Mike Tonder, Blue Skies Glassworks

I think over the years people have always gone to the water to the shore to contemplate things it helps put things into somewhat of a perspective and gives you a calm quiet place to think and that's what I wanted to create there in that space and it was the additional challenge because it could be viewed from fairly close or quite some distance when you're up in that second second floor you can see it from a long ways away I'm miked onder I am kiln form glass artist from the city of Two Harbors what i'm doing here is i'm cutting roughly a two inch wide strip and then splitting it with this curved line and sort of notice to just how the color starts changing some of the beauty of glass is that it the interaction with with the material and light just changes it all the time i mean just in the course of a day the way the light hits it will little change the pieces are laid flat on their back when they're going to be fired and then they may you know fold one way or the other but i know by setting the stage for that i'm going to get some motion you know glass is I think people see it as sort of a harsh unforgiving material you know but but there's that soft stage of it where it's totally malleable and workable you yeah that's a that's a good piece this will probably be the top of the piece here particularly because I like this little drip that's going over this way yeah that should work I'm going to make the first cut right about there I want to get at least some feeling that I can do it technically and then from that point on then I start working on the aesthetic part of it so now I have piece number one piece number two put them together and it's sort of that continuous line just going right around there and I'll just do a little sandblasting to get those two edges you know these these little edges to line up I think it's going to work you know all of them are decorative pieces but having something that relates to a functional piece becomes a good entry point for people to say oh it's a bowl well I don't know if I can make a good living but I can make a darn good life and I think that's a real important thing for young artists to see and once you have your skills and you bought your tools I mean there's there's always something you can do I like it you funding for the playlist is provided by the citizens of Minnesota through the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and by viewers like you you

Channel: ThePlaylistWDSE

Views: 1,157,507

Rating: 4.8250823 out of 5

Keywords: Mike Tonder, Two Harbors, The PlayList, WDSE, art, fused glass, sculpture, 313, onwebsite

Id: BrZyUtkjURQ

Length: 3min 49sec (229 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2012