Above: Conrad Williams demonstrates the “hypnotizing and alluring” process of creating glass art for a crowd.
THE IRONY OF GLASS ART: IT IS COOL to the touch, and often marked by its fragility. Yet those who create it must labor at the fiery mouth of furnaces only a few hundred degrees shy of molten lava, wielding weighty rods that must continually be turned, the glass painstakingly shaped, reheated and shaped again.
It is sweaty, arduous, potentially dangerous work. But for some who witness the process, it presents an irresistible attraction.
“You seldom meet a glassblower who got into it by walking into a gallery and, seeing a vase, said, “I need to make that,’” said Conrad Williams, owner of the Naples studio that bears his name. “You’ll meet people who say, ‘I went into a glassblowing studio and saw someone doing it, and I had to try it — and then I was hooked.’ That’s usually the case because it’s so hypnotizing and alluring.”
Glenn Novotny is another glassblower who became enthralled upon seeing a demonstration.
“Before they had the internet, before they had colored glass, I saw someone blowing glass when I was an airbrush artist on Clearwater Beach,” he said. “I talked the guy into teaching me. I’d pay him to make stuff in front of me and then I’d go home and duplicate it.”
At right: Two of Mr. Williams’ more Scandinavian style pieces.
When, at 69 years old, Mr. Novotny decided to trade out scuba diving for a less rigorous passion, he serendipitously found another artist blowing glass, bought the man’s equipment and went on to open Adventures in Glassblowing in Bonita Springs.
Unlike many other forms of art, glassblowing doesn’t lend itself to being self-taught. It requires hands-on experience with seasoned practitioners.
David Peterson II — who has his own studio, Breaking Glasswork, but is also the glass studio director at Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts in Lake Worth — had his interest piqued after seeing artists making smaller, more intricate objects with just a torch.
“I found out there was a school for glassblowing in New Orleans, and I decided to seek it out instead of just going straight into college from high school,” he said. “I was kind of a journeyman in that respect. As soon as I touched it and started to work with it, after the first year, I was hooked. It took me at least 2½ to 3 years before I was skilled enough just to work for someone else.”
The fundamental process of glassblowing has changed little since antiquity. COURTESY PHOTO / CONRAD WILLIAMS
Mr. Williams was born and raised in Naples, but was going to high school in Massachusetts when he attended a glassblowing demonstration about an hour from his home.
“At one point I looked at my watch and realized I had been there for a number of hours,” he recalled. “As a teenager, doing anything for that length of time is a feat unto itself.”
Later, he attended California College of the Arts in San Francisco to earn his degree in glassblowing.
From there, he was invited to an internship with Dale Chihuly and Benjamin Moore — the former being an internationally esteemed pioneer in modern studio glass art. (Mr. Chihuly has permanent exhibitions around the nation, including one at Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg.)
WILLIAMS
The concept of passing on the techniques from master to student is a common practice in every art form today. But there was a time in the history of glassblowing that it could get your family killed.
An offer they couldn’t refuse
Although it was in Syria during the first century B.C. that craftsmen first invented vessels of blown glass — which were commercially produced and exported to the Roman Empire — it wasn’t until hundreds of years later that glassblowing started to take the world by storm, and its hub was the Italian city of Venice.
By the seventh century, the city had established a growing glass industry. One of the Venetian artisans’ claims to fame was “cristallo” — clear, colorless glass (not “clear as crystal,” as it actually had a slight cast) — that seems, at least during the Middle Ages, to have been exclusive to Italy.
NOVOTNY
However, to prevent the entire city of Venice from going up in smoke, the operation was moved to the nearby island of Murano.
“It was a fire hazard, and they didn’t want to burn down Venice — really,” Mr. Williams said. “For centuries, they developed these techniques on how to work this material.”
To this day, visitors to Murano come to visit the Museo del Vetro, which tells the history of glass through the centuries, and to purchase locally crafted souvenirs.
But the works at Murano had a darker side — sort of like “Goodfellas” but with glass. The Venetian product was in such high demand in Europe, the glassworkers were forbidden to leave Venice. And what they learned in Venice, stayed in Venice.
“It became a closed circuit where you weren’t allowed to share the secrets,” Mr. Williams said. “If you left with the secrets, they would kill your family. It was serious. It was what they had to trade; no one else in the world had what they did. They would say, ‘Giving away your secrets is like selling your mother (presumably as a prostitute) on the streets.’ But some people did get away.”
Conrad Williams enjoys teaching his art to guests and visitors, from children to adults, at the Ritz-Carlton. COURTESY PHOTO / CONRAD WILLIAMS
Indeed, when money talked, the secrets walked. Venetian artisans, and their techniques, eventually found their way to France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany, England and Scandinavia.
“They went to the now Czech Republic and they went to Sweden, and created their own bases where they brought their techniques,” Mr. Williams said. “When you separate something, it’s going to evolve.”
After the art arrived in Sweden, the Scandinavians’ style that developed was one of more simple, refined shapes with clean lines, he explained.
“In Italy, they evolved into elaborate, very decorative gold and tiny details and facets and features and flowers and seahorses, ornamental, which you won’t see in the Scandinavian design,” Mr. Williams said. “In the Czech Republic, it’s a totally different form — like the difference between having a pastry chef and a line cook; they’re still in the food category, but it’s different worlds.”
Some of the rather medieval-looking tools of the glassblower’s trade. COURTESY PHOTO / DAVID PETERSON II / BREAKING GLASSWORK
Despite its evolution, the fundamental process of glassblowing is essentially the same as it was in antiquity. And that means using heat — a lot of it.
Into the glory hole
Glassblowing remains a primitive craft at heart. Painting, illustration, writing, music and photography have had the modern luxury of being digitized. But glass remains one of those arts that must be practiced the old-fashioned way — in this case, heated and made molten before it can be shaped. To do that, glassblowers labor at furnaces to raise the temperature of the raw material to between 1,600 and 1,900 degrees. Consider that the eruption temperature of the lava spewing from the Hawaiian volcano Kilauea was about 2,140 degrees Fahrenheit. Not too far off.
“Flightless Bird,” a sculpture of a spotted eagle ray by David Peterson II. “A lot of my work is driven by ocean life,” he said. COURTESY / DAVID PETERSON II / BREAKING GLASSWORK
“If you’re a welder for a living, you’ll probably pick it up quick because you’re not afraid of the flame and the heat,” Mr. Novotny said. “Glass takes forever to melt; it repels heat at all cost. It repels heat so much that they put it in your walls and call it insulation, so it keeps the heat from coming in your house.”
In Mr. Peterson’s case, the fiery aspect of glassblowing was one of its attractions.
“I think I was always especially enraptured with fire,” he quipped. “I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a pyromaniac, but if you used that term, I certainly wouldn’t take offense to it.”
Beyond that, glassblowing blinded him with science.
“The other thing that drew me to it was the thought of turning a fluid into a solid,” he added. “It piqued a lot of interest in me from school — science, engineering, chemistry — and it sort of incorporates a lot of these different things, like the chemistry of how to make the glass turn color, shaping a heated object that starts basically as a ball.”
Glenn Novotny, who used to own Seaside Creations, specializes in recreating sea life in glass. COURTESY PHOTO / GLENN NOVOTNY / ADVENTURES IN GLASSBLOWING
Glassblowing also requires a significant amount of patience. It’s not a static art like painting, where you put down a brush in mid stroke and return to the canvas later. Instead, it is a dynamic process dependent on temperature control, so that the glass doesn’t cool and thus harden. When that happens, the glass is often reheated in another furnace called a “glory hole” to be kept malleable.
It also requires constant motion, as some pieces must be continuously rotated so as not to lose their shape, since gravity alone will cause the heated glass to sag.
Mr. Novotny noted that the difference between a good camera lens and a bad one is determined in the annealing, a meticulous cooling process designed to eliminate the stress in the glass. To be successful, it must be done slowly and evenly.
“If there’s any stress in the glass, when you look through it, it’ll make the picture look foggy or blurry,” he said. “A telescope lens they use to look at Mars might take six months to make. They go down an eighth or a 16th of a degree a day, so that there’s no stress in it at all.”
DUKE
The intensity of shaping constantly heated glass, controlling the malleable nature of the material itself, the cautious aspect of dealing with such high temperatures — all have conspired to make glassblowing a poor choice for a solo practitioner.
Better together
There’s no doubt that modern studio glassblowing is a team sport.
“Because it’s such a team process, our glassblowers are working together on everything,” Mr. Peterson said. “If you want to become a professional, you start by taking some lessons, but then the best way to do it is to work for someone else and help them make their work. This can go on for years. I worked for Rick Eggert, who had a shop in Stuart, for 10 years as an assistant.”
Janie Duke’s technique, called pâte de verre, uses a kiln rather than a furnace. COURTESY PHOTO / JANIE DUKE / GLASS DUCHESS STUDIO
While in college, Mr. Williams donated his time on weekends to assisting a couple of his professors with their glassblowing projects. Having one of them trained in a Swedish technique, and the other trained in an Italian technique gave Mr. Williams diverse knowledge and experience in the different techniques. And that’s definitely something that looks good on a résumé.
“If you’re a professional artist, you want to hire a team that’s as professional as you can get,” Mr. Peterson said. “It’s going to take some time working together before you develop a routine.”
Such is the case with Mr. Williams. He creates his work with the help of an assistant who, when he was in school, couldn’t get into the elective he wanted, so he decided to give glassblowing a shot. He’s been with Mr. Williams for 15 years now — yet another happy casualty of the art’s siren song.
“If you were to decide to open up a glass studio, the first thing you’d probably be thinking of after you build it is who’s going to be my assistant or who can I hire to come work for me,” Mr. Peterson said, “because it’s not really done in a solo environment.”
A complicated sculpture might require a team of six to eight people, he added.
“That usually drives the price of the items — not just the amount of fuel to melt all this stuff, but then also the amount of hands that you have to have involved in order to make one piece.”
Glassblowing appealed to Janie Duke, owner of Glass Duchess Studio in Port Charlotte. She’d taken torch and glassblowing classes, but her particular situation did not lend itself to a team process. For starters, she couldn’t find enough glassblowers in her area of Charlotte County to be able to hire an apprentice to assist her.
“Blowing glass is a lot harder unless I make very small things,” she said. “The rod itself weighs 20, 30 pounds. Add to that 10 to 20 pounds of glass, and it’s super hot. So I decided blowing glass probably wasn’t going to be in my future.”
Fortunately, she found a technique that bypasses traditional methods.
A view to a kiln
In Seattle, Ms. Duke was visiting a friend who had a bowl she admired.
“I asked her where she got it and she said she made it,” Ms. Duke said. “She had a kiln in her basement, and she bought the glass and she had the molds. So we made a plate together.”
Upon her return home, Ms. Duke said, she was unable to find glass artists who created similar work. Undaunted, she searched the internet and discovered Bullseye Glass in Portland, Ore., which was offering an intensive 10-day class on a technique called pâte de verre — literally, “paste of glass” — that has a fragile, delicate, almost granular look, and allows for subtle gradations of color.
“I thought, ‘That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’” Ms. Duke said. “I’d never seen anything like it.”
She convinced her husband to let her attend the class, and then persuaded him to buy her a kiln.
“I can get some of the same results in a kiln as people get from blowing it,” she noted.
Ms. Duke also continued to take online classes with Bullseye, and has traveled to Portland and San Francisco to learn her craft. She had been working out of her garage, but — taking a hint from the Venetians, she moved to a separate studio.
“My husband’s Corvette was 6 feet away from a 1,700-degree kiln,” she said, “so we said, ‘We need to do something about that.’ ”
It wasn’t long before others took notice of her work, and started asking her about how she creates it. Once she felt proficient enough, it led to another aspect of her business — one that artists in all media have been doing for ages: teaching.
While Mr. Williams teaches smaller groups in his studio, he also found a unique way to attract larger audiences — ergo, more students — to his craft: a mobile studio.
“With that, I’ll go, during season, to the Ritz-Carlton several days a week to teach the guests staying, or just people visiting, there. Or we’ll go to events, weddings, parties. We did one at the botanical gardens. …
“If we go someplace, we can make a big platter or vase, and show people how it’s made, it’s a very hypnotizing procedure. where they wouldn’t normally have access to seeing it live. You can see anything on YouTube, but to see it live is very ephemeral.”
For Mr. Novotny, the teaching aspect of his business has become a marketing tool — and an alternative to the art’s current trend.
Glass as “high” art
One niche market has been offering a fast-growing opportunity for those who dabble in making smaller pieces, Mr. Novotny noted. But it’s not driven by the aesthetic appeal of glass so much as it’s need to supply the paraphernalia required by another popular market. In a word: cannabis.
“Most glassblowers, wherever they are, they sit somewhere in a garage and they make pieces and they sell them to head shops, or they might have an online Etsy store,” he said. “Glass Vegas in Las Vegas is a big show every year, where all the best artists from all over the world get together to see ‘functional glass art’ — and that pretty much means bongs.”
These can get rather creative, and he mentioned one he saw that was shaped like a naked woman, and which a user would suck the smoke out of her … umm … derrière.
“It’s THAT out there,” he said with an incredulous laugh.
Bongs form a niche market that has a special appeal to young artists, he added.
“It’s an ever-growing field, and any kid who wants to make some extra money, instead of watching TV, can go into their garage and be creative, and they can sell — they can sell it on the internet, right on Instagram, without even leaving the house. If I were a follower, I’d be making nothing but bongs and pipes — every kid wants to do that.”
Instead, Mr. Novotny uses his studio to attract the interest of tourists. Adventures in Glassblowing is even listed on TripAdvisor.
“Not every day is a beach day,” he said. “I’m an activity off the beach, which is good for windy and rainy days or inclement weather, or when it’s so damn hot. I get a lot of tourists and women’s groups that want to get together, grandmas who want to bring their grandkids.”
Mr. Novotny’s studio is next to his home, so when someone wants to book an appointment for a class, he’s already there. When the student leaves, he shuts the door. It’s not only convenient, it’s practical.
“I don’t have to be sitting there waiting for business,” he said, “and I don’t have to go make stuff and then try to sell it. They (the students) make it and they take it home with them. It’s a marketing technique that I put together that is working well.”
Mr. Novotny does spend time online — not as a purveyor, but as a student. As with most anything, the best teachers are those who remain perpetual apprentices to their craft. Mr. Novotny follows the work of more than 600 different glassblowers on Instagram, and combs YouTube and Facebook Live for new techniques he can adapt to his own work.
Ms. Duke is another artist who not only encourages her students to experiment with the craft, but who also takes that approach herself. And it has paid off.
“There was a lady in Naples who was in her 80s,” she recalled, “and she came up to me during a show, and said, ‘Honey, I have so much glass because I’ve been collecting it for 40 years.’ I thought she was going to say that she wasn’t going to buy anything, but she said, ‘Looking at this, I have never seen this technique. My husband’s going to kill me because I don’t have room for this — but I will find room for these two pieces.’ Then she thanked me for getting her excited again about glass.” ¦
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