Gathering Glass

This month's print of the month or thereabouts is from the "Hot Shop" at Tacoma's Museum of Glass. Visitors can sit in a balcony and watch the highly skilled staff and visiting artists at work.

We somehow found out that Preston Singletary would be working at the Hot Shop for several days so we trooped down to watch. Singletary, Tlingit by ethnicity -- Pilchuck and Swedish trained, has pieces in nearly every museum in the western world that has any interest in glass -- including the National Museum of the American Indian.

In the shop he is a very hands-on artist -- as opposed to directing the staff on what to do next. Once the glass is out of the furnace and on the spindle or blowpipe, he is right there with heatproof gloves and the tools of his art forming and shaping the glowing glass before it cools. It looks like magic to me.

Out of the two or three rolls of film this one, of a staffer bringing a "gather" of glass out of the furnace was the only keeper.