Beautiful shapes and objects emerge from the delicate work of glass-blowing by artist Keith Walker
Craft is the ultimate test of patience
If the heavy duty equipment, super-high heat, awkwardlooking tools and abundance of molten glass weren’t enough to deter the average person from taking up the art of glassblowing, you’d think the sheer frustration of watching all your hard work shatter in a second would do it.
But when a delicate glass bulb fails to stick to a not-quitehot-enough tool and falls to the concrete floor of Keith Walker’s studio, first bouncing, then cracking loudly, he simply shrugs it off and starts again.
It’s something the Edmonton artist has grown used to after years of working with the delicate material, heating, cooling, turning, spinning, finessing and coaxing it into all manner of beautiful shapes and colours, from sculpture and chandeliers to drinking glasses.
His latest project, deceptively simple-looking, clear-glass vessels in the shapes of bulbs, cones and flattened vases of different sizes, will be turned into terrariums, filled with tiny plants by his graphic designer/ landscaper partner in Calgary, Kyle Chow, and fitted with a simple rope for hanging. They also make a tabletop version.
The finished product will be sold this Saturday at the Mercer Market, in the basement of the Mercer Warehouse at 10359 104th St.
“What I like about it is that the pieces are really about shape, so it’s a skill-building exercise for me,” he says.
Walker, a journeyman carpenter, built the backyard studio behind his Parkdale-area home about five years ago and turned to glass-blowing full time. His studio is one of the few places in Edmonton where people can learn to blow glass — in short, half-day classes or in more intensive, three-day sessions.
“Anybody can learn how to blow glass,” he says. He teaches at the Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts and last year, taught two disabled adults from the centre to blow glass to help make components for a chandelier, which he built and installed at the East Edmonton Health Centre.
Walker’s work is sold through the Alberta Craft Council gallery and Tix on the Square’s store. He’s also crafted chandeliers for the Central Lions Recreation Centre, created glass sculpture for the Edmonton International Airport and designs glass recognition awards for corporations and non-profit groups.
His current terrarium project consumes his spare time at the moment. The day we visit, he’s getting help from his friend John MacPhee, a glass-blowing hobbyist who helps him by blowing, turning or grabbing tools when necessary because the work requires speed and quite often, more than two hands.
It’s a multi-step process in which Walker gathers blobs of glass from a 1,200-degree electric furnace on a long, hollow rod, then blows, shapes and turns delicately, his fingers working as if playing an instrument. He then heats it in a second, cooler (800 degrees) furnace called the “glory hole,” blows, shapes and turns some more, repeating the process until the piece is the desired size and shape.
The skill comes in knowing when to heat and for how long, how much to blow, when and how to turn or shape and how to use gravity to manipulate the glass, says MacPhee, as we watch Walker work.
While you might imagine a glass-blower gently puffing air into the rod to slowly, carefully, expand the glass, Walker instead shoots a strong, sharp, blast of air, like he’s shooting a blow dart, then covers the end of the rod with his thumb, manipulating the amount of air that enters the blob of glass on the end as he turns it.
That allows for better control, explains MacPhee. Beginners are taught to blow slowly, but they often blow a whole right through their glass — another of the many hazards of the craft.
In the classes Walker teaches, he usually demonstrates the making of a drinking glass. “I do a demo, so I end up with tons of these,” he says, pointing to a fancier tumbler he’s made, infused with spirals of coloured glass.
He and MacPhee have taken to occasionally bringing along these demo glasses to drink out of when they hit a local pub, leaving them behind for the server in a kind of guerrilla glassware project. “I thought it was a cool idea, just to circulate them,” says Walker.
Like the glass terrariums, they’re particularly challenging to make in uniform sizes and shapes, so he likes to practise, using calipers to get exact measurements.
“It’s something that I aspired to be — more skilled, more professional, just a better glassblower.”
To find out more about Keith Walker’s work and the classes he offers, go to blowinthedark. ca.