Featured Artist: David Smith, Seattle WA

David blows a challenge piece during RefractSeattle.org every year. This one was into driftwood.

If you get glass blower David Smith talking about glass, local or otherwise, you’ll find it both informative and entertaining. He has been working with glass and the people who do it for a long time. As the owner/operator of Blowing Sands Glass and the attached Laura Frost Gallery in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle David is among the few guild members who have an actual open-to-the-public workspace (you do need to make an appointment and wear a mask). His students rate his classes very highly and his class schedule is often filled two months ahead.

He was introduced to the art of glass blowing in 1978 while studying for a degree in Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. His final two years were spent in the Materials Artifacts Laboratory where he did analysis on man’s earliest evidence of ceramic processing, the pigment used in cave paintings, and worked on a project tracing the transfer of porcelain technology from China down the silk road to Europe. His thesis subject was soft-paste porcelain produced in France during the 18th Century. After graduating in 1983, he returned to Seattle and started working full-time as a glass blower.

In 1987, he bought a one-way ticket to China and then traveled across Asia and the Soviet Union, and spent the next 5 years living and working with artists in Finland, Germany, France and Ireland. He returned to Seattle in 1992 and established his own studio/hot-shop in Ballard. His art glass has been collected and appreciated around the world, and his glass castings are installed in the Atlanta Federal Building as well as public and private buildings in the northwest. His work is an extension of his technical background in glass science and his love of the traditions and history of glass blowing throughout the world.