***
The craft of glassblowing can be extremely demanding. Al Honn has been practicing the art of blowing glass for over forty years. He says artists are often ruled by small windows of time, maybe only thirty seconds, before temperature and gravity start to take over.
“Gravity can take over real fast, and if you’re not blowing things out evenly, it doesn’t have the ability to maintain the form, and defying gravity is kinda what glass is about”
A stout man, with a ponytail halfway down his back, a gray-blond beard, and a light blue t-shirt tucked into his blue jeans, he’s making a glass top hat. Honn’s studio is a shared workspace in a big open room with large furnaces and ovens, all glowing with hot orange, the ambient heat of which, Al says has crackled the coating on his glasses.
Honn works and teaches out of FOCI – the Minnesota Center for Glass Arts in south Minneapolis. KFAI’s Drew Temperante shared this audio profile.
MinneCulture on KFAI is supported by the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund
