#Cat blown away full#
#Cat blown away series#

I am really absentminded, especially when I’m the studio trying to work on projects.

And they were great about facilitating all of that. I want to exercise and eat and go home and sleep and get up and do it again. We didn’t share a house with limited resources, there were no wild dance parties to keep you up at night… I’m pretty monastic when I’m working in that way. I was there for about six weeks, maybe a little less than that. I was surprised as anybody when I finally lost. I started seeing I was able to produce the things I wanted to produce, and that there was a positive reception, I definitely got a little bit of a confidence boost. So, once I got there, I started to feel comfortable. In something like this, in this populist spectacle, it would be hard to know what to expect: What the metric of quality be? Who was going to determine it? I was, again, pleasantly surprised to find that the person that they had - and a lot of the guests that they brought in - had a great, sophisticated understanding of the process and the material. So, I kind of disagree with that - there are many measurable factors of succeeding in a project. I made a not-very-good living out of teaching art at a college level. People talk about art as being subjective. There had already been a little bit of pre-emptive critique from the glass world: How is this going to accurately or appropriately represent our community? But I think that the way I do glass is something that would be good to represent.ĭid you have any idea how far you’d make it into the competition?

#Cat blown away full#

I thought, were they going to put me in a house full of drunken ?īut you know, I was also curious about it. Honestly, the prospect of being on something characterized as “reality television” was pretty nerve-racking to me. I was looking for a way to pay the bills, and I saw a call for this thing. I had a full-time university teaching position in Philadelphia, which I had quit the previous year.

Well, honestly - the situation arose from a place of desperation lack of opportunity at the moment. I ended up going back to art school later on at Rhode Island School of Design. In an uncharacteristic way, I ended up enrolling in courses at the community college where he was, starting to play around with the stuff. I had never thought about it, or heard of it before. And something about that was exciting to me: This material that seems so out of reach to be manipulated by a person could be manipulated by hand. There was nothing special about them, except I knew he had made them. I ended up in Southern California after high school - I actually didn’t finish high school at that time as I said, I had some trouble with some of the normal stuff - and I lived with somebody who was coming home with little blobby glass objects. Like most people who have a public school education, I didn’t have a super full picture of what being an artist could be I imagined it would be a painter or a sculptor carving bodies out of marble. Maybe strategically, or maybe just kind of naturally, I failed at a lot of other more conventional activities. Make it harder for them.I always knew I wanted to be an artist. There’s nothing better than seeing hosts act cheekily, having a laugh, and sometimes distracting the contestants. I feel like there could be more chemistry and energy between them. The host and the guest evaluators have a nice, tame banter. In each episode, they are given a Christmas-themed challenge, such as remaking their favorite presents they have ever received.īobby Burkes from Queer Eye makes a fun and gentle host. This also creates even higher stakes in the challenge. I think it makes a lovely Christmas gift. Not only do the contestants win this amazing cash prize, this season, the winners choose a charity, and that charity will also receive $10, 000.

#Cat blown away series#

This series has a simple reality format with fun, humble contestants. One man quickly made me a little black cat, and I still have it 20 years on. Then in complete awe at what they had made. Scared of the fire/heat and that they would hurt themselves. I remember watching glassblowers in workshops in North Yorkshire and being mesmerized and scared. Glass blowing is a wonderful, technical art, and this series brings in a whimsical side to that.