As a woman who holds degrees in what she described as less-than-spine-tingling areas of business and economics, Marcie Miller has discovered the art of glass blowing an exciting creative outlet.
“I’m just fascinated by it,” she said of the art form she fell in love with five years ago. “I love that it’s a ‘fire art.’ It’s hot and dangerous and scary. You’re constantly pushing yourself to the edge.”
Constantly taking her art to the next level Miller recently garnered an Artistic Excellence award in solid furnace work award at the Glass at the Gardens show at the Denver Botanic Gardens. The show and competition are hosted in July every year by the Glass Artists Fellowship.
Miller’s winning piece, “Confetti,” was an illuminated paperweight perched on a stand. It sold for $145.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” Miller said of her win. “I was really, really surprised. It just snuck up on me. I feel excellent about it.”
The Golden councilwoman first got involved in glass blowing by apprenticing herself to more established and experienced glass workers.
“I would see it and be like, ‘Oh my god, that’s unbelievable; I need to do that,’” Miller said. “And at 42 I thought, ‘If I don’t do it now, when am I ever going to do it?’”
Miller said her initial work mirrored her teachers’, but she quickly found her own voice. She attributed the self-discovery in part to being self-employed. Miller was able to spend up to four days a week in the studio learning, while the norm for others would be once or twice a week.
She has also found her niche to be in blown furnace work, primarily making vessels including bowls, vases and lampshades. However, while Miller considers blown furnace work her forte, the award she won was in solid furnace work.
The fruits of her labor crowd her home and adorn her business, Higher Grounds, where they’re for sale ranging from $20 to a few hundred.
These days, Miller makes it into the studio two or three times a week.
“There’s not a lot that would keep me out of the studio,” she said. She’s been known to work in sub-zero temperatures during the winter. “But every now and then it’ll just be too damn hot.”
It was hot in the studio the morning of July 23, but four men and women braved the inferno to create new works nonetheless.
Miller sat on a workbench, spinning a rod to keep the molten glass from dripping. Using water-soaked cup-shaped instrument, she molded the glass to create a symmetric curve. She squeezed and twisted the glass, and then after letting it cool for a moment, plunged it back into a fiery furnace. An hour of work, aided by assistant Roo Huigen, yielded a spinout bowl with several overlays. Despite Miller having picked the colors she integrated into the bowl, exactly how the colors turned out wouldn’t be known until the bowl completely cooled the next day.
Flushed but pleased with their efforts, Miller and Huigen stepped outside to cool off under a garden hose and do a “happy dance.”
“I never considered myself very artistic,” Miller said, “But this made sense to me from the very instant I touched it.”
They headed back into the studio, eager to engage in another creative birth.