Encapsulation on a Saturday Afternoon

I thought it would be fun to show the encapsulation process through photos. I work Monday-Wednesday/Thursday for another hotshop making large scale blown & sculptural pieces. The rest of the week along with evenings, I work in my own studio making paperweights. Sunday is usually encapsulation day, and here is just one weight I finished this past weekend. This past weekend with Hurricane Sandy coming, I knew I needed to encapsulate earlier, as the paperweights need about 40 hours in the annealer and I could not risk a power outage. Due to this planning, I was able to finish the annealing schedule before the storm hit on Monday. We were lucky as we only lost power for three hours and had minimal flooding in the studio. Take a look & enjoy!

L.H. Selman's Paperweight Weekend in Chicago

As October has just begun, we closed out September with a major bang! I traveled to Chicago with my wife for a quick, but very busy weekend for the L.H. Selman Paperweight Weekend. The weekend started Friday night with a visit to the Selman Gallery in the Fine Arts Building On Michigan Avenue. A cocktail party and ribbon cutting of the expanded Arthur Rubloff Collection followed. The exhibit was impressively exciting! The evening continued with a fabulous dinner at the Chicago Stock Exchange Room in the museum. Saturday's events were held at the Congress Plaza Hotel and featured an Artist's Fair & Artist Presentations. One of the highlights of the day was meeting so many new collectors from the mid-west and beyond. As a "new" paperweight artist located on the east coast, it was awesome to meet people from other parts of the country as well as seeing familiar faces from New England. I also loved seeing fellow glass artists and spending some time with them. It's always cool to see what everyone is up to with their new work. Later in the afternoon, I presented a slideshow of my work along with a short film that Katie made. A black tie event was held Saturday night at the Driehaus Museum. The Driehaus Museum is a mansion from the Guilded Age, and we were amazed by the exquisite detail of the furnishings and decor. After browsing the mansion during cocktail hour, dinner was served and we were able to get to know more collectors over dinner conversation. The evening culminated with dessert and a private viewing of rare and beautiful paperweights presented by L.H. Selman. Sunday morning, we said our goodbyes at the Selman Gallery over a light breakfast and flew back to Massachusetts. Thank you to the Clark family and the Selman employees for putting on an amazing series of events. It was a phenomenal weekend!