First – the Helios Road Trip.  We had two vans full of Helios friends who ventured to Texas A&M (about two hours from Austin) to see the university’s world class English cameo collection and the newer American pressed glass exhibit.

The excitement started when we learned that you should definitely not drive your van into a parking garage with a 6 foot 9 inch limit when the van says on the dashboard that it is 7 feet 6 inches tall.  The van got sort of stuck (the way that bowl got sort of stuck the time I forgot the kiln wash).  

[UT students and alumni insert your own Aggie joke here...]

Not to worry since kilnformers are ever the problem solvers.  Everyone in the un-stuck van piled into the stuck van.  The extra weight lowered the van enough to drive it out – teaching us a very important lesson:  We eat way too many donuts at Helios.  Heaven help us now that a frozen yogurt place has opened two doors down.  Maybe we should make the kilns treadmill-powered.

The extra delay caused by the vandemonium, though, made a few in the group anxious to get to our first stop:

Only then were we off to the MCS Forsyth Center Gallery to see the glass.

The gallery is located in the student union building, which is kind of a strange place for a collection that boasts art of this caliber:

But I’m blogging ahead of myself.

One of the unique parts of the A&M exhibit is the display of in-progress cameo work.  The docent explained that the collector Bill Runyon (who would eventually donate the art to A&M) flew to England when Thomas Webb & Sons was closing their business.  He purchased everything he could – including a number of unfinished pieces.  Several of these, like this one, are now on display:

Seeing the partially finished work really humanized the art, reminding me that real people sat down in front of their work benches to create this stuff.

They have a good “Story of Cameo” display across several cases.  I photographed all the narrative and have posted it here.  (The placards had to be photographed at odd angles and then “stretched” in Photoshop to make them more readable – apologies for the occasional distortion.)

We have a lot more photos (including many more finished pieces) in the Helios photo gallery.

So here’s the question I’m left with:  Does anyone invest so much of themselves into their work today – spending months or years on a single piece?