April/May, 2019 - Vol. 32, No. 6.
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In This Issue
Boro Geode by Orion Whitwell
I’ve been blowing glass since 2015 and am known in glass art circles as OhDub Glass. I own Fahrenheit 1510. I grew up in Boise, Idaho, and have been surrounded by amazing artists my entire life. My father is a writer, my mother is a craftswoman/artist, and my stepmother is a contemporary dancer. All throughout my childhood, though, I never had an artistic outlet until I found glass.
When I started blowing glass, I only wanted to make functional glass art, but after a while, the glass bug took hold and I realized I wanted to be an all-around glass craftsperson. Now I make a little of everything — pipes, drinkware, jewelry, marbles, and more.
Recently, I bought a lap-wheel and started learning how to cold-work, which opened up a whole new range of possibilities for my glass art. I started cutting my pieces into interesting shapes, lapping bottoms of paperweights, and started making boro geodes
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My love of bold designs and colors probably started the day I came home from kindergarten and my mother had tie-dyed all of our clothes. My childhood was an immersion in creativity; my mother is an amazing artist who did everything — pottery, batik, weaving, oil painting, silk painting, macramé, etc. My father had a full studio for gem carving and jewelry design. Their joint creativity was showcased in every room in our house, from mosaics to murals and custom-built furniture.
In the early years, I bought every book and tutorial I could get my hands on, practicing and learning as much as I could on my own. Since then, my journey with glass has led me to meet amazing artists and new friends. It’s exciting to be part of such an inspiring and supportive community. I have been fortunate to take classes from some master glass artists from all over who generously share their knowledge and techniques.
I love all things glassy, and tend to be a bit of a squirrel: soft glass beads, fusing, and boro (tried the hot shop, but that’s not for me). I am most comfortable with and spend the most time on a Mega Minor with 104 soft glass, creating beads. A few years ago, I joined Terminal City Glass Co-Op, where I am able to work on larger torches, with borosilicate, learning to make marbles
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I live in Finland and have been making beads since 2004. My mother was a lover of elephants and collected a variety of items with elephants as the main theme. She had big ones, small ones, pillowcases, posters, and jewelry in her collection. I made this bead in memory of my mother’s love of elephants. (Pink was not one of her favorite colors, but it’s one of mine.) I like to imagine that she is sitting on the edge of a pink morning cloud and sees me create and grow as an artist
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My background is in fine arts, painting, and printmaking, with a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. My first glass class was with Kristina Logan in 1997. Since then, I have shown and sold across Canada, taught classes in Ottawa, and demonstrated at festivals and the Maker Faire in Toronto, Ontario. I currently sell online and at shows.
I am a longtime member of the Toronto Bead Society and served for several years as secretary, then web minder
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I was born close to Paris in 1986. When I was a child, I visited a glass factory in the south of France and fell in love with hot glass work. In 2008, after two years of studying materials science at university, I decidde to change my focus to working in glass. I graduated as a scientific glassblower in 2009 and started working for the Sciences University of Montpellier for 18 months. Then, I went back to university to obtain a graduate degree in materials science. At the same time, I worked at a technical metal-glass seals company.
For my jewelery pieces, I love to work with opal inclusions and spirals in dichroic glass. For the sculptures, I make animals and characters. I like fantasy, so I make dragons, fairies, and other fantastic animals. I also make a little blown stuff, such as this perfume flask. Because glass art has unlimited potential, I try to be able to make everything and anything
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I am from Turkey — I was born in Ankara in 1986 — and have loved glass since my childhood. One of my most vivid memories is of my grandmother offering me two pendants. One was glass, the other one was wood. I chose the glass one, and ever since, I made the same selection whenever there was a choice between something in glass and something in another material.
Nature inspires me. That is why I love making murrini and reflecting the colors and themes of nature in my works. With my murrini, I design flower gardens, colorful landscapes, vivarium, and galaxy beads
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I have been working with different forms of art glass for years. I started out taking stained glass classes and then got into fusing glass. At an open house at a local stained glass studio, I was introduced to the flame. The instructor used a Hothead torch and did a bead demonstration.
My first torch was a Hothead and I worked at that time with soft glass 104. I upgraded to the Nortel Minor and then the Nortel Major. Of course, to work with the boro glass, I needed to upgrade my torch, so now I use a Bethlehem Bravo and an oxygen concentrator. I love making marbles, pendants, rings, and small sculptures in my home studio in northern Wisconsin
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