You couldn't help but feel the cool in the otherwise hot space of Magnolia's underground glassblowing center.
It's got no name. It's hidden away in an alley just beyond the neighborhood library and it's run by talented rebels named Jesse, Tony and Wolf. The three make just about everything out of glass, from pears, apples, pumpkins and grapes, to rockets, Grecian urns and bowls. They do it all with great assembly-line timing and with steady doses of Led Zepplin or Steely Dan pumping on the sound system.
Jesse Kelly is one of the bigger names in Puget Sound glass blowing. The 13-year veteran has worked all over the Puget Sound region and has learned from the best here (including his mother, Ginger Kelly, who lives in Louisiana and is a nationally celebrated artist) and abroad. He's been a key figure at Fremont's Glass Eye Studio, blown at The Glass Museum in Tacoma, where some of his work is for sale, and now is designing molds in the little known shop in Magnolia, owned by resident Doug McKinney.
His current partners, Wolfram Wysgoll and Tony Su, are helping him create dozens of bunches of grapes for an upcoming winery auction on the Eastside. They're also making pink pears that will be sold at various locations, including the gift shop at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October). A percentage of the proceeds will go toward fighting breast cancer.
"I know someone who works at the Cancer Care Alliance who is also an art patron and this is just another way to make people more aware," Su said. "
Watching the three work together is like watching an industrial ballet of sorts. Using a glass pipe, Wysgoll will pull the molten bulb of glass, or blank, from a crucible, and twirl it to keep its form and keep it from dripping like honey onto the concrete floor. He continues twirling and walks it over to a counter opposite and rolls the blank in a container of colored glass bits, then hands the blowpipe to Kelly who flashes or reheats the blank in another crucible blazing at 2,300 degrees. Kelly, as the lead glass blower, or gaffer, then pulls the blank out, gives it a quick puff at the cool end of the pipe and lowers it into a mold controlled by Su. Once in the mold, Su clamps it shut and Kelly blows more air through the pipe to make sure the shape is filled out.
Su unclamps the mold, Kelly pulls the pear-shaped glass bulb out, sits down and rolls the pipe on metal supports while smoothing and shaping the glass. He removes the pear from the pipe setting it on a heat resistant cloth. Su hands Kelly a blowpipe with fresh molten glass on it that Kelly uses to create the pear's stem.
Then Kelly puts the finished product in the annealing oven where, even at 900 degrees, completed glass goes to cool.
All the while, Wysgoll is already preparing another blank for Kelly and the ballet continues.
"You can make glass look like anything you want to," Kelly said, "from metal to wood to-"
"-a pink pear," Wolf interjects, much to Kelly and Su's amusement.
Glassblowing is a profession that isn't easy. There's the $300 to $400 a month on the electric bill, the heady cost of supplies and the energy to focus at all times. There's also the chance of severe burns. But Kelly, who dresses for glassblowing like he's going to the beach: sunglasses, navy tank top, cargo shorts and periwinkle Crocs, said if you find you're getting burnt a lot, you might want to consider another career.
Kelly loves blowing glass. You can see his passion when he curls the stem of one of his fruit molds. You can hear the passion and respect when he talks about the greats, under some of whom he has trained. One was Lino Tagliapietra, one of, if not the best glassblower in the world, who makes his home in Murano, Italy, considered the world's capital of Venetian glass blowing.
"I've worked with the Lino team whenever he's been in town," Kelly said. "It's an amazing privilege. Watching him work is the best ever. He taught me about the beauty of glass not the form, to make a personal connection with glass. He taught me the choreography of glass."
Kelly doesn't anticipate making a lot of money this month on the pink pears, but that's not the idea. He, Wysgoll and Su see it as merely a good deed. Plus, it's good exposure, in a city that has become, even more than Murano, the epicenter of glass blowing, thanks largely to Dale Chihuly and his studio Pilchuck Glass launched in the early 1970s.
Kelly wants to continue doing those sorts of jobs though, working with wineries and perhaps other philanthropies.
But pursuing wineries and large scale projects make sense. He's a family man now, (married to fellow glass artist Megan Van Sanden whom he met while they both worked at Glass Eye) has a 2-year-old son, and has to be practical.
One of his biggest coups has been a deal with Nordstrom. For two years, he supplied roughly 2,000 pears, apples and bowls for display at the flagship store downtown and about 60 other locations in the country.
"I want to own a shop before I'm 35 years old," said the 32-year-old glass blower. "I like Woodinville; that would be ideal."
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