This year, I spent St. Patrick's Day at Locally Grown Art in Pittsboro, N.C. with Jonathan Davis. At 28, he's been making art from glass blowing and fire torching for eight years.
Jonathan blows a bubble of glass in front of his torch. This is the beginning of a wine glass bowl.
Here, Jonathan shapes the bowl with an iron tool. His blow torch gets up to 4,000 degrees, however, the studio was pretty cold because of his awesome ventilation system.
This picture makes me want to play with fire all day long. Here he spins the bowl to even out the imperfections in the glass.
Jonathan clamps of excess glass from a marble he made during my visit. This, unlike the wine glass bowl is solid glass.
Jonathan polishes the marble in a graphite tool that has a dimple for the marble to sit in.
The purple, carolina blue and orange marble at last! It was still a little hot to touch and could have shattered during the cooling process, but it survived!
You know you work hard when steam rises off your head. Yesterday, I had the opportunity through The Daily Tar Heel to follow a guy named Harold. Harold is a refuse collector and typically gathers bulk items and dead animals. I've never met a happier person who is thankful to have a job these days, even if you do have to pick up "Rockies" (squirrels) or "Bambi" (I'm going to leave you to decipher that one). I've also never met someone with as honest a personality as Harold, either. "If something besides rainwater comes out of this toilet, I'm going to shit a brick," he said as he moved 11 toilets from a bulk waste site.It's people like Harold who keep society moving forward without being stopped by smelly dead animals. THANKS HAROLD:)!