when they're making art work.

You wanna be in tune with the movement of the glass.

And this beautiful rotation.

You're centering your thoughts,

and you're centering your body.

And you have those moments

where you're only making your glass

and you're at one with it.

It's beautiful.

My name's Lisa Aronzon,

I am a glass blower.

We're in my glass studio in Broadway, Virginia

which is located in the Shenandoah Valley.

The first steps in glass blowing

are turning on the ovens and prepping my tools.

The furnace is always on.

That's where the glass is kept.

The glass comes in these 50 pound bags.

I'm gonna be putting it into the charging chute.

I've got a crucible inside the chamber of the furnace.

That's where the glass lives.

We'll fill it up once a week.

It maintains a temperature of about 2,000 degrees.

After I've got the equipment coming up to temperature

I need to prepare my color for the day.

Most people think the color is a paint.

It's not a paint, it's actually colored glass

that's been formulated by chemists.

It can come in powder,

it can come in bar color,

which can then be sawed up into chunks for me to preheat

in the color oven.

Then I will gather up a little bit of glass

from the furnace, open the color oven,

pick up our pieces of color.

One of the aspects of colored glass

is when it's hot it looks black

so we need to know where all the colors are

and they have a specific slot in the pipe warmer.

Now each time we go into the furnace

I'm gonna turn the pipe into my clear glass

and wind it onto the end of the blow pipe.

Like putting honey on a spoon,

that's called taking a gather.

And we count our gathers so we know how much glass we have.

So I'm gonna be taking a gather of clear glass.

I'll go right into my crushed up white color,

which gives me a base coat.

Then I'm going to shape and cool that bubble

to a point where it's warm enough

to accept the color that my assistant Chad

is then gonna bring over to me at the bench,

where I'm going to be directing the color where I want it

on the bubble.

Alright, I'm gonna do little dots, Chad.

I'm dialoguing with the piece,

and I let it just be that free.

Like am I gonna make a circle

or am I gonna make a squiggle?

And Chad actually assists me with this.

He'll help hold the pipe and make sure

that I can get a really nice crisp circle.

Color is my biggest thing, I love color.

And so whenever I even talk about glass blowing

I'm always talking about painting with the glass.

I was inspired by stained glass windows.

Especially from the 13th century.

Finding my own voice came from looking

at what interested me.

Art history and nature, these are my biggest influences.

The glass blowing bench is where the gaffer sits.

The person blowing is a gaffer.

I've been able to work with Chad Kaufman for five years now.

He had a degree in glass.

The thing about glass blowing is years of practice.

It can take up to 10 years to actually become skilled

enough to be able to make it work.

And it is time on the bench.

I listen to the radio when I'm alone in my studio.

And there was a speech from the president

asking America at large to help our veterans

come home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

And so I thought, what if all the glass studios I know about

came together and offered a class to veterans

as a fun introduction into our craft?

All of the studios, they all jumped on it.

I started with 25 schools across the country

and it's been going on for three years now.

After I finish the color work,

I'm going to encase the color with one more gather of clear.

When I take that gather I immediately go to the bench.

We block that gather and we're gonna be cooling it

and shaping it so that the bubble will blow evenly

when we put the air into it.

The wooden blocks are made out of hardwood.

It's like a ladle and it needs to be kept wet.

Because it's wet when it touches the glass

it actually creates a layer of steam.

The steam will take the heat away from the block

and not burn it.

And the same with the newspaper.

If it's kept wet, the glass will ride along

and not burn through.

That's why I have the ability to use the newspaper

and not burn my hand.

It's the closest you come to being able to touch the glass.

After I've used the block to shape and cool

we're just gonna be heating the glass

where I want it to move

and cooling where I want it to stay still.

Alright, blow Chad.

Stop.

So incrementally we're gonna be getting this bigger,

starting to expand the bubble now.

For this particular vase I want a cone shape.

So I heat the bottom part of the ball.

I have to hang the piece down using gravity

and centrifugal force, and I'm letting the ball

go from ball shape to cone naturally.

Then Chad prepares the lip wrap.

This wrap is like a frame or a finishing touch

on the edge of the piece.

And that went on beautifully, yay!

Once that's done we can continue to open the piece.

And that's continuously heating

and then going back to the bench and using the newspaper

to shape, and we're getting the glass hot enough

to manipulate, and then we call it spinning it out,

and dropping it down,

which then gives me the ruffle.

After we've ruffled the piece

we'll use the torch at the bottom to get that area warm

and then get an even temperature throughout the whole thing

down to around a thousand,

and I take successive heats,

usually two or three.

Then when I tap my pipe the vibration will crack

the piece off.

Chad, he's gonna be placing the piece

in a 900 degree oven where the piece needs to cool

for 12 hours to make sure there's no internal stress

in the glass.

The next day it's at room temperature.

I can take the piece out of the oven

and then I have to grind the bottom on a,

we call it a lap wheel.

When it breaks off the punty there is actually

a little remnant of glass.

And that has to be ground off and then the piece

can stand up straight.

The very last thing I would do to a piece

is use a engraving tool and sign my name, and date it.

Afternoon light is always kind of beautiful

coming into a piece of glass 'cause it'll come down

at a lower angle, and light the piece

as if from within.

People think, oh, they'll see my vase,

and they'll say "I don't wanna touch it."

And I say to them,

you touch glass every day.

You pick up a water glass without thinking about it.

My pieces are utilitarian, I want them

to put their fruit in it, and have it as everyday beauty,

something that they live with and use,

and not be fearful that it's too precious

and that it needs to be on a pedestal.