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Jon Offutt has worked for years
developing his glass-blowing skills to capture
the shapes, the colors, and the light of the plains.
His inspiration comes from gazing across the prairie,
his interpretation is stunning works of art
in the form of blown glass.
[acoustic guitar plays in bright rhythm]
I get up fairly early in the morning
and come out to the shop, and light the studio on fire.
It takes about an hour and a half for things to warm up.
During that time I empty the ovens
of the work I made the day before, pick out the colors.
This is one of my favorite sounds,
the glass rods have their own.
And kind of previsualize what I'm going to make for the day.
Do all the makeready so that when my assistant shows up,
we're ready to go, and then we'll start
whatever the project is for the day.
Go ahead Dave, if it's ready.
I started out in Fargo Public Schools, down at
the Creative Arts Studio; did a lot of clay down there.
That little blob of glass is close to 2000 degrees right now.
That's where I found my love for the vessel form.
The hotter the glass gets, the softer it becomes.
When I transferred to Moorhead State,
they had glass as an elective.
When I tried it, the process is so much more immediate,
the feedback loop is so fast, that it was
just much more suited to my personality.
I use the friction of the table, the torque on that pipe,
to twist that color up a little bit.
So I've worked up the primary color.
The learning curve on blowing glass is very, very frustrating.
Dave's heating up one of the accent colors.
There's a lot of smashing that happens at the beginning.
A lot of things fall off the stick
and get stuck to the door,
and there's very little success
for the first couple of years of doing this.
Most of the work that I do is decorative, and I'll call it
art with a small "a" versus art with a big "a."
It's not about content
and message and emotion.
It's about being well-crafted and functional.
We use a lot of strange tools--
leather punches and cordless drills.
It depends on what you want to see.
It's relating to the material.
I have a lot of visual interest going on in that little button.
But some of it can be engineering.
Usually it's more reverse engineered.
I want to see this piece, how, what are the steps
that it's going to take me to get to here?
We're going to start up now; Dave'll take the pipe
and pick up some white powder and heat.
When we start something new, there's a lot more communication
as to what to do and when to do it.
(Jon) Dave and I are the only skilled hands
for a couple hundred miles.
So there's the two of us.
If there there five of us, the work would probably be
larger and more complex.
I'm really enamored with the landscapes, um,
they continue to get more complex and bigger in scale.
They're so representational
and they have some interest in the land
and there's some depth to the sky.
That orange color is because it is so hot,
start to pick up that blue.
Technically they're very challenging,
so they're fun for me to do for that reason.
So that created the sky.
And they do have an emotive quality.
People can look at them and recognize them
and say oh yes, this is a July day,
or this is a spring morning.
So there is some art in the more recent work.
The bread and butter of the craftwork
that allows me to keep my skills up and keep my studio running,
so that when I do want to turn my attention to sculpture
or something more emotive, I have those skills,
I have the facility to do that.
So on that scale, I've created all of the visual elements
that are going to be in this piece.
Being able to think creatively.
So now I'll put another layer of clear glass over that.
Being able to make an aesthetic judgment.
Drip a little bit of that off of there.
Is that beautiful or is it not?
Is that good or is it not? Is that quality?
Do you want to fill your life with quality things?
So it's like a little landscape already.
Each step, um, over the last two months,
I've really been working on the land.
Start by moving it around with the table.
I think I have it down where I want it now,
and I can accomplish what I want to see.
I'll finish shaping with
just a small section of folded newspaper.
So I'm going to turn my attention
to variations in the sky, variations in the clouds.
I'll go ahead, add a little pressure here,
and the sky's gonna get bigger.
Four times a year I'll make something that I like so much
that I'll sign my last name to it.
Most of my work is just signed "Jon,"
and there's a few of my pieces that go out
that are signed "Jon Offutt" on the bottom.
Point it down and let it stretch a little bit,
a little bit of centrifugal force,
pull that out a little bit longer.
Would I like to be doing it in ten years?
I hope to be doing it in ten years.
I'm good.
I hope to take on another apprentice.
Little puff.
Have more help so that I can accomplish what I want to see.
Stop.
This is what makes life worth living.
Don't try to make a living at it; it's a crazy, crazy way to--
it's-- it shouldn't be a profession.
It should be something you love to do.