T-Rex
04-13-2012, 07:15 PM
Hey everyone,
I've been hanging around here awhile now, chiming in where I see fit - but I've never actually introduced myself.
My name's Trevor, I'm a geologist and glassblower, although I'm working on switching the order of those two titles.
After graduating as a geological engineer, I worked for a year doing exploration in northern Albania (for a Canadian company) until the resources & base metals market fell out in 2008. I took that as an opportunity to do what I always wanted and get an education in glassworking.
I attended Vetroricerca, a technical glass-working school in northern Italy. I was lucky enough to find it online while still in university and I emailed the director every few months for years to make sure when my time came I would get in. The school is a very small operation, it's a two-year program that accepts only 15 students. It's also 100% free.
From 2009-2011 I had an amazing experience living in South Tyrol, a very unique Alpine region of Italy. The history is fascinating. Tyrol used to be a kingdom of it's own, but became what is now Austria and was eventually split between Italy and Austria after WWI. If you have time, read the wiki article on South Tyrol or Tyrol, so worth the time.
It was a blast, and needless to say I miss the food.
You can check out my work at
www.trevorwasik.com
I made the website as an exercise for school, it was created mainly to showcase the wide variety of techniques we learned: stained glass, pate de verre, casting, tiffany glass, painting on glass, boro-lampworking, beadmaking, traditional glassblowing, and quite a lot of industrial glass including a visit to a float-glass factory, chemistry lessons in the evenings, we even learned about boring European glass legislation. We were only briefly exposed to everything - every week it was a new topic, although we re-visited everything at least once. Still, a whirlwind tour of glass, it gave me an amazing base comprehension of the material.
Afterwards I came home and started glassblowing with some guys not too far from my hometown. They make mostly prodo pipes and I've been having a blast actually learning lampworking. I even was able to improve their setup with things I learned here on the forum. It wasn't easy convincing them though, no one likes the new guy coming in and changing things around haha.
For now I'm back to geology, but I'm trying to strike the right balance. I want to buy a house so I can set up my own shop. I'm actually really close and with luck there will be some big changes for me over the next year. Neeldess to say there will be pics once I get there!
Glad to be a part of this community. I can honestly say I would not have come even this far without you folks!
See you around,
Trevor
I've been hanging around here awhile now, chiming in where I see fit - but I've never actually introduced myself.
My name's Trevor, I'm a geologist and glassblower, although I'm working on switching the order of those two titles.
After graduating as a geological engineer, I worked for a year doing exploration in northern Albania (for a Canadian company) until the resources & base metals market fell out in 2008. I took that as an opportunity to do what I always wanted and get an education in glassworking.
I attended Vetroricerca, a technical glass-working school in northern Italy. I was lucky enough to find it online while still in university and I emailed the director every few months for years to make sure when my time came I would get in. The school is a very small operation, it's a two-year program that accepts only 15 students. It's also 100% free.
From 2009-2011 I had an amazing experience living in South Tyrol, a very unique Alpine region of Italy. The history is fascinating. Tyrol used to be a kingdom of it's own, but became what is now Austria and was eventually split between Italy and Austria after WWI. If you have time, read the wiki article on South Tyrol or Tyrol, so worth the time.
It was a blast, and needless to say I miss the food.
You can check out my work at
www.trevorwasik.com
I made the website as an exercise for school, it was created mainly to showcase the wide variety of techniques we learned: stained glass, pate de verre, casting, tiffany glass, painting on glass, boro-lampworking, beadmaking, traditional glassblowing, and quite a lot of industrial glass including a visit to a float-glass factory, chemistry lessons in the evenings, we even learned about boring European glass legislation. We were only briefly exposed to everything - every week it was a new topic, although we re-visited everything at least once. Still, a whirlwind tour of glass, it gave me an amazing base comprehension of the material.
Afterwards I came home and started glassblowing with some guys not too far from my hometown. They make mostly prodo pipes and I've been having a blast actually learning lampworking. I even was able to improve their setup with things I learned here on the forum. It wasn't easy convincing them though, no one likes the new guy coming in and changing things around haha.
For now I'm back to geology, but I'm trying to strike the right balance. I want to buy a house so I can set up my own shop. I'm actually really close and with luck there will be some big changes for me over the next year. Neeldess to say there will be pics once I get there!
Glad to be a part of this community. I can honestly say I would not have come even this far without you folks!
See you around,
Trevor