Archive All Issues November 1973

ENGRAVING ON GLASS

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Featured in the November 1973 Issue of Arizona Highways

As director of Kitt Peak from 1960 to 1971, Dr. Nicholas U. Mayall was a major figure in the establishment of Kitt Peak and the new telescope which bears his name.
As director of Kitt Peak from 1960 to 1971, Dr. Nicholas U. Mayall was a major figure in the establishment of Kitt Peak and the new telescope which bears his name.
BY: REG MANNING,MARY ELIZABETH BURKE,W. R. BOND

I had done a number of pieces with the stone wheels when Mr. Cummings learned of the death of an old friend, Edward J. Palme, a copper wheel engraver who had worked on Steuben glass. Mr. Palme's beautiful old copper wheel lathe had been passed down through five generations of his family in old Vienna. Through Joe Cummings, I was able to purchase the old lathe from Mrs. Palme, complete with its assortment of copper wheel tools. I put the machine back in order, attached a new motor, and plunged into the task of teaching myself the art of copper wheel engraving.I completed my first copper wheel intaglio early in May, 1969. The same month, on my way to a cartoonists' convention, I visited Steuben glass works in Corning, N.Y. Company officials let me interview the engravers, the world's greatest, and watch them at work. I soaked up knowledge like a sponge. One engraver, Peter Schelling was particularly helpful. Since that time, Felix Moslein, a great engraver, who got his training at Lobmeyrs, in Vienna, before coming to Long Beach, Calif., has also been extremely helpful in explaining the proper techniques of copper wheel artistry. Without Cummings, Schelling and Moslein I could never have accomplished anything in this rare and difficult art.

My one-man show is being held at Phoenix Art Museum November 21-January 20, in the Helen Wells Decorative Arts Gallery. It's being called "Desert in Crystal."

SOLILOQUY WHILE WATCHING A SUNSET

Arizona has the most beautiful sunsets in all the world!

The solar system encompassing our beautiful planet earth was born to that Sun. Centuries ago gases and dust were pushed together by the pressure of starlight. In their interfusing they established a gravitational field. Various sized masses of matter took shape in this glorious creation. A huge ball of gas was formed the ball of gas grew and grew it became hotter and hotter and then under enormous pressure it exploded and began to glow. sending out heat and light. A new star was born our sun and traveling around it in widely spaced orbits were our nine planets.One of these nine planets became the possessor of a ravishing beauty oceans, mountains, canyons, sculptured ice, plant life, and was "Gods Chosen Child" because, of all the planets, it was so perfectly situated in the solar system as to be able to bask in the beautiful light of the sun from whence it came. (The epitomy of which we here in Arizona are blessed with.) It possessed an atmospheric condition supporting life, a natural order (seasons) making it possible to sustain that life indefinitely, and then the greatest miracle of all an intellect was instilled in an elevated concept of that life. In this perfectly beautiful setting, a Reasoning Power determined "Win or Lose, I am going to introduce the element of free will into the thinking mechanism of the man on this planet. What will he do with this irrevocable law forcing him to ultimately determine his own destiny? And yet, I will be kind; I will establish universal truths, axioms, laws to assist in making his determination in the process of his evolution."

Since this inception of our universe, fixed in time by all current scientific knowledge as approximately five billion years ago, the progression of scientific evidence questioning and determining the phenomena of nature, visible and invisible, within the atom and in outer space, can be made concise with one ultimate truth. This truth is a statement in physical law known as the "Principle of Uncertainty." The law irrevocably proves that physical events cannot be determined, and the future cannot be predicted, for in the process of attempting to establish irrevocable determination, a change has occurred thereby once again establishing the "Law of Uncertainty" as our governing law.

In the absence of "predetermination" we may logically conclude that the most fundamental law of nature is "free will" and in our aura of time this is a representative of our unknown and unseen God. Free will is motivated and governed by the soul. Here we must interject the axiom that the only manifestation we may ever outwardly express of that which is in our hearts and our souls is thru our minds. There is no other avenue thru which it may be expressed.

Not without Reason did a Supreme Wisdom establish the prayer "thy WILL be done on earth as it is in heaven" in the heart of a man so profound as to shake the world and establish himself as the pillar of a way of thinking which has governed a country exceeding all others in its technology and advancement into space.

Mankind's brilliance has discovered the missing symbol in the equation essential to continued existence!

Today, in 1973, man is writing his own prayer, as that same Wisdom intended him to do. "Thy WILL be done in the heavens as many of us have tried to do here on earth"; for when we raise our eyes, hearts, souls our minds to the heavens we are epitomizing all prayer, all Godliness, for have we not been taught by the wisdom of all centuries that therein lies the key to the salvation of humanity and the universe?

We need not die to walk those "golden stairs" open the "pearl gates" to Heaven. We need only an elevated state of thinking something we may all possess right here on earth, as we wait and as we build our space ships, labs, telescopes, observatories to project our minds further out into space to meet...?

As you gaze upon the phenomenon of an Arizona sunset, bear in mind that in its splendor a great truth is being revealed to you.