Billups Design

Just outside Chicago’s Humboldt Park at North Central Park and Potomac Avenue, I approached a somewhat clandestine warehouse where a burly man donning all the gear you’d a imagine a Hell’s Angel to have in his closet—plus the imperative lengthy grey beard—stood outside.  He tugged on his golden retriever’s leash.

I’m not a dog person (you can blame my parents for never getting me one), so I instinctively took a step back for every one I took forward as the retriever leapt toward me with thick drool flinging from its mouth.

“Hot Glass?”  the Hell’s Angel asked me.

“Uh…yeah!” I answered.

The Angel opened the door, the retriever jumped through and I followed the gruesome twosome into the warehouse.

Through a dim concrete hallway and past a chalkboard with scribblings of classes offered, the space opened up like the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin (Not familiar with this?  Think claustrophobic sand avalanche turns glorious high-ceilinged work space.  An English-speaking Arabian tiger may or may not be involved.  God, I love Disney.)

This place is an adult’s playground; everything that your parents told you not to do as a kid is happening right here:

Rock music playing too loud. Check

Massive fire in open oven.  Check

Men playing with fire.  Check.

That’s just how glass blowing goes at Chicago Hot Glass.   It’s the Harley Davidson of fine art.  It requires the obvious artistic eye and technical skill.  But it also demands the cajones to brave the burns.

And like the diamond in the rough warehouse we were in (another Aladdin reference.  Now I’m just that girl who’s obsessed with Aladdin), the process of making a refined, smooth, beautiful piece of glasswork is a crude and callous one.  As much as the finished projects may look as if they were begotten in an artist’s loft so white it glows celestial, Chicago Hot Glass is far from heavenly with multiple fires burning and men spinning glass on something reminiscent of a devil’s pitchfork.

After the Hell’s Angel disappeared into his glass-making haven, I met up with John Barbagallo, a similarly bearded man minus the dog. There was no doubt in my mind he didn’t also ride a motorcycle.  He assured me immediately that Chicago Hot Glass was the best place to be—Chicago’s only public glass studio on the brink of expanding for more studio space for lamp and bead making.

I admired his enthusiasm to make the hard sell.

“So how long have you worked here?” I asked John.

He shrugged, looked around the place as if it were Christmas morning and this is what family and home truly meant, “I don’t work here.”

My pen stopped moving, and I looked up.

“Yeah, I took an eight week class and never left.”

Now that’s love.

John then led me past the artist, Joseph Ivacic leading a private lesson and guiding his pupil as he blew through the long pipe to expand the molten-hot glass.

He took to me to a wall with metal shelving barricading an entire back corner and lined with unfinished glass pieces of every color and every shape.  John showed me his work which he explained he’d been working on for a very long time now.

“It looks finished to me!” I praised.

But he assured me that there was much much much more refining to do.  My eye caught an orange vase with a post-it reading “Not For Sale…Yet”.

“There’s a lucky few who manage to pursue a career in this.”

That’s when John passed me on to Pearl Dick, a resident artist at the Habitat Gallery who also teaches classes at Chicago Hot Glass. Pearl is cool looking and could probably also rides a motorcycle.

She shows me her collection of heads she’s been working on since 1997.

She tells me it’s still not done, and as she explains the process of creation, I get the feeling it will never be done. You start with an idea. You try to execute it.  And when something inevitably goes wrong—you get one shot to work with the glass at the perfect temperature—you either become inspired by its flaw, or bust.  Pearl noted that it’s the “happy accidents that propel you forward.”

My inner monologue: kinda like children.

Glass blowing is mind blowing.  I don’t have enough breath to blow up birthday party balloons let alone an orb of molten glass.  But there are people around Chicago who find solace here, who enjoy the risk in the craft, the burns, the inevitable mistakes and the refining, refining and refining.

There is something about taking an ingredient so basic and natural as sand and creating decadent art.  Out of the studio, the best glass pieces find home in lavish apartments, museums and galleries.  As for Chicago Hot Glass’s students, they bring their work home, a trophy from the underworld of art, no doubt, carried home on motorcycles.

Chicago Hot Glass is located at 1250 North Central Park Avenue

Chicago, IL 60651 | (773) 394-3252

Find out more about CHG and classes www.chicagohotglass.com

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