As I sit in front of my screen mulling over what I should continue with in this ongoing glass adventure. I think I’ve described a bit of what life was like at the Glass Lab at the U. of Wisconsin. I should also give you a brief view of what life was like in Madison, WI as well. The year being early 1969 and the Viet Nam war raging with the worst yet to come. Madison was experiencing many student demonstrations opposing the war as well as Tricky Dick Nixon our infamous president. I participated in a few of those demonstrations but found myself tiring of walking up and down State St. chanting slogans. Don’t get me wrong I was vehemently opposed to the war but wanted to get on with my life as an artist. My live in girl friend Sandy was working at the local TV station channel 15 WMTV writing ads and also writing speeches for the station manager Tom Bolger and on top of that editing Harvey’s book. What was my/our future to be? What it was to be serendipitously unfolded one bright sunny Monday morning at the glass lab on Monroe St.

Scene 1, Monday morning March 3, 1969
I was no longer Harvey’s assistant and did not have any assistantship responsibilities but since I did not have any other classes but glass I took it upon myself to get to the lab in the morning and make sure all was set for our class. I had emptied out the annealing ovens of the small cups and whatnots and then made sure to turn the annealers on again for the morning class. Turning on the annealing ovens meant turning a knob that was nothing more than a range control. By range control I mean a knob with numbers from 1 to 10 and a low and high position. (See image below). These range controls were replacement parts for electric stoves and were obtained from the W.W. Grainger company. The range control worked by turning the elements on and off. The higher the number the more often the elements turned on and off and the hotter the oven would get. Keeping a consistent temperature meant keeping an eye out so that the temperature in the annealer did not get so hot that all the work would end up as a puddle. The oven temperature was viewed on a pyrometer that had a type K thermocouple attached to it. The pyrometer hung next to the oven so that it could easily be viewed. The digital world was a long way off. We were in the midst of an analog world. I made sure the glass was hot and the tools and blocks were at each of the benches. I recall the block buckets needed emptying and refilling as they had become really smelly. Once you smell a rancid block bucket you never forget it. Getting everything ready didn’t take long and when done I would retire to the couch that sat at the front of the lab and read the morning paper.

Scene 2, The Telephone Call
It was a Monday the sun was shining and it was probably 10 or 11 a.m. when the telephone rang. Telephone, you know one of those black table top phones that have a dial on it with holes that revealed letters and numbers, a hand set that you picked up and held to your ear, and a cord snaking to a box at the bottom of the wall behind the studios dog eared desk. Well, as I said the telephone rang and I was standing next to it, I picked it up and said “glass lab”. A woman’s voice at the other end asked if she was speaking to someone that could or would do her a favor. She proceeded to tell me that there was a university assistant prof. job available for someone that had glass blowing experience as well as a background in ceramics and could teach both. An MFA degree was also required for the job. She then gave me the name and telephone number of the person that was the contact for the interview. Would I be so kind as to post that information at a location where those things are usually posted. Of course I obliged her and said I would get on it immediately. Let's get real here folks. Do you think I would really post that job availability info? You are correct, I did not. As I’m one to say, “my mother did not raise no dumb son”. Was there anyone more qualified for that job than myself? Maybe but I did not want to find that out. Here I was turning 31 with an MFA in ceramics and almost one year glass experience. It was a set up.

Scene 3, I Make The Call
Tuesday morning came and I waited until 10 a.m Madison time, 11 a.m EST., to make the call. I placed the call and the person at the other end picked up. I simply stated that I had seen the job posting on the job posting board at the art office and would like to get the information on how to go about arranging an interview. I was stretching the truth a bit, why not. The woman at the other end who we shall now call Marilyn because that’s her name, gave me driving directions for the interview. She wanted me to take the highway from Madison and get off at exit 13 of the Ohio Turnpike. I asked why was I getting off the Ohio Turnpike at exit 13 if I was going to be interviewing at Penn State. There was a brief pause and Marilyn said Penn State? It’s Kent State. Kent State? I guess in my haste I heard Penn State as I had never heard of a university called Kent State and Penn State/Kent State sort of sounded the same. That bit of information came as a surprise but what did I care, Pennsylvania, Ohio, it was a job and I didn’t care where it would be located. An arrangement was made and I prepared for my interview. Needless to say Sandy was very excited as she now saw that we might be leaving the Verona pig farm. Here is where it gets interesting. Another bit of serendipity. My interview was to be with Prof. Miska (pronounced Mishka) Petersham. I knew Miska from my membership in the American Ceramic Society. Miska was also a potter and we got to know each other while attending ACS meetings.

Scene 4, The Interview
The day arrived for me to leave for my interview. I packed my good clothes which consisted of two pairs of chinos, and a shirt with a collar. Once again I got into my Black Valiant Station Wagon and set out for Kent State University. A distance of 513 miles according to Siri. I still remember getting off at exit 13 and turning onto Rt. 43 into the town of Kent. To this day the road is almost exactly the same. Still a two lane 5 mile trip. The only difference is that all the beautiful maple trees that once lined the road leading into Kent have long ago been cut down in order to widen the last half mile into town. At one time those trees created a beautiful leafy canopy so thick it blocked out the sun. As an aside Kent is known as the tree city but when those trees were cut down the students renamed the city Stump City, but I digress. I arrived in the late afternoon and was met by Miska and his wife Marge. I would be staying a Miska's house and not at a motel. His house was in a beautiful bucolic setting in an area called Twin Lakes. I was given a chance to rest after the long drive and that evening treated to a wonderful home cooked meal.

The next day was the interview. The interview consisted of a tour of the university as well as the art dept. I won’t bore you with the details but needless to say it was a standard university art department with the standard curriculum. Miska had created a fairly robust ceramic program but he needed help in building that program as well as start a glass program. The university did not have a glass program but Miska had, on his own, built a day tank in the basement of one of the buildings and he and a few students were trying to blow glass. Miska wanted to expand what he was doing with glass into a full blown program as part of Kent State’s School of Art. The university had given him permission to hire someone to head that program. The university had also leased an off campus building that would house the program. The building was an old Lincoln Mercury garage and would not only house the glass program but also the sculpture dept. The interview went as most interviews go, meet with the host, take a tour, meet with the art dept. hiring committee, meet the Dean and remember to smile and listen. Listening is very important when you interview for a job. I met with the art dept. committee and was asked the usual questions and impressed them with my resume which not only consisted of fairly robust exhibition record but also a teaching record. I had taught Ceramics at Mary Washington College in Virginia for a few years. Some teaching experience was very important. I did not tell them that I had been canned from my job at Mary Washington for reasons that I will not divulge here. Interview over I went back to Miska’s house and was soon treated to a wonderful dinner. Later that evening Miska and I settled into drinking Martini’s. Miska was a tall man and I found out unlike myself was used to drinking Martini’s I was not a drinker in any sense of the word. After what I believe was my third Martini and in a state of inebriation and on the verge of falling on my face in his living room I bluntly asked Miska if I would get the job or words to that effect. He said of course you got the job. After that I have no idea what happened. I did find my way to my bed and soon, very soon passed out.

Scene 5, The Job
After my hiring I was asked to teach a summer glass program prior to the start of the academic year at their new/old facility on Gougler St. off of downtown Kent.

Sandy and I arrived in Kent without a place to stay. The sculpture prof., Brinsley Tyrell offered us a room in his house while we looked for a place to rent. He and his wife Lillian had two small children and they seemed to be excited to have two strangers staying with them. While I was teaching Sandy got to work immediately looking for a place for us to rent. It took about a week or so and Sandy found us a small house in this wooded area on Chelton Drive. It was something out of Hansel and Gretel. To us it was a dream house.

Teaching that summer course required me to build the day tank and annealing oven. My students and I did that and not only did we build the equipment but we also did the gas line plumbing and set the blower for the furnace. There was no money for a hood so we cobbled together some sheet metal and fabricated our version of a hood. The photo below should give you some idea of what the glass studio looked like. Not very pretty but we had hot glass and we could blow glass. It didn’t get much better than that.

One morning, after getting to know the art school staff, Marilyn, the directors secretary, asked me how come no one else had applied for the job. Without cracking a smile I simply said, “go figure”. And that was that.


Well, there you have it in a nutshell of how jobs were handed out in those days or at least how I got my job. It was a “good ole boys network”. If you had a standing in your college and there was a job available you could hire who you wanted. No advertising necessary. I don’t write this to defend that system only to tell you how it was.

I have many more stories to tell of how a small coterie of mostly American glass artists built the foundation for the studio glass movement. I will attempt to tell my stories in future blogs and hopefully others will take pen to paper and write their stories. It is important that those of us that were instrumental in creating this movement document our history. Others that were not there have written what they believe is the history of studio glass but from what I have read falls short of what it was like to be there and what it was like to take that first gather from a glowing hot glass furnace.


Annealing oven range control, The first Kent State Studio, Our first house on Chelton Dr., Sandy cooking dinner at Chelton Dr.