I am so glad you joined us. . .
Kristin waiting to assist with a cane pull.
Hello there. My name is Kristin Imre. I am a NOCA Glass School instructor and future Co-Executive Director of Greater Boston Glassworks.
My journey with glass started rather unexpectedly. I feel like glass found me.
It took the form of my neighbor, Jesse Rasid, who owned a glass school and needed just one more person to enroll so he could run a class. I was in the midst of working on a doctorate, consumed by research and enamored with teaching. I had always loved making things: clothes, quilts, tiny houses, books, and mobiles. I didn’t think much of trying a new craft. A month later, I was working production for Jesse and by the end of that first year I was teaching glass. Twelve years later, I have now left academia to work exclusively making and teaching glass.
In those twelve years, I have witnessed what glass can offer us: a means to heal broken hearts, to learn patience in imperfection, and to focus a noisy mind. For myself, I found a respite from chronic pain, a way to be a body defined by its strength and capacity, and a generous community. In glass’ invitation to be fully present for both ourselves and each other, I found the joy of accepting and giving support: when you take a heat for your gaffer, when your assistant drops out a piece while you put in the jackline, when you drop or take a well-heated color overlay. In all these moments is the exhilaration of what is possible when we do hard things together.
This is why I am so excited to build Greater Boston Glassworks with everyone and discover what else is possible.
I am particularly excited for what I see as two interconnected programs: a teen summer program and our Careers in Glass Apprenticeship program. For a handful of years, I was lucky enough to teach glassblowing at the SnowFarm Summer Program. For a very hot month each summer, I got to spend my days teaching 14 to 18 year olds to blow glass. Most of our students had never touched glass and we got to watch them grow from the nervous overwhelm of a first gather to the confident execution of a their final piece. A handful of these students have continued with glass.
Kristin teaching an assisted jackline with Jacob King in a six-week class with students Kathy Recca and Asaf Poran.
As I watch them grow as glass blowers and artists, I can’t help but think of what Amanda wrote about in our last newsletter about the unique barriers that glass presents both for getting started and maintaining a practice and/or career. As a community, I think we have the benefit of being able to pool resources—expertise, equipment, space, etc—so that we can bring more people to the practice and, perhaps more importantly, help them sustain, develop, and continue through the seasons of that practice.
Our teen summer camp will be a means to introduce people to glass. Our apprenticeship program will be a way to help them imagine and build a sustainable career. In the teen summer program, we hope to give a diverse array of young people the chance to explore and play with glass for two-weeks during the summer break. In our apprenticeship program, we hope to create an avenue through which students or others working to build a career in glass can gain the experience and skills necessary to move forward. In the one- to two-year program, we will offer apprentices experience working as technicians, glass educators, production assistants, and artists. They will learn from and work with staff, instructors, and professional artists as well as have time to build their own practice.
In the meantime, we are working hard to build a future in which such programs are possible. I know there is such generosity and abundance in this glass community and I can’t wait to find out what we will do together!
Thanks for joining us for the ride!
Kristin