When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.
Where: Exhibit Hall at the Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green St., Pasadena.
Tickets: $8 and free to children, ages 12 and younger. A limited number of free passes are also available online.
Information: 310-285-3655; http://craftsource.org.
Few glassblowers do what Mayauel Ward can.
Using a torch and pre-made rods of colored glass, the Manhattan Beach artist creates lifelike flowers, butterflies or fish directly on the hot surface of glass.
He then dips the design into a layer of clear molten glass, repeating the process several times before blowing and shaping the solid blob into a thick, heavy vase.
“It looks very dimensional that way,” says Ward, who adds the technique is time-consuming and takes years of practice. “There’s a certain element of painting, sculpting and welding in what I do.”
Unusual techniques and unconventional materials — that’s the stuff of the Contemorary Crafts Market in the Pasadena Convention Center’s 55,000-square-foot Exhibit Hall where Friday through Sunday, Ward’s floral vases can be seen alongside Craftsman-style furniture, woven seaweed baskets, mixed media jewelry, hand-painted textiles and more.
The juried retail show features 200 artists from across the country who’s works are found internationally in museums, galleries and homes.
One such artist is Desiree Gillingham. She’s been hand-making sea shell lampshades in the style of stained glass from her Carmel Valley studio since 1974.
Each shade is a unique mosaic of individually soldered sea shells — leftovers from fisheries around the world.
Illuminated, the shells give off a range of colors not seen when the lights are off.
“They’re endlessly interesting,” Gillingham says. “I hear from people all the time about their piece. Once in a while I get a piece back for a repair and it’s interesting to see my name engraved on the top. It feels like somebody else did it. It’s weird that people are still loving it.”
Available in a range of sizes and silhouettes, the shades are priced from $295 to $5,000; the most expensive model includes the base.
“I only make between 50 and 60 pieces a year, and that’s working full time because they are so labor intensive, and they’re very detailed,” she says. “They are not slapped out. It’s one shell at a time.”
Ward’s art glass is similarly labor intensive. And not just his vases.
“We specialize ourselves to be able to do what we do,” says Ward, who discovered glassblowing as a student at El Camino College in the 1970s. On the Torrance campus, the glass studio was always the first class to fill up and empty out, he said.
“Furnace glass is one of those things you either love or hate,” he says. “You don’t know it until you get in front of the furnace, open the door where it’s 2,000 degrees and gather glass on the end of a pipe. A good chunk of the population just cannot do it. It’s just too hot.
“At the same time, the people who get involved in it tend to fall in love with it.”
Ward went to work for the art glass studios Correia in Santa Monica and Abelman in Van Nuys before going solo. Today, he works out of Harrie Art Glass in Inglewood where he creates a range of objects, includinge tumblers, perfume bottles, paperweights and vases.
The glass works start at $140 and run into the thousands.
“If I could just sell high-end expensive things that few others in the country could make, yeah, I would do that,” he says. “But I want to reach a broad audience.”
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