Lee Baldwin visits Jim Antonius

Dances with Glass

By Lee Baldwin, May, 2005

You're standing in the glassworks studio of Jim Antonius, holding a long metal pipe. There's a lump of glass on the other end. You find the lump of glass very heavy, requiring considerable effort merely to hold it off the floor. Then you notice that the blob glows yellow-hot, it's actually molten, heat from it stinging your hands and face. Before you can think what to do the hot liquid flows, hissing, to the concrete.

Nothing that most of us are taught prepares for this, gathering a flowing blob of liquid glass at over 2100 degrees Fahrenheit and handling it properly, let alone making something beautiful out of it. Yet this is what Antonius does, and teaches, every day. Jim Antonius dances with glass.


The Warriors
Mouth-blown glass, 84 in. X 36 in. X 4 in.
Blown glass forms mounted on hammered metal rod.



Antonius began working with glass in 1969, and later attended Pilchuck Glass Center in Washington State, studying glass design with the German master Johannes Schrieter. A memorable lesson from Schreiter included holding a piece of cardboard with a hole in it over ordinary objects and asking: What do you see?

Schreiter wanted students to get the essentials from what is perceived without allowing the left brain to make a simple association. Through the hole, Antonius saw linear patterns and a relationship of different shapes that made an interesting design.

Antonius sees glass blowing as a deft performance, moving between the melting crucible to the blowing bench to the glory hole repeatedly, shaping the glass in measured steps. Antonius moves swiftly and expertly, guiding the glass instead of forcing it, heating parts with a torch, cooling others with a blast of air, coaxing the glass into the shape he visualizes.

Antonius prefers to keep the physical properties of glass at center stage, while with careful subtlety he imparts the technical moves learned over a lifetime to his intuitive wishes for the hot, developing glass form.

Although he's created thousands of glass artworks over the last four decades, Antonius does not call himself an artist. He's happy simply to make glass, regarding the viewer as the artist, and feels honored if someone applies the term to him. But when people view his work, Antonius does want something definite, even if it's not positive. He would prefer a negative response from a viewer rather than anything lukewarm. Antonius is about heat.

Adjunct professor for the glass arts program at Prescott College, Antonius has much to say about teaching in the arts, remarking that past standards of what constitutes "good" in art constructs a maze of "should-dos" that are limiting to students. He would rather tell young artists not to imitate what they see.

The mantra he teaches about hot glass, the guiding principle, is heat, mass, and memory. If two parts of a superheated form are at different temperatures, that temperature difference will last for some time even as the whole cools or is re-heated. The glass "remembers." A relatively cooler area of the mass will expand more slowly when blown than will a hot one, so the hot portion will become larger. Similarly, a thicker, more massive portion of the form will stay hot and thus more fluid than a thinner section. Heat, mass, memory.

"Glass blowing makes you efficient," Antonius points out, "because there is no second chance. If you want to improvise as a glass blower, you must have practiced a body of technique so thoroughly that it's unconscious." The hot glass artist must be able to call forth a given move, influence or effect upon the glass at will, because shaping what is essentially molten sand is a performance art in which technique must be unconscious yet instantly available.

Antonius, pushed by curiosity and the desire for innovation, has developed a broad technical palette. A partial recounting of his methods includes abrasive etching, engraving, beveling, leaded glass fabrication, fusing and slumping, glass painting, bead making, glue chipping and, of course, glass blowing. The complete list is more lengthy still, all of it available to his work and teaching.



Not interested in decorative arts per se, Antonius would rather his work make a statement. "Not another perfect glass goblet," Antonius remarks, as his quest lies in finding new corners to turn. He wants his work to be technically challenging and, most importantly, to generate an emotional response. Although the finished form is frozen, inert and motionless, he wants viewers to sense his love of the dance, the unrehearsed ballet, wherein many technical steps chosen through intuition create an original effect.

Antonius wonders, "How many times can we replicate a cowboy lassoing a steer?" He likes to achieve work that is technically difficult, and appreciates the response, 'How did he do that?' The only thing this artist seems to want from his work, as his key achievement, will come if his work is recognizable.

You can decide that for yourself at the following galleries:

Van Gogh's Ear Gallery
156 South Montezuma St.
Prescott, AZ 86303
928 776 1080

Norby Gallery
6268 East Cave Creek Road Suite 4
Cave Creek, AZ 85331
800 216 6699

And on Jim Antonius' website.