The Blown Away hot shop is 10 times bigger, with all the visual drama of artists swinging blowpipes like pendulums, flames exploding seemingly out of nowhere and assistants in protective suits running towards the annealers. This is what I learnt in one ordinary hot shop.
In many ways, glassblowing reminds me of my childhood in rhythmic gymnastics, as the blowpipes and punties become an extension of the body. Finally it is cooled down slowly in an annealer, because it will crack or explode if left to cool at room temperature. To create an opening – perhaps for a vase or a drinking glass – the hot glass is transferred onto a punty, a non-hollow rod. Glass is shaped in arcane processes – rolled mesmerisingly back and forth on a steel bench, blown through the blowpipe, or shaped with wooden paddles or wet newspaper. There’s a circus-like enchantment to how this molten substance is gathered out of a furnace onto a hollow blowpipe and manipulated until it becomes something solid. The smashes make me flinch in my armchair. “Glass will smash, and so will your dreams,” says Gray, as she introduces 10 artists to the competition. As it cools, it is as fragile as the temper of a toddler. At times, it is as freefalling as honey from a dipper or as stretchy as hand-pulling ropes of taffy. As resident judge Katherine Gray suggests, its manifestations are limitless.
Blown away elliot walker tv#
A few weeks after I watched the first season of Blown Away – a Netflix reality TV show based on competitive glassblowing – I thought I should try glassblowing at least once in my life.įor some, Blown Away might be just another artsy competition reality show – The Big Flower Fight and Forged in Fire come to mind – but for me it is so much more. I didn’t mean to fall in love with glass.