Alchemy Glass: The Story

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Michael and I met in the spring of 1989. I needed to slump a piece of glass for a hologram sculpture and was having trouble finding anyone in Los Angeles who had a kiln I could use. Michael had just set up his glass studio nearby. A mutual friend put us in touch. A week later Michael gave me the keys to his studio and I started hanging out there a lot, slumping glass elements for holograms. Michael was busy experimenting with fusing glass in a way that no one else was doing and he was getting some very interesting results.

See it in the back?

At that time, Michael drove around in this ancient but enormous blue glass truck. He was still earning his living doing glass installations. That truck was scary. It always seemed like a wheel was going to roll off and take out a couple of cars. I went along with Michael on a few installations, but I think after the first one I always had some reason or another for taking my own car. Fortunately, Michael’s glass installing business wasn’t going to go on too much longer.

One day Michael took one of his glass pieces to The Gallery of Functional Art in Santa Monica to see if they had any interest. By the time Michael got that big blue truck home from the gallery, there was a message waiting that the piece had sold already. They also wanted to know when they could have more.

Michael started working with his friend Greg Moul designing and making one-of-a-kind lighting fixtures. Greg had this great gallery in Venice called See The Light that showed a lot of different artists who worked with light. Michael had a few shows there and started to develop a following among local collectors and architects who came to him from time to time to commission custom pieces.

Michael and I started working together on some hologram light fixtures. I was spending a lot of time working at Michael’s studio and for a while Michael was living on the floor of my studio. We started talking about combining our studios one day so we could have all our toys in one place. That plan was put on hold in 1991 when I went to Prague for an art festival and didn’t come back for a year and a half.

Lovely Bohemia While in Czechoslovakia, I spent some time travelling through the "glass" towns in Northern Bohemia where even the children are skilled glass artisans. I started concocting a plan for setting up a glass factory to produce some of Michael’s designs to sell in Europe. In the fall of 1992, I ended up back in the states without getting the glass factory off the ground. Michael suggested we just do it together here in Los Angeles, and so on October 27, 1992, Alchemy Glass & Light was born.

Please check back a little later on for The Story of The Birth of Alchemy Glass & Light!