e e e e e e e e e we have Corum one two three four five yeah we're good okay okay uh ladies and gentlemen members of the board I am calling this meeting of the oakal public library board to order uh before we get into the business of tonight's meeting I'd like to read our territorial acknowledgement the Oakville Public Library is situated on the treaty number 14 and treaty number 22 treaty lands and territory of the Miss sagas of the Credit First Nation and the traditional territory of the hon wot and the hoden shony Oakville is currently home to many different First Nations Inuit and8 people regardless of where we come from we are all interconnected through the land that we live on the water that we use and the air that we breathe we are committed to a continuous learning journey and allyship we seek to elevate indigenous voices and lived experiences to cultivate reconciliation in Oakville um Madam commit secretary do we have any regrets this afternoon or this evening um as far as I can see Mr Sal M and also I can see Bill Smith tonight okay and I don't know if we were expecting them or not um but uh anyway I do want to say a big thank you to everybody for taking uh time out of your busy schedules this summer um to join us for this uh impromptu meeting um I'm just trying to give me one second I have to shift back to my agenda from the uh um territor acknowledgement yeah we have a time sensitive matter this evening and so we'll going to go into close session in just a moment once I get us through the the public uh opening um uh we've had her regrets uh are there any Declarations of interest to report this evening I'm not seeing any uh we do not have uh do we have the minutes from our previous meeting to to approve no we we don't have so we step number four we do not have any consent items we don't not have any confidential consent items we do not have any discussion items we do however have 8.1 which is a a potential Library development proposal uh we need to go into a session Clos to the public for the purposes of the acquisition of land um and I look for a motion at this time uh to move us into that closed session thank you Ray thank you Rebecca all in favor and that is carried so give us a moment to go into close session are we publicly streaming this evening yeah I forgot [Laughter] let us go over cool I'm currently in my first of third of three years at uh at Sheridan so um it's uh kind of fun to be at that point because you have all great ideas and you're not limited by actual technology shared in college in the glass department they uh ran a bit of a competition amongst the students I submitted my design and uh then uh it got sent off um one of the things that I did before I submitted my design to the town was uh I had a talk with the uh actual professors to make sure that it was doable uh it'll look not unlike this uh the central piece will actually have a a wave in it it's got this Oak shape to it uh when you look down on it uh that'll it'll have a name plate on there and then uh when it comes out of the mold it looks not unlike this it'll be on the end of the pipe and we just break it off and uh we put that in to cool and then uh when it's done we saw it off right about here and uh uh polish the bottom so of course this one's been on already the the process of the thing uh kind of goes like um we start out with a spike of glass we form a uh we take a gather and we form it into kind of a conical piece of glass uh then we get a couple of what we call gathers We Gather glass on the end of the rod and then uh we um roll it in colored powder which is basically really finely crushed glass uh with color in it uh then we melt that in uh we roll it a few times just to make sure that it's got lots of solid color on it uh what we do is we take glass out of the furnace and we roll it in this uh colored powder the glass color and it sticks it'll stick to the glass the hot glass and then what we do is we take it over to the glory hole and uh we melt it in so the glory hole gets it nice and hot reheats the glass once it's melted in nice and neat I'll take it over to pole there and he'll uh stick it on a piece but I want to get it pretty hot so that I don't have a I get a nice uh small Trail for him um and then we apply that onto our Spike right so we have two colors we have uh we are have two guys doing it basically uh we'll we'll lay on one color then we'll flip it over and we'll lay on the other color so we have um the basically three rods of color together right because we don't want the glass to cool off too much after after he's done it uh after he's formed his spiky bit there um we don't want the glass to cool off too much and we don't have to reheat it over and over and over again uh so uh it it takes two of us with bit rods to form two colors just so that we can um put the one color on and then put the next color on uh and then go and and melt them together because if he put one color on and then he melts it together then we put another color on and he melts that in it could melt in uh in in kind of a weird blurred shape so if we put them both on at the same time then they melt at the same rate and that makes it uh much more crisp and nicer and so now uh we laid the color on the center bit and we just have to melt the color in so it becomes one smooth pattern because if there's any uh seams or anything where the color is when we plunge it into the middle it's going to catch bubbles there so that'll be little imperfections in the design um then we'll melt them together so that they're smooth uh without a lot of uh edges CU if we have a lot of edges we'll trap air and uh we didn't want a ton of extra bubbles or or special design of bubbles so we we wanted to make sure that um it's all nice and smooth then what we do is we extrude it out a bit uh lengthwise and give it a Twist nice slow twist and that gives it kind of that uh Helix of color in this you can see the uh Spike of color but it has this nice uh you know about two revolutions worth of color uh in a two revolutions a Twist in color um then it's we put a bit of a wave into it so it looks kind of more like a flame so this puts a nice TOS of that then we have a graphite mold mold that's made out of a big CH block of graphite uh it's a two-part mold so it splits in the half basically I'll uh get a ladle of glass out of the out of the furnace a big Ladle of glass and we pour that into the mold so it's full and then uh the the guy who forms the spike with a Twist in it um plunges that into the mold so we plunge it straight down into the mold we let it cool off a little bit so that it firms up because the glass is kind of like taffy you know um after a few minutes uh we wait a little bit longer and it seizes up a little bit more it's still flexible but not uh solid just doing this to cool the edges here set it up a bit then we pull it out of the mold and we flash it in the Gory hole and that's to uh even out the heat but also the flame in the glory hole will polish the one end so this this end here gets it's uh gets it smooth surface from what we call Flame polishing and so we have to let it completely set up before we put it away otherwise if we put it away too hot it's going to deform when it's in the analer the the internal heat in it will actually like deform the piece yeah SL the heat actually moves kind of slow and the internal heat will come out to the external part of the uh of the uh piece and then when it it's on the grading in the analer because the shelves are great uh it can actually take on the shape of the grading if it was too like if it becomes too hot and the analer itself isn't that hot even though it feels like it when you stick your head in there it feels like it go but uh uh it's not hot enough to actually deform but the interior of the piece could be three4 or 500° warmer than the actual exterior and then that soaks out to the outside yeah the anas are at like 500° and these furnaces are at like 2,000 something uh then we uh wait uh for a while to until it seizes up as soon as it stops moving then we'll break it off and we'll put it in the annealing oven now we're just creating a stress point in the glass if like this is a really cool part now so if I hit the glass all the vibrations are going to stop at that one point uh then it'll sit in the annealing oven for about 57 hours and that cools down slowly and what it does is it takes all the stress out of the glass uh because all the forming uh that we do uh causes uh inconsistent Heating in throughout the glass right and even though we're flashing it and doing all kinds of things to it uh to try and um even out the heat uh it'll still have inconsistent heat through it so what we do is we put in the kneeling oven and it bathes it in a in a 550° c for uh um a good 25 hours or so well everything in a glass shop is a team effort right uh so uh I came up with the design you know it's it's it's my design but that doesn't mean that I'm the one who carries things out I mean there are a number of artists like that they actually just design it and somebody else actually makes it in this case uh I you know I've got the skill set that allows me to help out right and then plus I get to supervise I get to look and see what's going on um the some other first year students uh that are there are Paul Vanden bigger uh he's the one who's putting the twist in the class he's uh quite good at it so uh we figured why you know why reinvent the wheel for one of us to figure that out and then there's Matt Crosby and that's helping out with everything else bringing beds opening the door um you need to have a hand uh in the glass shop because there's so many things that are really hot that you just can't do it you just can't hold a pipe in one hand and try and open the door with the other hand especially with this thing it weighs too much it's a good five 10 pounds of Glass on here um so uh it's important that I get Paul and Matt to help out each one will be unique there'll be it'll be at least slightly different no matter how no matter how much we wanted them to be exactly the same uh they'll always be a little bit different just because of uh how we did it the uh shape of this award it takes on the shape which is actually an oak leaf um so if you look at it it's Oak Leaf shaped right um and that's of course the oakville's own built-in iconography so what we did is we placed uh these spirals of color in the center to kind of um uh symbolize an inner flame so it's kind of like the inner fire that runs the runs the town so the um volunteers have you know are are this um uh energy that that runs the town and uh you don't get anything done without having a core of volunteers willing to do the things that need to be done so so I thought it was important to have that in there and it also kind of symbolizes the inter fire of the actual people uh who are volunteers cuz they have to have a certain Dedication that you don't see so it's it's kind of a dual meaning in that in that regard you've got uh the in fire of the town and the inter fire in the people who are the inter fire of the town the complexity of piece actually requires that uh you have a few extra hands especially when we got a two-part mold um one guy plunges the piece into the mold but he can't let go of the pipe uh to uh you know to to try and EXT ra it so um it takes another two people to try and separate the mold off of it cuz it can stick uh can get glass can get sticky at that temperature and it can get stuck in the mold and if we leave it in there too long it's just going to crack uh so we'll have ruined piece at that point so um because graphite really sucks the heat out of the uh out of the glass right it's like uh doing anything with it touching metal to the glass it'll suck the heat out of the glass so um it takes a couple of guys in there uh sometimes prying sometimes holding on to the physically holding on to the mold with a pair of gloves on um and then Paul can pull it up out of there once it's out uh once it's been freed uh it's important to pull up vertically so that we don't snap off some of the vertical striations in the mold like these uh these bits in here um that's you know a solid graphite in the mold and if we twist it we can snap them off off and then we've ruined the mold and we don't want to do that right uh it it it takes it takes a while to cut one of those things CU it's 6 in thick so uh it takes a it takes a few hands uh to get things uh get things done this is actually my my first time in Oakville it's a lot of it's a very nice town uh everybody's really nice here and it's uh almost it's almost surprising you know like how how nice everyone is in Oakville um and also how dedicated volunteers are and how important it is to actually um give them some kind of uh award to recognize what they do so uh it was it was great for me to to to sit down and go hey I get to I get to make this thing you know volunteers are basically selfless you know it's selfless service it's it's really giving to others I know for sure that they're not in doing their volunteer work um expecting to be recognized and to be thanked but it really is from my perspective an enormous honor to be able to make this year the awards that we'll actually recognize them and thank them for the work work that they do volunteers are the creatures that operate maybe between Earth and Sky and the keep a community together the community Spirit award for this year is a um an a functional box uh that was the request from the committee um I had proposed something that would go on the wall but it has um actually the the Box itself has a lot of the elements that I of my initial proposal um my initial proposal did include this um Waterfront line delineating uh the difference between the sky and the Earth so that has been retained in the Box the process of making the boxes is included working with two different clay bodies one that's very groggy a bit like having sand in it so it's very textured and the other one is a porcelain for the temperature that I'm firing to so the um the interesting part about these two clay bodies is that they're really quite different one is um very smooth and the other one is is this as I say more textured more more has more um almost like sand in it if you were to feel it with your fingers you you feel more of um um it's just different to tactile but they uh these two different Clays dry differently and they um they want to almost go in opposite directions so it's kind of interesting to work with them in a way that puts them together to come to the um the awards which are the boxes Vanessa has come a long way in terms of solving a lot of technical problems this year and and it's because she's really set for herself um some technical challenges working with different types of Clays and trying to combine them um together in a single piece a single object um as a ceramic artist that sort of sets you up for trouble and um Vanessa went in knowing that and she's been strategic in finding ways to sort of respond to those challenges and it's really boosted her her technical skills for sure this is why my little note here on that you know it's like yes you're going to get different sorts of responses by by working with um uh a hollow right where the glaze is going to collect and flow oh then when it's and that's not really representational of the kinds of forms that you're making where it's going to be you know there are little grooves small areas where it's going to be gathering together but generally speaking it's going to flow over and then this all I to do is it's not an elegant process there so see it there it's come out it's maybe even a bit distorted and then take this magic tool which I do not know if it has a name and help for the best so highly unsophisticated I'm cutting through this box so now I have two pieces one that's sort of showing the irregularities and the very um hopefully straight cut lid once those are put aside then I return to the same mold and using the grogged clay now with the Globs I use Globs I press them into the mold and at a certain point I then take the one of the halves of the porcelain uh piece flip it over into the mold and so what I'm visually looking at that point is I'll have some porcelain a clay some space and almost the Grog clay below and then I'll take more of the Grog clay fill it all in and what I'm doing there is um joining both the porcelin and the grogged clay and at that point I'm um really compressing the clay and forming the shape that's going to be in the inside and I that process takes a fair amount of time and then when that um piece when the mold has absorbed some of the moisture from the actual clay I flip that out and then I put together um overnight the what is now the base of the clay the base of the box and the lid I put them together without the lip and I actually dry them inverted uh with a lot of plastic to keep the moisture in so it's actually not drying it's just settling uh which is sort of an important part of this process I let that happen overnight and then the next day I will put the um the lip into the box the rim it's beautiful I like the way it's it's so soft by comparison scratch I know I know nal's got extremely high standards the at sharidan is really intense um it takes over your life in ways that you couldn't possibly predict and the more you learn about it the more you want to know the more you experiment and learn about the materials um you realize that it never ends and that there's always something new and exciting to do with Ceramics and I think that's what's amazing about Sheridan that it's a really transformative three years in order to create the um the lip of the box I will first either roll out a slab a bit like you do with pastry or I will pass it through our slab roller either way I've got um something that looks very much like pastry and then I um cut strips to the size that I want so I'm able to cut it and create the lip then I cut that lip at an angle and I soften it and I clean it up so what is lovely about this porcelain is that I can actually use the sponge fairly liberally on it I can smooth out um the lines where I want them The Last Detail that I put on a box is of course the writing so um I've chosen to write in um script on the boxes in there is an exhibition of um the graduating class of all Studios so includes textiles glass furniture and Ceramics of course so um that was very exciting it was a very very um it was very successful in the sense that we had people coming in there until about 10:00 at night so there were people on the sidewalk the galleries were full the work was great so a great opportunity as a student to start you know um exhibiting our work and showing our work and uh and that process is also very interesting because once your work becomes public there's a whole new dialogue that starts happening so I mean I think that dialogue Madam committee uh secretary I'm clerk I'm assuming that the motion coming uh do we have to actually have a motion coming out of this close s uh Mr chair I emailed to you the minutes that should be like uh how it looks like how it should be looked in the public session read the motion so you have that to me yes today I'm sorry did you say you just emailed it to me or you emailed no today around the 3:00 I believe 2:00 3:00 Jeff I can read it to you I see it on the um the public uh agenda if that helps why don't you just move the motion you can read it into the record then how's that sure okay okay let me know when we're ready please Madam committee clerk are we going to be getting a high sign when we're ready to go um we are good to go now e for um Mr chair we are live now and thank you um members of the board we are now uh back in a session open to the public and I will report that the Oakville Public Library board met in closed session for the purpose of a proposed or pending acquisition or disposition of land by the municipality or local board in relation to item 8.1 potential Library develop vment proposal August 22 2024 while we were in session we had a discussion about the matter and uh board member Andrew has a motion for us at this time thank you chair and all I move that the confidential report dated August 22nd 2024 from the CEO of the Oakville Public Library be actioned as directed okay can I get a second to that motion please thank you Ray all in favor that's carried okay um seeing that we've concluded our business I'll just put a call out for other business to come before or new business to come before the board there's no new business uh Tara could you just remind us when the next board meeting is please yes so we have a um special board meeting on September 5th which will be an engagement session with Perkins and will um and then our next regular board meeting is Wednesday September 18th at 7 p.m. both of which are in person in Council team thank you so we won't get to use our new backgrounds that you're sending us yes sadly okay members of the board that concludes our business for today I'll look for motion to adjourn thank you anybody have I not got anybody in the minutes today I think everybody's in the minutes so I'll take Meredith's motion seconded by who's going to give me the second uh Rebecca all in favor Ry you you're you're all over the minutes all in favor that's carried the meeting is adjourned thanks once again everybody enjoy the rest of your summer and we'll see you on the 5th of September