Glassblowing: Learn How to Make a Handblown Crystal Glass Rose

Glassblowing: Learn How to Make a Handblown Crystal Glass Rose

Day 273 #VanLife: What Do I Do Now? or Chasing Seventy Degrees and Sunsets

When I started this #VanLife adventure I had a different life filled with family and friends, a house, and all the things that go with keeping a house.  It was a pretty standard life with all of the ups and downs I suppose and, for the most part, it suited me just fine.

Buying a van and doing a build-out to convert it into an RV was simply to allow me to set up at art and craft shows, selling my art glass across the country while avoiding the costs of hotel rooms. It also offered me the opportunity to see other parts of the country in the hope of relocating our household to a new community  in which I could more easily make a living as a glassblower and our little family could thrive.  #VanLife was a means to and end and not meant to be a way of life for me.

There's an old saying in relationships that "distance makes the heart grow fonder" and then, for some, there's a cynical addendum, "for someone else."  In a polyamorous or open relationship (a relationship based on consensual and ethical non-monogamy) which ours was, one would hope, and more accurately assume, that wouldn't spell the end of a primary relationship but it did for mine.

When I returned home from my maiden voyage in the van from exploring the Pacific Northwest, I came home to a world I no longer recognized and a relationship that had ended at some point while I was away.  Oh, there were several extenuating circumstances but because discretion is perhaps the better part of valor, let's just say that was the end of our twelve year relationship.

I left my home, family, and friends, heartbroken and feeling homeless and somewhat worthless.  Certainly, I felt less than and I felt very lost and completely alone.  That all happened this last October.

I naturally started doing a lot of introspection, soul searching, and otherwise trying to remake or discover what my new life was to be like.

Much of the time since then has been focused on my glassblowing.  I'm so very thankful that my career is as it is and that it afforded me the gift of distraction.  I've been able to focus, as much as one could with such a heartbreak, on something other than said heartbreak.  The roar of the torch is music to my ears and brightness of the flame helps illumine a very dark time for me.

In November and December I rolled into my Christmas show in a major mall in Kansas and poured all of my energy into making glass art and selling it to the Christmas shoppers. 

After Christmas I headed to the southwest for warmer weather and to meetup with the 2019 Rubber Tramp Roundup (#RTR) in Quartzsite Arizona.  Some five to six thousand of us camped out in the desert for fourteen days, sharing our lives and stories while making new friends.

Being out in the desert I had a lot of time on my hands to think and my thoughts seemed to follow a kind of horizontal spiral: How did everything go so wrong so fast? What did I do wrong? What do I do now? Where do I go? How do I live?What did I want the rest of my life to look like?  I had lots of questions with few answers.

After the roundup ended and we all went our separate ways I headed into Quartzsite proper to the annual RV gathering and setup on the main drag at a marketplace making and selling glass art to visitors, travelers, and snowbirds.

As a result of having been a glassblower, going on half of my life, being on the torch sculpting glass is very comforting and meditative for me.  Due in large part to familiarity and muscle memory, it allows my mind to wander and engage in a sort of free associative state.  If I'm not working out my problems on my bicycle, I'm working them out from behind the torch.

Currently I'm still setup in Quartzsite making glass and I still don't have many answers but I do have a few that seem certain: There seems to be no way to return to my former life. I am now, for better or worse, living full time in my van for the foreseeable future.  I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I don't want to be cold anymore and I'm going to be chasing seventy degrees and sunsets around the country.  One more thing is just beginning to dawn on me, for perhaps the first time in my life, I am free.

If there is one bright spot in all of this, it's the reality that I've fallen more and more in love with my chosen career.  It has been the one thing that has brought me the most constant joy in my life and for that, I am deeply and humbly grateful.  Glassblowing for me is as a life preserver for a drowning man.

More than that, I really do not know.  At this moment, my most pressing question now is: do I get a dog? 

VanLife Day 11 or GlassLife Day 9993

I'm feeling like this post has more to do with GlassLife than VanLife right now.  When you're on a long show, meaning longer than 3-4 days, it can sometimes feel like an eternity. Such is the case as I near the end of this gig.

It's been a delightful stay and I've reconnected with friends, made new ones, and generally enjoyed myself but it's time to move along down the road.  What's more, I'm anxious to do so.

This should be my last longer show for a while.  Typically I limit longer shows in malls to Christmas, St. Valentine's Day, and Mother's Day.  So, I won't have another one like this for quite sometime and who knows where I'll be come Christmas.

I enjoy the music and art festivals quite a bit and all the smaller shows in-between are pretty fun and often profitable too.  When compared to a race, they're like a 50 yard dash as opposed to the longer shows being more like marathons.  You run them each differently.  Your inventory is different, your clientele is different, your expenses are different, and your profit is different.  Longer shows offer stability and security.  Shorter festivals offer opportunity and diversity.  There's a time and a place for each of them.

What do you call a flock of hummingbirds?  A charm!  I've made of charm of hummingbirds in the last couple of days to be sure.  Half a gross to be exact.  After having made thousands and thousands of them over the years, I think I could make them in my sleep and sometimes I think I have.

Production too can become a little monotonous but it also offers time for reflection and thought, not unlike riding a bicycle for me.  I can just kick on autopilot and let my mind wander around a bit.

While I churned out my recent charm of hummers I thought of different paths to my first major destination, the Pacific Northwest and of places and people I might visit along the way.  Colorado would seem to be the best way to go and as luck would have it, I have a good friend, who happens to be a priest in Christ Catholic Church, in Colorado Springs.  I think I'll pop in on him for a bit and see if I can wear out my welcome.

We'll see where the Kraken takes me...

VanLife: Day 4 or How I Became a Kelly Girl Glassblower

I find I'm settling into a routine which is a good thing because I'm a creature of habit for the most part.  After four days of #vanlife perhaps I'm beginning to find a balance and a rhythm.

This was the first day that my glass show was fully up and running and that part of the setup work was done.  That's always a good feeling.  Now down to making glass and selling glass.

It always fun when I return to a place I have been several times before.  It's often like old home week.  You catch up with friends and acquaintances, see what's new and what's changed.  Sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.  I think that's a very true statement for life in a shopping mall.

I spent a great deal of my life working in malls.  My first management position was in a Swiss Colony in the Battlefield Mall in Springfield Missouri and later in a Morrow's Nut House owned by the same company.  Those jobs opened the door to management positions in other stores within that mall and those positions ultimately led me to a General Manager position of a candy company that operated 10 stores in four states, all in shopping malls.

I became acquainted with all aspects of the building, owning, marketing, staffing, supplying, merchandising, maintaining, opening and closing of mall stores.  I worked with lots of different management teams and franchise companies on various construction projects and community marketing programs.

I was what was called a Mall Rat.  I lived and breathed the Mall life.  I was pasty white in those days.

Its funny how life twists and turns.  It was ultimately my familiarity with malls and franchising that I was able to find my way into the glass business.  I had just completed a contract with a company with multiple stores and interests where I had opened and staffed five more dollar stores for them, two in Chicago and one three in Tennessee.  I was ready for a new challenge and I answered an ad in the local paper.

The ad was for someone skilled in opening and franchising stores in shopping malls.  I thought perhaps it was friend playing a trick on me because I had said to him earlier in the week at a dinner party I threw that jobs like mine were getting harder to come by without moving out of the Ozarks.  Out of mere curiosity more than anything I inquired about the position and I realized it was the real deal.

The company had contracted with Kelly Girl, a headhunting/temp agency, to find a suitable candidate for the position.  In order to pursue the job, I had to become a Kelly Girl and so I did.

I eventually met with the owner who was a lampwork glassblower.  He had a little shop up at Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri and he wanted to spread out his operation to shopping malls and amusement parks.  I knew immediately that I was the person for the job and I also knew immediately that some how, some way, I would become a glassblower.  I sold myself and we arrived at a mutually beneficial contract.  My one caveat was that he teach me how to blow glass and to this he agreed.

Little did I know he was incapable of teaching me how to blow glass.

I fulfilled my part of the bargain.  I used my contacts and expertise to get him into two different malls, two different shopping centers, and one theme park.  I took him from this side of bankruptcy to being relatively financially flush and moderately successful.  In all that time, he never once gave me a lesson.

When I reminded him of his contractual promise, he said,  "You've seen me make enough hummingbirds.  Hop up on the torch and make one."  And then he walked away.

I hopped up on the torch and made what look like a fledgling hummingbird just hatched out of the egg that had been subjection to radiation poisoning.  I wasn't pleased with my finished product but I was excited about the possibilities.

He returned only to puff himself up after looking at my attempt at making a hummingbird suncatcher and say, "I've been doing this long enough to know whether a person has an aptitude for glassblowing or not and I'm sorry to tell you, you'll never be a glassblower and that little mess will never hold together."

It's odd how a person can at once experience and the cold chill of dismissal or indifference and the fiery heat of rage.  Right then I dismissed him and his opinion and raged at his words.  I simply replied,  "Squat and watch fella!"

I left his employment with a white hot self-righteous indignation and a forged determination to become at glassblower, come what may.

It took a while.  There was no YouTube in those days and the craft was pretty secretive.  If someone knew you wanted to learn to make glass and you were watching them, they'd shut down on you in a heartbeat. I wasn't sure where or how I was going to learn the craft but I knew I would.

In the meantime I went back to doing what I do, managing stores in malls.  I took a position with Bailey, Banks, and Biddle Fine Jewelers which worked its way into management training.  They were part of the Zales Corporation which had just emerged from bankruptcy and they were in the process of closing some of the less profitable stores. They wanted me to become a store closer.  This wasn't something I wanted to do because I fundamentally disagreed with their methods though I understood their need to do it the way they did.

During one Christmas the mall leased out a kiosk space in front of my store and low and behold, they had leased it to a lampwork glassblower.

It was one of those moments that the 19th century British author, Charles Williams, would describe as an infinite moment: a moment that if recognized and seized could change the course of one's life forever.

I soon met the glassblower and I kept my mouth shut.  He, on the other hand, did not.  His name was Jerry Capel and he was warm, inviting, inquisitive, talkative, and full of zeal.  He had also been blowing glass for about 40 years at the time of our meeting.  He saw in me my appreciation and attention to the glass but I let him approach me about me learning how to blow glass.  I didn't want him to shut down on me like the rest had.

Let me back up a bit, while I hadn't met him, I had seen him in my former employer's gallery several times, so I knew who he was but my former employer had made it a point to keep us from meeting.  I was soon to understand why he had kept us apart.

As we got acquainted, I shared with Jerry the story I shared with you dear reader, of my escapades with the fellow who told me I'd never be a glassblower.  That was one of the few times I would see regret in my new friend's eyes. 

Jerry told me the story of teaching my former employer only a year or two before and suddenly I understood what had happened.  I had unwittingly been duped by a person who was not what he portrayed himself to be at the time and he was not capable of teaching me how to blow glass because he hardly knew how to do it himself.  He used me and his usury was premeditated.

My new mentor however, was capable and more over he was eager to teach me.  He loved glass and would share his talent and expertise with anyone who would sit still long enough to listen and watch.  Seldom have a met in my life people with such a zest and passion as he had.  We became student and teacher and good friends as well and developed a relationship that lasts to this very day.  He didn't teach me everything I've learned about glass art but he taught me everything I needed to know to be successful at it and imparted his passion to me.  For that, I will be forever indebted to this man who changed my life in a moment.

My dear mother helping me out at my very first Christmas show.

I soon quit my job and never went back to managing stores and businesses for other people.  I became a glassblower and the following year I had my own little booth at a mall for Christmas.  My journey started 28 years ago as of this writing and the rest, as they say, is history.

Long story short, that's how I became a Kelly Girl glassblower.

Future Perfect Tense

I will have returned to Eureka Springs Arkansas sometime before my death.  That much is certain, unless death comes suddenly and surprisingly.  However, even so, perhaps even then, I will have returned to Eureka Springs after my death.  All the best ghosts do you know after all it is the most haunted place in America, so the tour guides say.

Be that as it may, I returned today to call on my wholesale accounts and to deliver some handblown glass hummingbird suncatchers to one of my favorite little stores, the Velvet Otter.

The Velvet Otter is a quaint little antique/gift store on Highway 62 out at Inspiration Point.  For many years, it was a glass shop owned and operated by a lampwork glassblower by the name of Jerry Driggers.  I loved visiting his shop as a kid, watching him blow glass and often watching the sunset out his back windows overlooking the White River.  It's a picture perfect place.

Periodically I get to missing Eureka Springs and I have to get my fix.  I had been experiencing withdrawals of late and so it was time to return for a bit.  My trip was shorter than expected.  After I got there, I just wasn't feeling it.

It's a beautiful place and if you've never visited it you should.  It's a wonderful little Victorian Village out of the late 1800's sprinkled with hippies, artists, spiritualists, religious fundamentalists, survivalists, motorcyclists, poets, writers, romantics, and misfits of various kinds.  Just about everyone will find something to love in Eureka Springs.  I certainly have.

It has many beautiful Victorian homes in the downtown area that rival the great Painted Ladies of San Francisco even and it has a very interesting and eclectic shopping district full of artists, craftspeople, and unique shops.

It's a place to see for sure and one that I will have returned to some day if time allows.  I've visited Eureka Springs on and off throughout my life, I've loved there from time to time, I've lived there for about a year, and had art galleries there over the years but it's the springs that will always call me back.