I really like taking the trolley, especially after a long day of work. I usually take the one on California St. It's not the fastest means of transportation but it's very relaxing. It's such a tourist thing but I have a Fast Pass so it doesn't cost me any more than taking the bus.  

I was on Post St. and California St. waiting for the trolley. I just had some pizza at this ok pizza place on Post. St. and Bush St. This is on my way to the Crucible in West Oakland. I could have taken the Bart at Powell but I didn't feel like walking so I decided to take the trolley to Embarcadero then hop on the Bart. 

Crucible Open House

I don't want this to seem like one big ad for the Crucible but I went to this Open House Art Show/Art Sale today and I was so amazed and impressed with a lot of the stuff there. I just wanted to share some of what I saw today on my blog.  

I think this is a combination of neon and EL wire. The neon part is in the center and the EL wire is along the edges. It's kind of hard to see this from the still picture but it also played music and the neon would pulse to the beat of the music. There's also some other neon projects in the background. 

I really liked the pattern on this glass table. I'm not exactly sure what the process was to make it but it's still very cool. 

This was an interesting piece of glassware. It's in the shape of a stalagmite or something. There's also a piece of welding sculpture to the right of it. 

Here's some glassware of shells and crabs still in the kiln. 

In front, there's a small prototype of the larger metal sculpture in the background. Last week, the orb part wasn't yet assembled to the top of the pyramid. The orb was just resting on the ground. I was kind of stumped about what it was for but then today it all made sense. 

I really like the plate in the center with the pears. I think it was made using this process called "slumping". That's were you fuse different pieces of glass on top of each other. I guess that the person who made this started off with a clear piece of glass and layered colored pieces of pear shaped glass on top and then fused it all together. 

These are some homemade stringed instruments. There was a woman there trying out the one on the far left. It sounded pretty good. While she was playing it, the instructor for the class said, "I see we have a cello player here." The middle one is suppose to be an erhu made from a broomhandle and a Peet's Coffee tea tin. The bow should be in the middle of the two strings but it's not. It still sounded ok though. You can see from the pegs that the one on the right is an 9 stringed instrument. The strings curved around that wood dowel sticking out of the bottom on the coffee can. The neck was made from a branch of a tree. 

Here's a lamp welded together from scraps of metal. It's kind of similar to the stuff that I was doing last week. 

Here's some more glassware. I really like the heart one.  

This is a very minimist guitar. I've heard that most people believe that the body of a guitar is the most important thing for producing the sound but actually, it's the neck of a guitar. One time, I was taking the Staten Island ferry and there was a guy on the ferry playing guitar on just a neck of a guitar with just pickups and no body. The body of the guitar just amplifies the sound. 

This is some tool casted using this green sand casting technique. Basically, you use sand and clay and water to make the mold for what you want to cast. It's an older technique to traditional bronze casting. The instructor for the class was giving a demo trying to make a cast of these bells that he was working on. The sand and clay are reuseable but it has to be remilled before it can be reused. I would really love to take this class but it's during the week and it would be hard for me to make it there because of work. The instructor told me that he's a guitar maker by trade and he also teaches the musical instrument making class. 

I'm not exactly sure what this is suppose to be but I think the person who made it casted each "cog" section then welded it together. That just a guess though. 

I guess if you donate over a certain amount of money to the Crucible, they cast a bronze plack for you. I thought the Ultimate Frisbee design for this one was cool.  

These wooden feet were part of the electronics/robotics classes. When you pressed this button, it would make a lot of noise and the feet would move up and down. It's hard to see that with a still picture. 

I really liked this one. I was looking carefully on how the person who made it did the dragon. It looks like he took a sheet of steel and then used an acetylene torch to cut out the dragon. The edges are a little rough but it gives it a really nice effect. I had a lot of fun last week cutting out shapes through these 1/2" slabs of iron with the acetylene. I would take forever to cut and the molten iron would just drip off the edges. 

The Crucible has a picture of this in their course catalog. I think one of the instructors made it. I think the it's based on this one pizza slice wedge then all of the wedges were casted and somehow joined together. 

Some glassware. 

The pieces of this chess set was made out of casted aluminium. 

I thought that this one was ok but I thought that the materials used were interesting though. It's like stuff mounted onto concrete. 

This is a welded sculpture of a bug. It's kind of similar to the stuff that I was doing last week. It's so much more cooler than my candleholder though. 

On Friday, I had lunch at this restaurant called Sai's Vietnamese Restaurant near the Transamerica building. It's kind of nice to find a place to a decent lunch at a reasonable price in the Embarcadero/Financial District. 

While walking around the Financial District during lunch, I found this really cool bronze statue.