Canada’s first mobile glass-blowing studio stops by
Stampede art-on-wheels experience the first of its kind nationwide
Imagine a food truck.
Now, imagine a food truck on steroids — but instead of serving food, they serve pieces of glass blown at more than 1,000 degrees Celsius.
That’s what Mandy Patchin and her three-year-old Calgary-based company Glass House Experience are serving up at this year’s Stampede.
“Me and another colleague really wanted to share the art of glass blowing with as many people as possible. We were deciding between a brick-and-mortar studio, or doing something different,” said Patchin.
They ended up buying a moving truck and converting it into Canada’s first, and only, mobile glass-blowing studio.
It all started seven years ago for Patchin, when she took a weekend course on glass blowing. A newfound love for the creative art form caused her to quit her full-time job working in the oil and gas industry, and now travels the streets of Western Canada.
“I took a workshop and I fell in love with it,” she said.
“I started taking courses — I went to the U.S., I took courses in Calgary and then I just rented studio space for a year and that’s what got me into it. One day I said ‘I’m quitting this day job and I’m building a truck.’
“It’s kind of a crazy story, but I enjoy it.”
Patchin even takes her studio to schools, where kids as young as 10 get a chance to mould their own pieces.
“We travel around mostly in Calgary and Alberta ... we work with schools doing demonstrations, teaching them to make stuff,” she said.
The unique experience is what Patchin says draws crowds to her studio.
“It’s about experience nowadays, it’s about trying something different,” she said.
“I get a lot of, ‘whoa, what an amazing idea,’ or, ‘this is so cool.’ I think it’s something you don’t see everyday.”
For the Stampede, she has made sure she has a good supply of glass cowboy hats and horses.
Patchin and her studio are set up across the midway from the Calgary Saddledome steps for the duration of Stampede.