Tacoma WA: The Hot Shop was housed in a conical shaped building, attached to the
Museum of Glass, but clearly set apart, as if to both invite and warn visitors of it's unique attributes. We had read of this place in our traveling bible, "
1,000 Places To See Before You Die" in which Patricia Schultz wrote, "Unless you've been to the thousand-year-old glass furnaces on Venice's island of Murano, you most likely have never seen anything like this." And we have yet to visit Venice... so were duly impressed!
Passing through the entrance to the Hot Shop, one is struck by the wall of heat radiating from the yet to be seen 2,100°F furnace that contains a pool of liquified glass. We had to make our way around a barely lit rounded wall, giving one of the vibe of traveling deeper into a cavern that held the contents of a boiling lava pit - and it felt like it!
After taking a "hot seat" up front in the viewing gallery we began to realize the intensity of the process which is involved in artistic glass making. Dale Chihuly, the world famous glass artist once said, "Glass is the most magical of all materials. It transmits light in a special way." And we agree - particularly as we observed molten balls of glass emerge from the furnace, then watched the artist use a blowpipe to breathe life into it.
Creating works of art from molten glass truly is a team effort - one which we never had observed in person. While we had watched episodes of the Netflix series "
Blown Away" - it is a totally difference experience to be immersed in the visceral process of glass artists at work in person. You can literally feel the intensity of the process, hear the searing sound of sweat dripping off the artist's forehead onto the red hot glass and smell the blow torch gases as they react react with the glass.
Later as we walked through the Museum, we had a far deeper appreciation for the amount of focused patience, persistence and passion these glass works of art embodied in the finished product.
Nelson Mandela said "There is no passion to be found playing small--in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living." And there was no doubt that these glass artists were living large - and it turned up the heat for us to more fully expand our personal potentialities... in the Hot Shop of Life!
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Photo Captions (in order of appearance)...
1) glass artisan uses a torch to form the glass
2) The Hot Shop Building
3) The Furnace with the molten glass
4) Some of the members of the Hot Shop team
5) One of Dale Chihuly's imposing works of glass art in the Museum
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