For over twenty years I worked at the Toledo Museum of Art, where in 1962 two workshops conducted by Harvey Littleton demonstrated that it was possible to build a glass furnace compact enough for an individual artist to use in his/her studio. This was the beginning of the worldwide Studio Glass Movement. Prior to those workshops glass had been made in a factory setting and an artist’s involvement was limited to designing pieces to be blown by a skilled craftsman.

In 2006 the museum opened the Glass Pavilion to house not only its world-renowned glass collection, but also a series of glass-making studios. From that point until I retired in 2014 my job had me shooting video of resident and visiting glass artists in both the hot shop and the flame working studio (see the Videos page for examples). As a result I had the chance to watch highly skilled glass artists up close as they worked. When I retired I decided that the part of this art form I could approach was glass flame working and I took classes in the studio where I had previously shot videos.

I am currently working with borosilicate glass in a small studio at home. Partly due to the limitations of gas and oxygen pressure (for safety reasons in my basement studio I’m using residential natural gas rather than propane and a 5 lpm oxygen concentrator) and the size of the torch I have (a GTT Bobcat), I have mostly been making glass marbles. In particular I’m fascinated by flower implosions.