On the Floor: Sculpting Visions
Photo by Chelsea Tornga Photography.
By Nick Davis, Hot Shop Technician
A large part of what makes Museum of Glass such a special place is the people who work here. As anyone who has visited MOG knows, one of the most dynamic parts of the guest experience is the live glassblowing demonstrated daily in the Hot Shop. The MOG Hot Shop Team is one of the most visible and tightly knit departments in the Museum. Their daily displays of talent and technique invite audience members to witness the fascinating process of glassblowing and gain insight into how the works of art in MOG’s galleries have come into being.
Each day in the Museum of Glass Hot Shop brings a fresh, often ambitious, project out of the furnaces. Visiting Artists who do not normally work in glass can provide a special challenge for the Hot Shop Team. They rely on us to be their proxy in the Hot Shop, helping to translate their ideas into glass. These artists often do not know much about the material, and that can result in some very interesting ideas and approaches that are unconventional to glassmakers. In that, there is a similarity to the way we approach the Kids Design Glass program. We find or come up with techniques to make something in glass that is true to the vision of the artist.
As the Hot Shop’s technician, I am not usually out on the floor blowing glass with the team. My days are spent in the metal shop, office, and all around the Cone, doing maintenance and repairs to the glass equipment, and tackling other behind-the-scenes projects, such as creating stands for our Kids Design Glass pieces. I am a glassmaker too, though, so it is great when I get called on to come out of the shadows and join the team in front of the furnaces. Some of my favorite experiences on the Hot Shop floor are when I get to utilize my specific skills to help bring a Visiting Artist's ideas to fruition. My personal work is mostly hot-sculpted solid or very thick glass, so it is especially rewarding when I get to work with artists looking for objects in that realm.
In 2015, shortly after I started working full time at MOG, I had my first opportunity to sculpt glass for a Visiting Artist when Dan Webb came to us for his residency. Webb is mainly a woodcarver in his practice and makes wonderfully varied and creative sculptures. Wood is a medium which lends itself to long term projects. Woodworkers meticulously reduce a larger block of wood to a sculpture by removing pieces a bit at a time, cutting, grinding, and sanding over days, weeks, or even months, until a final form is achieved. This contrasts with the immediacy and gooeyness of working with hot glass, where working on a piece for a “long time” might mean a handful of hours in a hot shop and a little more time in the cold shop (in the hands of a skilled coldworker, that is!). With this difference in technique in mind, it was interesting to see what kinds of ideas Webb brought into the Hot Shop.
Webb came to us with some fun ideas involving putti, which are little winged babies or angels often seen in Renaissance art. He planned for these figures to be perched atop blown vessels with additional glass elements. I had seen Pino Signoretto make putti in the past, so I was excited to try my hand at sculpting some for Webb’s work. Winged cherubs did not magically appear at the head of the pipe as they seemed to do for Pino, but, after some effort, I managed some serviceable putti. They were combined with some beautiful glass rainbows and vessels made by the rest of the team, bringing to life Dan's drawings of angels pooping rainbows.
Whether it is through sculpting an element of a Visiting Artist’s idea, bringing a Kids Design Glass creature to life for a child designer, or crafting a bespoke mold or tool for an innovative new piece in the Hot Shop, it is always a thrill to use my own areas of expertise to allow a fellow artist’s vision to become a real, tangible object. At Museum of Glass, I get to call that thrill work.
Nick Davis. Photo by Chelsea Tornga Photography.
About the Artist:
Nick Davis earned a BFA in Art with an emphasis in Glass from Emporia State University. He has worked as a freelance metalworker and technician, production glassblower, and instructor at institutions such as Pratt Fine Arts and Museum of Glass. In his own work, he uses the fluidity and optically distorting qualities of glass to draw the eye and attention in and around sculptures, often supported or attenuated with fabricated steel elements. In addition to his role at the Museum, Davis creates bespoke tools for artists around the world.