‘A CLOSET PYROMANIAC’
A glassblower gets fired up in today’s Spotlight
“I feel I’ve always been a closet pyromaniac, but this is a way you can do it without seeming crazy. I also do some fire-performing — spinning things that are lit on fire. It’s not glass-related at all, but I started them at around the same time. I just have some props — hula hoops and fans … circus stuff, and I’m mostly working with a group from Toronto: Crimson Fire Show. And I eat fire, too.
“I got into glass by accident. It was in 2011 and I had just moved to Edmonton from Saskatchewan, and I called my cousin. He owned a company called Pixie Glassworks, and they had just been on Dragon’s Den. They didn’t get a deal, but overnight, after it aired, they got something like 200 emails, so they were doing 16-hour days in the studio, trying to make it work, and they’re sitting there having breakfast and saying ‘We need to hire somebody,’ and that was literally the exact moment that I called. So I started working for them the next day.
“I started just packing orders in the studio for them. Then after a month they had me try the torch, and I caught on really fast, and within six months they asked me to go full-time.
“Right away, I loved it. The medium is really cool. It’s super-fluid and the way it moves is really captivating, especially working with a 2,000-degree torch — you feel like a badass.
“My first day on the torch, they got me to make these little flowers. I made 13 of them and not one looked like a flower. But I went back to the studio the next day and made 30 of them, and 13 looked like flowers, and it increased from there.
“I keep one of my failed pieces with me, mostly just so I can remind myself that you always start somewhere that you’re not happy with, but if you just keep putting the time and dedication into anything, you’re going to get results.
“So I was making aromatherapy pendants for them throughout the day, and then I’d usually stay late and work on my own projects and try new things. I moved back to Saskatchewan and didn’t do any glass for a couple of years and was getting miserable, so I applied to go to the Haliburton School of Art and Design.
“In my second week in the hot shop, I burned my entire hand. The end of the pipe that’s holding your piece on is called the moyle, and it’s one of the hottest parts of the piece. I was two weeks in, so of course I’m the professional — a little overconfident — and at one point I flipped the rod the wrong way and grabbed the moyle, and my entire hand was stuck to the glass.
“I had just moved from Saskatchewan and didn’t yet have an Ontario health card, so I just stole some burn cream from the school fridge, coated my hand and wrapped it all up. Luckily, the next week of school we were doing drawing for glassblowing, and the only parts of my hand that weren’t burned were where I held a pencil. So that was all I could do.
“Now I make mostly jewelry and vases and stuff like that. I also do memorial jewelry, like cremation paperweights, where you can actually incorporate the ashes with coloured glass — they’re really beautiful. I also do these galaxy universe pendants, where you incorporate the ashes.
“The more detail I can put into a piece, the more meticulous it is, the more fun it is for me. Something that would be a pain in the butt for most people is like a form of meditation for me. I get so zenned in that two hours go by like nothing and I feel so relaxed.
“It’s a medium that you can never master. You can work forever, but there are these incredible Venetian artists that have been doing this for generations and generations, and at 22 years old they’re better than I’m going to be at 60. But it’s one of those things you can never master — there are 1,001 things that you can do in glass, and if you don’t love one thing you might love another, and there are always more techniques to learn and more ways you can refine and get better, so it’s a great medium to always do more. You’re never going to get bored.”