This week I am going to talk about one of my favorite forms of art: glassblowing. I don’t know about you, but I get so excited about art that is made by heat, like pottery, enameling, glassblowing, metal working, etc.; I just love all of it. Anyway, glassblowing for those who don’t exactly know is, it is a glass forming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble with the aid of a blowpipe, and then making things with it.
Last year when I was taking an art major class, we had an independent project that we had to do outside of class. This technically meant that we had to use time outside of class to do a self-guided project. However, I told my mom it meant that we had to do a project outside of the classroom in order to finally convince her to let me try glassblowing. I had wanted to try it for a while but it was expensive and the closest place to go was about 40 minutes away. Therefore, I thought that this project was the perfect opportunity to let me try glassblowing because once I told my mom that is was for school she was okay with me doing it. A few days later I signed up for a beginner’s class at Goggleworks in Reading, PA. A few weeks later I drove there and took the class; we were making birdfeeders, I was so excited! I decided to make my birdfeeder green because I thought that it would blend in with nature and birds would like that. After a bunch of steps (that I don’t exactly remember because it was an hour class that I took like a year ago) but it basically went like: heat up your glass in the fire-kiln thing to melt it. Then you had to keep spinning the pole because the glass on the end was molten and if you let it stay still for too long it would drop off the end of the pole. Next when it was nice and hot and symmetrical we rolled it into the little colored glass chips to make our bird feeder the color that we wanted. Next we put it back into the fire and melted and spun it again. Then we took it out of the fire and had to blow down the tube to make a big bubble at the end (this is the glass blowing part). Then we poked a hole in the end of the bubble and stretched it out so that it was the flat bottom of the birdfeeder where the food would sit. Meanwhile, the glass still above the bubble got stretched out (it had been out of the heat long enough that it was hard enough that it wasn’t drooping anywhere). Then, we shaped the bottom of it to the way we thought it would look nice and pretty. By that time it was cold enough (but still really hot) that we could break it off of the pole. Finally the guy who was teaching the class took some hot glass and put it on top of the bird feeder in a little loop so that we could hang it. Then, we put our birdfeeders into this place that was like an oven so that our glass could slowly cool so as not to crack and we could pick it up a few days later. Overall the experience was so fun and I really wanted to do it again but it was expensive and all of the intermediate long term classes weren’t on the weekends but during the week when I had a lot to do after school. On a slightly more depressing note, I talked to the guy who ran the class after class because I wanted to ask him about his work and stuff. He ended up telling me about all of the cool art he makes but that not many people buy expensive glass-blown pieces so he has to teach these classes, but he still barely makes enough money for his family. This conversation made me realize that I didn’t want to be an artist. I was torn between doing art because it makes me happy and being a doctor because helping people makes me happy too. Then, I realized if I was an artist and could barely support my family I probably wouldn’t be happy so I realized that a doctor was the way to go, and I could do art in my free time. It was a little more complicated of a decision than that but that is a pretty good idea of what I was thinking. I guess that is why the time I went glassblowing is so important to me, and I am glad I could share it with some of my classmates. Also, sorry that this post was not as educational as my posts normally are, because I don’t know any of the correct glassblowing terms. Here is a picture of my finished birdfeeder: