Play Date

When I was a child, I played with my neighbourhood friends. Now-a-days, parents arrange playdates. Yesterday I discovered the pleasures of the playdate.

Lee Brady, my mentor, and I got together to play. I travelled out to Lee's studio which is located just west of Saskatoon, nestled into a well treed acreage. Unfortunately, access to his place is by grid road. It had been raining all day which meant greasy, slippery roads and I am not a happy camper driving a grid road at the best of times. With a slow, white knuckled crawl, I traversed the 7.5 kms of gravelled road to his place. I had arrived!

The studio is a well organized, comfortable space with good natural light. The windows, unsurprisingly, sport beautiful examples of Lee's stained glass work. Fused pieces graced the table tops. With a cup of Earl Grey to calm my taut nerves, we began to talk about glass. How to cut it, equipment that I would need, the best type of controller, potential design possibilities, fusing firing schedules, etc... We decided that I would spend the next month practicing cutting glass and playing with fusing.

The Glass Workers Guild was putting in a group order so we spent some time looking at glass. We picked out a few simple panes of glass that we thought would work well with the smoked vessels. We also came across pate de verre which I really liked the look of. As it turned out, Lee has been wanting to try it out as well. He has the paste on hand so we ordered some of the necessary frits.

Left: Pate de verre bowl by Cyrille Morin

As Dr. Oz recommends taking 3 things away from his show, from the day I took: a box of glass scraps and a sheet of glass to play with; the realization that glass is way more expensive than clay and that I have to get a controller!

I am grateful for the pure joy of play.