Lakeland PBS presents Common
Ground, brought to you by the
Minnesota Arts and Cultural
Heritage Fund

and the citizens of Minnesota.
Production funding of Common
Ground is made possible, in
part, by First

National Bank Bemidji,
continuing their 2nd century of
service to the community. Member
FDIC.

instrumental music....

Welcome to Common Ground. I'm
Producer/Director Scott Knudson.
In this episode, Steven Weagel,

of the Pequot Lakes area,
displays his artwork at the
Crossing Arts Alliance in
Brainerd, Minnesota,

and demonstrates his glass
blowing at Vandalia Glassworks
in South St. Paul.

Hello, my name is steven Weagel.
I'm from Pequot Lakes,
Minnesota,

and I'm a glass and metal
artist. We're here at the
Crossing Arts Alliance

in Brainerd, Minnesota at an
exhibition called "Light, Color,
and Minnesota Landscape.

I've created the shades down at
Vandalia Glassworks in South St.
Paul, and I've done

all of my metal work. I'll start
this at my studio outside of
Pequot Lakes.

Before I start adding color to a
piece, I want to create a form.
Harvey Littleton wrote a book

way back and the name of his
book was "A Search for Form" and
for most of us glassblowers , as
we

learn to create glass and we
learn to control the glass and
we learn to create new shapes,

then, the main concern for me is
that it's got a good form, and
form, it's called "form sense"
by

other artists, and form sense
only comes from a lot of trial
and error and a lot of work.

My first thought is, "what form
do I want,", "is this going to
be a good form," and "how do I
get there."

Once I have the forms worked out
in my head and in the glass,
then I can begin to add color

to it and let the color enhance
the form. I'm going to reheat
it. For most of us,

as glass blowers, we're always
in a search for form. Of course,
that's endless, that's infinite,
the

old medieval guild symbol for
glass workers was a female
symbol with infinity on top of
it. That

is what glass is, glass is
infinite . Let's go to Vandalia
Glassworks in South St. Paul,
Minnesota.

This is a unique situation. This
is one of the finest studios in
the country. Essentially,

I will be going here, opening
this door, and gathering.

Then I will come out of there,
and generally, I will go to the
bench,

and I will use this tool called
a block, okay, and then I will
be here.

I will be in and out of here
constantly, and then back to the
bench. So, that's where I get,
there's

about 300 pounds of molten glass
in there, that's the melter, or
the furnace. Back in the old
days,

we did everything with gas, and
it was a kind of a standing joke
that an "electric furnace",
because

it's cost prohibitive. Well ,
now the price of propane and
natural gas has gone up to

the point that electricity is a
viable solution, and the nice
thing about electricity is, you
can

seal that tight. With propane or
gas, you've got to relieve the
pressure. With electric,

you can have it shut tight and
hold all the heat in there. This
is relatively new in

the last 10-15 years. When I
started blowing glass in
1968-1969, we had to build
everything,

and now there's a whole industry
that build these commercial
units.

This is totally state of the
art. Craig, over here, has been
blowing glass for 40 years also,

and we both feel the same way,
we walk in here and it's like
we're kids in heaven.

There's a lab here. "Hardest
working glassblower in Minnesota
right here, this guy right here.
Okay.

So, take a smaller gather, you
can just see the glass;
actually, it reflects like water
so

as I approach the glass with my
blowpipe, I'm looking for the
reflection, and as soon as I

see the my blowpipe in the
reflection, I know I'm close,
because I don't want to have it
too

deep. I don't want to have glass
way down on the blowpipe. We'll
let that chill just a little
bit.

i don't like too much glass up
on the pipe, it's a waste of
glass, and it causes other
problems, so

I take two small gathers to
start, instead of trying to do
it all in one gather.

I just set that up so there's
enough glass on there to have a
foundation for a shade.

This time I'm going
to start with white,

because I want a base behind the
color, and because it's going to
be lit from the inside.

I want it to be somewhat opaque,
I want the light to diffuse when
I turn it on, and so what
happens

is, I get dichroic glass. I get
glass that's one color when the
light is reflected off of it,

and when the light is turned on,
it's now transmitting light and
it changes color.

I'm going to put
another layer of white

and then I'm going to get that
melted back in. Now, I'm just
building up the color, so you
can

see it's kind of lumpy, I want
that to get nice and smooth and
I will build up layer upon
layer.

Okay, I'm coming out, and I'm
going to begin to build up

the blue, so that's called
aquamarine, and this blue is
fairly opaque.

I'm going to stick with a fairly
light blue, and then I'm going
to put dark blue designs into
it.

Okay, you're good. Now I'm going
to do one layer of a deep cobalt
blue, and you can see this

is really fine. Now you can see
how much that changed. Now, what
I'm going to do

is heat in again, and I'm going
to go back to that lighter blue,
and that will give me
variations,

with the dark blue peeking out
from behind the lighter blue.
The aquamarine, this color is.

This doesn't take as long to
fuse in, because it's so fine.

Okay, we'll do now, we'll go
back one more in the aquamarine.

i'm just going to block this,
just to get it off the pipe a
little bit.

Now what I'm going to do is, I'm
going to get it into that optic
mold. Nice and hot,

okay,

see the ridges? I'm going to
give this a quick heat and I'm
going to go over there to the
color, see

how I'm twisting that, now look
at the color, how it's gone into
those low spots. I'm gonna do
that

one more time, I'm just gonna
heat this enough to fuse it, and
I'm gonna pick up just a little
more.

Now, I'm going to get it really
hot again and then I'm going
back to that optic mold.

Now, as I go in here, I'm going
to have lines go across the
lines that are there.

Quick reheat, and then I'm going
back to that fine powder again,
only this time I'm going

to turn it in the opposite
direction, so I will twist it
across the lines that were
there. I've

got the color set up, we'll fuse
everything, I'll get it really
really hot, I'll block it, and
I'll

blow a bubble into it. So,
occasionally, I'll just come out
..and like now, can you see the
pattern that

formed in there? It's very
subtle right now, but as I blow
it out, it will become much more
apparent.

I've got to get this really hot
so I've got to be a little
patient here.

I take my block again.

I'm gonna go reheat once more,
it's not doing quite what I
would like it to.

Okay, that's better,

now I'll block it again,

okay, then I'm gonna blow.

I've gotta add a little heat.

All right, we'll let that
settle back a little bit.

All right, it just started to
blow, I stop immediately, and I
will block that.

Now we're starting to get some
really nice interesting things
happening with that color.

I don't want to blow that out
too much, so I just barely
puffed that one.

Okay, we've got the bubble set
up, I've got the white peeking
through, I've got the light

blue peeking through, and the
dark blue is on the outside. I'm
going to let this

cool. Now, these tools we use
are made out of fruitwood; in
this case, these happen to be

applewood that I've saved.
Cherrywood works, and the reason
we use fruitwood is it's really
hard

on an end cut, and it doesn't
have any resins that mark the
glass, but most importantly, we
use

we use cherrywood or applewood,
the fruitwoods, because they
don't rot in water.

So, most of these tools have
been in water for 3 - 4

years before I ever carved the
wood. I store the wood in big
tubs, and as I need it, I take
it out

and carve it, form it, whatever
it is I need to make. Most
people think it's because

it doesn't mark, but one of the
main reasons is - it'll last
forever in water. It'll last

longer in water than drought,
than being out in the air. Okay,
we're ready for a big gathering

You can make a nice big
shade with that amount.

Could have taken a little
less, but I can make this work.

You can see how easily that
could have gotten away from me.
Once it laps up on that block
like that,

if a person isn't paying
attention, it can lap up onto an
arm or a hand, but that's not
going

to happen, we've got it under
control. I'm going to put a
neckline in it while it's still
good and hot.

There are other ways to do this,
but I'm kind of "old school"

and this is the way I like to
work the glass. Some people use
wet paper to do this part.

All right, I've got that nice
and centered, I'll block it one
more time. I'm going to go
reheat

and then I'm going to neck it
again and probably reheat one

more time. Then, I'm going back
over to there, over there to
those optic molds.

I still need to keep
that bottom, heavy.

Okay, back to reheat.
Now, we'll start forming

the shape,

make sure I've got
a good neckline,

till the bottom, blow it out,

till the bottom,

blow it out,

and again,

I have to make certain I keep
that bottom tilled or it'll get
paper thin.

Okay, I'm going
to reheat again.

Okay.

All right, that's as
tall as I want it.

I'll till this line again and
I'm going to remove it from the
blowpipe, I'll hang it up,

a little water,

and let's go reheat. Now I'm
going to get the top third of
that really hot, and I'm going

to blow it out. I'm going to
expand it with a steam stick. I
will get it hot as far back as I
want it

to blow out and I'll use my
steam stick in it to create
pressure so I can blow it
without blowing,

and the reason I want to do that
is I want to expand that, it's
going to be the lip end, okay.

So, now here's my
steam stick and

see it blow up,

so that expanded that. I need
to start that out a little,

so now I've got a nice swell to
it. Now we'll begin to open it

and I like to use a
wooden stick if I can,

because it doesn't show glass so
much. Okay, we've got a flare,
here we go now, this is going to
get

real sudden. So, I'm going to go
back, I'm going to reheat, I'm
going to spin it and I'm going
to (not understandable word).

One quick flash,

and I'm going over to
crack off now. You ready?

Now I will

smooth that out,

put a little extra
heat down here,

and we'll go into
the annealing oven.

That went in nice.

Harvey Littleton was a ceramics
instructor at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and they

wanted to see if they could come
up with a way for one or two
people to work with hot glass
and to

create art with it, and to take
it out of the realm of
utilitarian, and get it into the
realm of art.

I believe, about 1965, may have
been earlier, the first class
was offered at Madison,
Wisconsin. It was

in the Masters of Fine Arts
Program. The furnace that they
came up with to melt glass was
called

a Day Tank. Those of us that
started early used that design
of furnace for years and years
and

then in the factories, in order
to cool the glass and take all
of the stress out of it they had
a

unit called a Lehr. Essentially,
it was a metal conveyor belt
moving through a heat zone,

and it would go from
approximately a thousand degrees
fahrenheit, and by the time it
reached the

end it would be down to room
temperature. Of course, that
wouldn't work in a small studio,
so they came

up with an Annealing oven. Hot
glass, once it's melted and
formed, must be cooled, slowly,
but

before it can be slowly cooled,
it must be to held at a
temperature that's 50 degrees
below slumping.

Most glass slumps at around 1050
degrees, but it varies, and
there are ways to find out that

slumping temperature, but what
that Annealing point does, if
you hold it at that temperature

for up to an hour for thinner
pieces, weeks for other pieces -
heavy pieces,

then it relieves all the strains
that are going on inside of that
glass,

and it allows it then to be
cooled slowly and be stress-free
so that it doesn't just explode.

Here is one of my finished
pieces, you'll notice the metal
has all been darkened

with heat, the shade is
attached, and it's ready to be
in somebody's home.

We are at the Crossing Arts
Alliance Gallery and Shop in
Brainerd, Minnesota, at 711

Laurel Street. As an artist,
I've been making art for a very
long time.

I do art fairs and festivals,
and I sell my work there, but to
have a show set up

in a gallery where people can
come and visit and talk with me
and find out about my art,

where my art comes from, where I
came from, where my thought
process is, understanding the
inspiration

that drives me; well , without
Crossing Arts Alliance in
Brainerd, we would have no
resource, really,

to exhibit our work. One of the
things that the Crossing Arts
Alliance does, that Lisa Jordan

is so good at, is getting us out
in the public eye. The gallery
situation in Brainerd, and

the artists, didn't used to be
as visible as they are now. Lisa
Jordan has really done a great
job

of bringing this art, our art,
all of the artist's art, out to
the community.

Thank you so much for watching.
Join us again on Common Ground.
If you have an idea for Common

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of Common Ground, call

218-333-3020.

Production funding of Common
Ground was made possible, in
part, by First National Bank
Bemidji,

continuing their 2nd century of
service to the community. Member
FDIC.

Common Ground is brought to you
by the Minnesota Arts and
Cultural Heritage Fund

with money by the vote of
the people. November 4th, 2008.

If you watch Common Ground
online, consider becoming a
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