—Josh Ries, resident artist at Art of Fire Studio
Making magic has fired the imagination of Foster Holcombe for 30 years. Inside a converted 1950s dairy barn in Montgomery County hill country, the master glassblower, wife Theda Hansen, and five resident artists practice an alchemy that transforms molten blobs of glass into striking—if strikingly fragile—art and functional ware.
The Buffalo native got his start way back in 1978 at the Pilchuck Glass School. The Pacific Northwest landmark sizzled with genius, guided by one-eyed visionary Dale Chihuly. Holcombe listened, learned, grew. After an extended U.K. apprenticeship, he returned stateside and dedicated day and night to one of those hard-to-learn, harder-to-master disciplines known as “art.”
Today, his studio is a Maryland landmark. And a rarity, too. Seattle may boast more than 1,000 “hot shops,” but Art of Fire is one of perhaps only a handful in the Free State. Explaining this startling left coast-right coast disparity, Holcombe shrugs, “Different cultures.” But there are signs that a Mid-Atlantic renaissance is in the making.
Holcombe makes blowing glass look as effortless as a child blowing bubbles, moving with an assurance and speed not typically associated with 2,300-degree objects. Watching him literally sweat the details, one understands how glassblowers suffer for their art, toiling in a Dantesque inferno where glass flows like molasses and furnaces blast out heat four times hotter than your kitchen broiler.
Says resident artist Josh Ries, “In summer, it’s 120 degrees inside here, the worst experience you can imagine. It’s like sitting under the July sun—times 10.”
Ries began apprenticing five years ago as a college student. His addiction to this mystical practice dating back 20 centuries was instant. Chucking his sociology texts, he began the first of hundreds of marathon commutes from his Pennsylvania home. Dad, a truck driver, cast a “skeptical” eye on his new career path. It was so out there. So impractically arty. Today, he’s enthused.
Hot glass does that. It woos, beguiles. Chalk it up to artistic pyromania, but the power to pull dazzling works of art from a raging furnace seduces. Success is immediate. A pottery project may take days to complete—and a watercolor, weeks—but a glassblower can create a curio-worthy centerpiece in 20 minutes. And art glass has a huge following. Says Art of Fire student Heather Rowe, “Whenever my mom comes to visit my place, she steals my glass.”
Holcombe’s facility is a major East Coast learning center, but he limits annual enrollment to 100 students. Getting schooled in the fundamentals is key. “You don’t pick up an instrument and start improvising jazz,” he says. “It takes two to five years working on a continual basis, 30-40 hours a week, to become extremely proficient.”
Early on, students make a big discovery: Glass isn’t a solid at all. It’s a “super-cooled liquid” always in motion. Huh.
Ries spent “thousands of dollars” on his glass education. Today, his knowledge of sociology may be so-so, but he has a passion few ever know.
That, and he can make a kid’s mouth hang wide open.
To learn more about the Art of Fire Studio visit their website at www.artoffire.com.
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