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I
never had an early interest in glass in particular but always had an
interest in creativity.
Sometimes, I’m not too sure where it’s going; but for me,
it’s
all about being able to make
what I want, when I want, and keep it moving
until I can no longer do so. I took the scenic
route on the way to working
with glass. I was always interested in the visual arts and music,
and
in 1976, I started my education at Kent State University with a major
in painting. During
this time, I had a weekend job as a groundskeeper
at Hale Farm, an early American historical
village just outside of Kent,
Ohio. It was there that I was literally thrown into glassblowing.
Hale Farm
has a small glass shop along with other craft areas for visitors to walk
around
and ponder. One afternoon,
the head gaffer at the glass shop walked off the job after getting
into
a tiff with the grounds manager. The manager looked at me and said, “Hunting,
get over
to the glass studio and give the guy a hand.” The next
thing I knew, I was gathering hot,
molten glass out of a replica of a
historic furnace.
When the next semester started at KSU, I
found out from a friend that the college actually
had a glass-arts program. There weren’t a lot of universities
that offered glass as an art
medium in the late 1970s, and it was there
that I took my first steps into being educated
in glass art. Henry Halem ran the
program on a very
tight budget at that point in time,
and I must say dealt up the best
education a young guy could imagine.
Henry was good friends with most
of the well-known glass artists, and he brought
in many
of them for workshops. Between
1977 and 1979,
I attended workshops and worked with the
likes of Fritz Dreisbach, Dick
Marquis, Steve Weinberg, Bert van Loo, Marvin Lipofsky,
Dale Chihuly
(with William Morris as gaffer), Joel Myers, and the late Bud Hurlstone.
KSU
was a place of great creative energy that produced many
talented artists in their own right.
I look back
at that period fondly and was lucky to have been part of the madness.
1980 was a banner year for me. I went to
the Penland School of Crafts on an assistant
scholarship with Rick Bernstein
and ended up working for Richard Ritter as a full-time
assistant for
around six months. He taught me about making glass color and millefiori.
Penland has always been a Mecca for studio glass artists.
In the early 1980s, I visited
many private glass studios and got
to meet with or had the pleasure of assisting many
of them in
the eight months I was there: Mark Peiser, Billy Bernstein, Gary Beecham,
Steve Edwards, Rob Levin, and Harvey Littleton to name a few.
In February of 1981, I traveled to Italy for two months
to experience the Italian glass
scene. My main stops were in
Venice and Murano. When I returned, I moved to Chicago.
I
had planned to build my own hot-glass studio somewhere, and Chicago seemed
to be a
logical place to do so. Wrong!
Chicago proved to be the most difficult place to open up a
shop in the
world. The fire codes were unbelievably strict, but I managed to finally
set up
shop at 2710 North Lakewood. It was there that I opened Hunting Studio
Glass in the
summer
of 1982.
The birth of my son, Wesley Justin, in 1987
gave my life new purpose. I left the big city
for
a more peaceful setting and bought
a nice piece of property in central Wisconsin just
outside of Princeton.
Once I settled in, I found I had more time to focus on my
work, and
that became evident in the detail and coloration that began
to emerge. The development of
some of this work is documented
below.
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