber Shop for Rob to get a haircut and catch up with Ed, Brian and Mr. Pesco.

It is a bit stunning that our boy is taking his SATs and that senior year and colleges are not much far behind. What happened to the 17 years of time we have had together? It is shocking.

It was a late night last night working on the chicken boy. Need to get the stripes in his shirt and a delineation of his short short crewcut a la tigertooth versus the workpaths brought into illustrator from photoshop. Long work…but I am making a bunch of brushes that may make the work convincing, a little easier to do, and a bit more like drawing than vectorizing. The recent job (to be announced soon!) had hair that needed to do more than what my hands could do given the time constraints…so brushes were made for that.

Brushes here> here> here> here>

Brushes are the max. I had an illustration for the Museum for a show they are mounting on Mt. Washington and Pairpoint Glass. The trick to this illustration is that it is a pointillist illo to reflect the peachblow decorated glass (see to the left) that is going to be cut out of signage vinyl and applied to a 72” x 72” glass panel. So, I drew the shapes with vectors and manipulated the shapes to make them nice and regular. I then applied a dot pattern to the line and released them to stand alone objects. Then, once each petal was complete, I saved them as symbol files, and then rotated them behind the center so though there were a lot of dots, there were not a total zillion to do. I used the blob brush sized to match the dots that make up the brush. So the prompt from Nancy Stahl and Jean Tuttle at Hartford to learn more about brushes truly have merged with my work.

Speaking of Hartford, I was thinking this morning that I should review my business plan and revise it. I first wrote it for Syracuse, updated in 09 for Hartford….and it feels like its time again. Funny…but true.

Gotta go…a linear crew cut awaits.