Glass Blowing At Neusole

   When I mentioned I that glass blowing could be habit forming a fellow artist commented "Not enough time for the the money." Nicole my instructor said she had started by taking a brief college course and then proceeded to fill her school schedule with any glass blowing she could.

    It is a decisive art where movements must be made with a perfect balance of skill and force. Perhaps a result of duel nature of glass as a substance both transparent and impenetrable. Heat had long been a source of anxiety and a lack of knowledge has always been a call for further exploration for me both in my art and life. Still, I was more than happy to let my instructor reach into the large furnace where the molten glass was held. The heat was bold and forth rite unlike the smothering heat of the Ohio valley summer outside. The interior of the furnace glowed a rich orange and magenta.

     I watched carefully as Nicole kept the lump of glass at the end of the metal pipe in careful rotation. The color of the glass slowly shifted from Lemon yellow to gold honey. She handed it to me and I was greeted with my new charge of keeping the glass on the the end of the rod. It had the tendency to try and slip out of shape. If it was not in a consistent rotation it would invariably attempt to slink towards the floor. I was directed to a second smaller furnace with an opening that I was informed had a slightly lower heat for reheating the glass if it got to hard. When my instructor deemed it ready I was directed to a metal table to begin the blowing. The pipes we were using were hollow at the center and had a mouth piece at the far end for this part of the process.

     She tried to to tell me it was like blowing on food. I struggled in red faced frustration for a minute trying to force a bubble into a substance with the consistency of taffy. I thought a more apt metaphor was playing a musical instrument. In my case the flute. My efforts yielded a bubble the size of an m&m and a great deal of respect for the people who made this part seem so easy.
    Once the bubble was inserted into the glass we moved to a bench with long supports attached to it's arms. One of us blew into the glass and the other took the pair of glass tongs and began to form the neck of the orb. Air expanded the amber walls of the bubble and the walls gotten thinner and thinner until they were almost perfectly translucent. My hands tensed at the task of pinching the unruly glass into shape. The heat seared the soft insides of my arms and small bursts of flame shot from the place where the tongs were in contact with the glass.

     When the body of the ornament was formed Nicole took over again and got to watch again in intent wonderment. She took the tongs I had just been using and dipped them in the water bowl used to cool the hot instruments. She touched the neck of the ornament with a drop of water and let it sizzle through the surface of the glass. Once a hole was formed to free the ornament from the pipe a second lump of glass was added to base of the hole. She then plunked and twisted the glass into a small hook.

       Upon completion the ornament was placed in an small heating unit to cool it slowly. Like every thing else with the glass a delicate equilibrium had to be observed.

     Communication was critical for every part of the process. I had to be mindful of what was being said and what my body was doing in response to her. Art for me had been such a solitary endeavor that bringing another person into the equation was both liberating and humbling. If there was a mishap like the glass cooling to quickly we both shrugged and tried a second time. Glass cooled to quickly and shattered. We scrapped the pieces into the collection bin and tried again. One ornament developed an asymmetrical bulge and we decided it was a distinctive imperfection. All was transitory and some how greater than either of us involved.