- Oulu, Wisconsin is sandwiched between Highway 13 and Highway 2
in northern Wisconsin.
- You look on the map
you'll notice all roads lead to Oulu.
- Originally it was all Finnish immigrants.
I was a teacher and he liked to blow glass.
- Then I decided when I would build my own place
I would have fun with it.
- We just started building,
and eventually, we added the studio for the glass blowing.
- In order to get that glass out of the furnace
we have to use rods and pipes.
The rods are solid. Pipes are hollow.
- Then you'll gather your glass.
- It's at about 2,150 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can see it looks orange, but it's actually clear.
That's just the color of the heat you see.
As soon as you remove it from the furnace,
it starts to cool down.
- We start blowing glass in the middle of November
and blow into January.
- Something that we will often do first thing in the morning
find out how the glass is moving and find out how we're moving.
- We like to use something like a fish that has
a lot of different parts so that we can use the different tools,
kind of loosen up and see
if it's going to be a good glassblowing day or not.
- There's a partnership you have to develop.
- You don't have enough hands and arms
to do all that yourself.
- You don't have a lot of time to talk about it.
- Some people call it a dance.
They like watching it
because we know what's going to happen next.
- I've got to smooth the lumps out of the glass
to make it more symmetrical.
- Every time he touches the piece with something,
it cools it.
So he has to put it back in to reheat it.
- Just put a simple pattern on this.
- Then you'll heat that up in what's called a glory hole
and that will meld the colors together.
- There's really not all that much blowing
involved in glassblowing.
Still looks orange and it won't be
until the glass gets down around 900 degrees
before you start to see the colors.
The object is not to try
to make a fish that looks like any particular fish.
The object is exercises in manipulation and material.
Lot of cutting and chopping and tweezing and pulling
and pushing and paddling.
The hotter the glass is, the easier it moves.
I like to think of it like room temperature honey.
We call it a soft glass.
It's basically silica sand, soda ash and limestone.
It's a formula that's been around roughly 2,400 years.
Two more bits and this thing will be done.
We have to get it off the pipe.
[sound of a tap]
Cool it down slowly
so that when it was cold enough to touch, it wouldn't break.
- The different things you can do with glass, it's amazing.
- Glass is one of those materials that
whatever you bring to it, it'll give back to you.
It's kind of a magical material.
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