My oh my, The Mind Benders class I taught at FOCI wrapped up last night and what a wonderful whirlwind! I had the most amazing students who time and time again, were so hungry for knowledge, and wanted to learn more and more.
We learned to bend neon, make digital vector patterns, blink the neon with programmable microcontrollers and I even showed them how they could work with a glassblower to pull their own tubes.

My TA, @dinkytown was incredible- typically fulfilling the class's needs before I even asked her. I am thrilled that she learned a bunch in the class.
It was able to train two FOCI staff members to bombard (the dangerous process of purifying and putting gas in the tubes)- so now FOCI neon renters can get their tubes filled quicker.
The artist talk and demo I gave was well attended, and now FOCI has the doodle I made during the demo in their permanent collection.

Rebecca. By Daphne Du Maurier.

You are a young bride, of a different age and class from your new husband, and you find that his perfect, but dead ex-wife gets into everyone’s heads, including yours, ruining your new perfect life; then things get worse.

3 of 5 library cats .

@bookstodon #bookstodon #reading #books #marriage #class

Class is funny. One of the guys I play DnD with grew up on the other side of Cleveland from me.

We were sitting down and getting out notebooks and dice and I said "Hey, I was in Parma last weekend for a wedding. Right behind the old Armory." He goes "Oh, yeah."

The other two guys thought I went to Italy for the weekend.

Delighted to see a new book review on ‘The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia’ by Dr Mitja Stefancic just out in the 50th Anniversary issue of Network, the magazine of the British Sociological Association. Link to the full issue https://www.britsoc.co.uk/publications/network/network-current-issue/

@bookstodon
@sociology
@anthropology

Wrapped up all my commercial projects and final mirror world class, along with working on a new hanging chandelier sculpture with @alifeeney . The stick sculpture runs a #webcam server with GPIO controls so that anyone can view and interact with the sculpture from anywhere in the world.

It's website is down currently, as it's the sculpture is my minivan with me as I drive cross country. I visited some old friends in Corning last night, and am staying with an exceptional neon bender who bent a lot of work for Bruce Nauman in Chicago tonight.

My show, "Embracing Fallibility" opens along with my "Mind Benders" class at FOCI, in Minneapolis in a few days. Until then, I will be driving a bunch listening to radio drama's and chatting with students as a visiting artist at UW Madison.

Oh it's hectic, but it's nice to be on the road again - the voice an stories of Joe Frank keeping me company

I made my Mirror World class some bling out of 6mm glass tubulation. We can all laugh and be shiny together now. I actually didn't make myself one though. I guess I can make it tomorrow. I bent it to my handwriting in cursive with a 6mm sharpie :) . lol happened to be an easy an fun 3 letter phrase that flows nicely.

I sure do love mirroring a bunch of little tubes simultaneously :)

I gotta get a few feet of bright colored silicone or latex tubing. They are meant to be necklaces. They may be fragile during hugs.

Its been nice to teach these classes with Kacie Lees in the evenings and decompress from the hectic week finishing up neon work things ahead of an upcoming midwest road trip! Class and show in Minneapolis and visiting artist 2 day at UW, Madison.

We mirrored so much. Its so fun seeing people get it- and run wild with it.

"The new sentencing guidelines are the latest demonstration of distorted thinking about social disadvantage, and of the invisibility of class in many discussions. The treatment of working-class people is an expression of “two-tier” justice so deeply embedded in our history and institutions that it is barely noticed"
Kenan Malik

#Justice #Law #UKLaw #Class #Discrimination
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/16/noise-uk-two-tier-justice-system-silence-class

Show coming up + commercial neon + 3 upcoming classes = oh dear I am busy.

I did make a crackle tube this week with Kacie Lees- such fun! We decided to make the upcoming crackle tube class on April 19th an 20th a Bring Your Own Glass - BYOG - to smash and put inside a tube :). The recycled aspect makes the final tube more interesting and its also just fun to smash glass every now an then. With a community of students and glass professionals- Urbanglass has some really interesting glass trash to smash.

I made a few gifs of the crackle tubes as photos can't really capture the frenetic nature of a tight fill. I also added a gif of Kacie attaching an electrode on the topo chico seltzer bottle krypton crackle tube I made. The topo bottles I smashed had enameled labels so they hold up to the heating needed to purify the glass.

The other day my friend Kacie Lees and I ran another one of our BYOG mirror parties at Urbanglass. I felt kinda bad sending Ari the registrar out for a last minute paper cup run for mixing chemicals, but my heart was warmed when she hung the glass chain we mirrored for her on her desk.

Speaking of Mirrors, you can catch, Your Magic Is Real at Urbanglass in downtown Brooklyn. It has lots of mirrors in it- and you will need to work with a friend and hold hands to activate it.

If you REALLY have FOMO, Kacie and I are teaching a more intense mirror and neon class in a few weeks. Mirror World will run in the evenings at Urbanglass- March 25th-29th and is a neon AND mirror class. I attached a photo of a rainbow celebration sculpture I made at a show Kacie curated on Governors Island back in 2019. I really gotta return to that silver rainbow body of work.

https://urbanglass.org/classes/detail/mirrorworld-imperfect-practices-in-neon-reflection-with-kacie-lees-james-akers

Teaching my first course at Hugo House, an 8-week playwriting class that is going to be *ridiculously* fun and cool.

In person in Seattle's Capitol Hill, masks required.

Partial scholarship applications open tomorrow.

https://hugohouse.org/product/breaking-from-realism-stories-for-the-stage/

Last day to register for my new class, Know Your Competition. Takes place TOMORROW, Thursday, March 6, from 7-9 p.m., on Zoom.

Find out more in today's newsletter.

https://mailchi.mp/02a06654647b/last-day-to-register-know-your-competition?e=03364c3b2e

Journalist Calls Out #Conservatives for Going #WOKE (w/ #ThomasChattertonWilliams)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6WiGkslwz4

Just a friendly reminder for anyone who needs to hear it.

If you use a #bank, instead of a #CreditUnion, you are an active supporter of the #capitalist #class.

Banks make money off your money.
Credit unions give it back to you.

So, please.

Go open an account at a credit union and tell the #banksters to go jump off a pier.

The domination of the arts by the private school & Oxbridge educated middle classes has squeezed out working class creatives, much to the detriment of the UK's overall culture creativity....

But, its hardly recent, and its not a problem where there is a silver bullet; it requires long-term strategic thinking, and we can't mange that for the environment there is no way we'll get there for the arts....

#class #art #music

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/feb/21/working-class-creatives-dont-stand-a-chance-in-uk-today-leading-artists-warn

Publication alert

In "Work–family conflict: A classed phenomenon?" Berglind Hólm Ragnarsdóttir, Valgerður S Bjarnadóttir, Andrea Hjálmsdóttir, and Anna Soffía Víkingsdóttir show that both work to family and family to work conflict are associated with anxiety and depression among women and that these relationships are more pronounced among working class women.

https://doi.org/10.1177/00016993241311150

#sociology #socialsciences #worklife #class #depression #AcademicJournals

@sociology @academicchatter

An interview with me about ‘The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia’ in Italian by Mitja Stefancic. / Intervista con me sul libro mio per i miei amici e colleghi che parlano italiano.

https://www.meridiano13.it/alexandrina-vanke-russia-intervista/

@bookstodon
@sociology
@anthropology
#poverty #class #inequality #russia

Coming March 6!

In this interactive workshop, we will look at resources for locating comparable and competing titles, discuss the difference between comparable books and competing ones and how each can help you, analyze comparable and competing titles, and look at how to use that information to inform your writing as well as in your proposal or query letter.

Register at https://writer.org/event/know-your-competition/