Lauren Justice
Professor Helen Lee, left, works on a glass goblet with help from graduate student Anna Lehner.
The artists call it “the glory hole.” It’s one of three furnaces essential for glassmaking, used to reheat glass while a piece is being worked on. On this late November day, inside the Glass Lab on North Frances Street, the glory hole is burning at 2,150 degrees Fahrenheit. The door is open and the inside glows a molten orange. Helen Lee, assistant professor of UW-Madison’s art glass program, stands next to it, holding a blowpipe with a partially-made goblet at the end of it.
Lee gives a warning: “Assume any metal surface could be hot.”
While Lee is often in the Glass Lab teaching undergraduate students glassblowing, this is her time to practice techniques like the ones needed to form a goblet. “There was a time when this was all I made over and over and over again,” Lee says. “But I haven’t made it in a long time.”
Working with Lee is Anna Lehner, a third year MFA graduate student and Lee’s project assistant. “It’s rare to work solo and I don’t teach it that way,” Lee says. “It’s safer to have an assistant.” Lee and Lehner move around each other as if in a choreographed dance; often there is no need to speak. Lee takes the lead as Lehner anticipates her moves and provides, without prompting, more molten glass, a blowtorch, or a metal tool to smash off imperfect parts.
But sometimes they do consult. “There is a reasonable chance this goblet is going to fall off,” Lee says.
Lee came to UW in the fall of 2013 when she was offered the assistant professor position and “couldn’t say no.” It was her first job in academia. She fell in love with glassblowing as a teenager at a Massachusetts art camp. “We made paperweights, cups, vases ... standard beginner stuff,” Lee says. “But it was mesmerizing and so other worldly. Glass moves in a way no other material moves.”
After receiving a degree in architecture design from MIT, where she spent every minute of her spare time blowing glass through an extracurricular program, Lee earned a master of fine arts degree in glass from the Rhode Island School of Design. She then worked in the private sector in design but when the job opening at the UW came up she threw her hat in the ring. “All other glass programs that exist in the country are based on this one,” Lee says.
UW Madison’s program, the first university-based art glass program in the nation, was founded in 1962 by the late Harvey K. Littleton, who joined UW in 1951 to teach ceramics. At a time when glassblowing was done almost exclusively in factories, “he revolutionized the idea that the studio artist could have access to working with glass,” Lee says.
Lehner started blowing glass as an art student at UW-Stevens Point and came to UW Madison for graduate school specifically for its glass program. “My body feels connected to the material,” Lehner says. “I’m more aware of gravity here [in the Glass Lab] than anywhere else.”
In the second year of her master’s program, Lehner began to branch out to other departments, studying earthquakes with a professor in the geoscience department. “I am now using glass from New Zealand that is created through the friction of tectonic plates,” Lehner says.
“What makes UW exceptional is that it’s a glass program within the context of a huge research university,” Lee says. “There is a real exchange of information.”
Lee and Lehner work on the goblet for several hours today, continuously remaking it. Although today was just for practice, Lee says: “Sometimes I keep [the pieces] and sometimes I recycle them.” But today's goblet now sits on the lab’s demo shelf.
Next public event: Glass ornament sale and glassblowing demonstration, Dec. 15-16, 9 a.m.- 5 p.m., 111 N. Frances St.; all proceeds support UW glass students to further their education by funding field trips and supplies.
Undergraduate and graduate students in the UW glass (and neon) program: 34
Temperature at which glass starts to get soft: 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit
Glass the furnace can hold: 700 pounds
