This past weekend we returned to Art at Murray Pond, in Killingworth, CT, to photograph Joan Levy Hepburn crafting beautiful hand-blown Christmas ornaments in her glass studio. She's a gifted musician, multifaceted artist, and teacher who excels in a variety of mediums, including glass.
Huddled over a custom made configuration of twenty paired propane fueled torch nozzles facing each other, she carefully applies spaghetti-like colored solid rods of hot glass on top of a bulb of glass that she has just blown from a clear hollow tube. She patiently moves, twists, and spins the ornament to keep the temperature as even as possible while all the time talking around the mouthpiece of the blow hose.
Then, at just the right moment, the talking stops, and her cheeks expand like a jazz trumpeter as she forces air into the open end of the glass tube to give it a little more shape. When the ornament is done, she seals the tube, puts a loop on top, and lets it slowly cool until it's ready to hang on a tree.
Just like glass, if we get heated too fast, we crack and break and are not pleasant to be around. But if we allow ourselves to evenly respond to the heat and become malleable, then slowly cool down, we become that beautiful masterpiece that everyone wants to be with this holiday season.
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