![]() ![]() “I grew up in a junkyard so I’m really into recycling and I’ve always considered it very important,” says Kaplan. Recycling is the second major influence in Kaplan’s work. That influence becomes obvious as you walk around his studio and see Lake Erie driftwood mixed with glass chandeliers and wind chimes hanging from the ceiling. Making his art outside seems like a nice fit for Kaplan, an artist who says nature is the main influence in his art. “I thought the glass skulls and drinking horns would be popular but people liked the glass flowers and hearts more.” “It was totally fun, people get really into it,” says Kaplan about the festival. “I’ve finally realized I could have learned how to blow glass even better if I stayed in school, so I’m trying to take more classes to expand my art,” Kaplan says.įor the first time ever, Kaplan began blowing glass outside this summer at the Great Lakes Medieval Faire. He will learn how to pull and mold glass canes into double helixes. To keep the shop teeming with new customers and students Kaplan has now decided to resume his education by attending classes at the Toledo Museum of Art, where he will learn about the art of Venetian cane pulling. 65 th Street or while staying in the Cleveland or Detroit Ritz-Carlton hotels. Kaplan and his team have created elegant chandeliers and rustic designs that can be enjoyed while dining at Dante in Tremont, Stone Mad Pub on W. The time it took Kaplan to teach himself and get the studio running seems well worth the effort – the Glass Bubble is now bustling with artists creating original works of art and with visitors stopping in to watch and shop.īusinesses and homeowners contract the Glass Bubble artists for various project. It took Kaplan two years to build the studio because, after only one year of actual glass classes at Kent, he never learned how to build and operate kilns and furnaces required for the art. Five years later, he bought the building in Ohio City with the goal of eventually opening up a glass blowing studio. Kaplan instead began working for his dad at the family’s junkyard, but his desire to blow glass never left. He went the pre-med route with a minor in glass blowing but later dropped out. Kaplan was a young hippie floating around before he decided to enroll in college courses at Kent State University, which is where he was first introduced to glass blowing. ![]() Over the course of 17 years, Ohio City has undergone dramatic change to become one of Cleveland’s hottest neighborhoods and the Glass Bubble Project continues to help keep it that way with amazing new projects. “There was project housing across the street and a dirt parking lot for the West Side Market.” Let me introduce you to NeidFyre.The Glass Bubble Project, a glass blowing studio and gallery in Ohio City that offers glass blowing classes, was established by Mike Kaplan in 1998, long before the arrival of the chic restaurants and trendy bars in the neighborhood.įor Kaplan, it’s easy to recall the days when Ohio City wasn’t the popular spot it is today: “I bought the building for $20,000 when it was still a pretty rough area,” he says. This was not the first time I had seen her play under adverse conditions and win the crowd over. The lyrics to “Angus”-a song about the making and showing of a bridegroom’s kilt-and antics of the two produced much laughter from the growing crowd, movement through the room stopping. When she began to sing people stopped to listen and, at the appropriate moment, she pulled a kilted lad in for a bit of audience participation. ![]() She played for herself as much as for the crowd, her concentration fierce but her smile quick when she glanced up and caught someone’s eye. The stage, high and small at the end of the room on the edge of traffic flow, had almost no audience area but that did not faze the fiddler in the least. The bow flew across the strings producing a bouncy tune as the crowd milled about in the room reserved for vendors catering to fairegoers 18 and older.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |