2024, Boyd Sugiki and Lisa Zerkowitz at Hot Haus Glass Studio
Boy and Lisa came to Melbourne in 2024 to run a masterclass in glass fundamentals at my home studio, Hot Haus.
The class brought together 10 students, Emma Young, Alexandra Hirst, Carmen Skeehan (SA), Rob Schwarz, Hugo Curtis (ACT), Ann Kremen (NZ), Rosie Gatliff Francis and Myself (VIC) along with Mariella McKinley as Teaching Assistant and ran over a week during late October.
Boy and Lisa, world renowned for their teaching ability, spent 6 days returning us as students to the basics of simple forms and colour preparation. Day 1 was spent solely on cups, from simple cups to optic cups, with additional time learning to make internal and external folds. Day 2 looked at larger cylinders and began to marry the internal and external folds with the cylinders to create lidded jars. Day 3 we spent exploring the garden and galleries of Heide MOMA while the furnace was loaded ready for Day 4. Day 4 looked at bowls and colour application, using the bowl technique to play with cloches and other wide forms. Day 5, the final day for blowing, culminated in goblets, cane colour applications and more complex vessels built up from the simple forms studied earlier in the week. The sixth day was an open invitation demonstration blow where they created a range of pieces based upon the forms and techniques bought in the class.
Before the week began, my dear friend, boss and mentor told me she was convinced “some things would start to click” after this class. She was not wrong.
Glass appears as this mystical, amorphous thing that cannot be learned and cannot be mastered, it requires such an immense level of skill that before the skill is apprehended, it is often only seen as non-existent. After this class I had managed to de-mystify several skills I had never understood before, and advanced my basic fundamentals dramatically. It was as if I realized after that I had never really dialogued with the glass before, instead only shouting or being shouted at by the glass until now. Boyd and Lisa taught to directly, the information was simple, using a combination of drawings, film, speaking through the process as well as physical demonstrations. As someone highly interested in pedagogy, who has taught beginner classes and often spends time in a mixed world of peers some more-skilled and smoke less-skilled, I am always thinking about how to teach better and how to share my knowledge in the most efficient way. Boyd and Lisa provided not-just a masterclass for practitioners of glass, but for people like me wanting to learn how to help others learn.
The saturday was followed by drinks and dinner at a pub across the road from an antique tool store. we all went in in search of calipers, they shopkeeper asked us what we did and perked up when we said we were glassblowers. He ran out the back and grabbed a pair of rusted old jacks and said we could have them for $25.
I took them home, cleaned them up to reveal the maker (Jim Moore) and a small signature from the previous owner. Turns out they were the jacks of a man named Paul Kelsey, Laurel went to Monash university with him in the late 90s! It just reminded me how small and beautiful the glassblowing world is, we’re only ever a degree of separation away from anyone else.
