Thursday night, I spent the evening at the Corning Museum of Glass event 2300°: Ornament-A-Palooza. Whenever you hear about a 2300° event at CMOG, it is an event that is free and open to the public (there’s another coming in December). A ton of people show up and at this particular one, the theme was Christmas ornaments and it was a great kick-off event to the holiday season.
The first thing I did when I got there was eat. Free food is always a good start to an evening right? Well the photo you see here was the food line for the paid food ($4 or free to museum members). Me being hungry, I must have overlooked any signs and I accidentally got into the paid food line. After handing back my warm plate of un-free food because I didn’t have a ticket, I headed over to the free food section. The line was longer, but the food was still good, if not more of what I was looking for. Can you tell I like food? Two paragraphs in and it’s all I’ve talked about so far… I’ll move on.
After sufficiently stuffing my face with pepperoni, my girlfriend and I went on to watch one of the ornament making shows. It was really neat (see the very top photo). There were three flameworkers making glass ornaments throughout the museum and we sat at one for about 20-30 min resting our legs. There was a raffle for the ornaments once they cooled, which everyone around me, but not me, won.
Saddened that I didn’t win an ornament, I went on the prowl for the chocolate eclairs which I noted earlier on a sign as being one of the many free food items at the event. If they existed, they were very well hidden. I did however end up browsing the shop (where I discovered a short line for roasted garlic soup… did I mention they had free food here?) I hadn’t explored the shop before, but they had a great variety of things from kitchenware to artsy decoration pieces. Good gift ideas. However, being a thrifty and knowledgeable shopper, I’m aware that CMOG will be having a big sale after Thanksgiving and a studio glass sale Dec 6th and 7th. I also really liked… hey did someone just walk by me holding an eclair?
I’m a video guy. My degree is in digital filmmaking. So I took notice of the A/V people with their Cannon cameras intercutting scenes from all around the event with live footage and music from the Horse Flies. So if you were say… following an older couple because they had two eclairs, you could still see the entire event going on around you via one of the many screens displayed throughout the museum. They did a great job with the video production and it really added a lot to the atmosphere.
My favorite part of the night was the Hot Glass Show with special guest artist Christian Thirion. As he created Christmas themed pieces, a band called Nuages played on a raised platform next to the hot glass stage. It was a really cool setup. The singer of the band was singing in French, and I assume the artist himself was French.
I had a great time at this event. I look forward to the 2300°: Winter Solstice event on Dec. 8th.
Myles started UrbanCorning.com and Facebook.com/UrbanCorning in 2008, and ran it until May of 2014. Myles moved to Tacoma, WA and his new website can be found at: www.tacomatose.com.