I have a lung disease called Cystic Fibrosis. Since I could remember, I have lived summer to summer waiting to run out of breath. It has impacted my every decision—especially my art.
When I was 15 I collected old tube televisions and tediously cut the glass with a dremel. The speakers were hooked up to sound machine alarm clocks and would play the noises of the jungle or waves as fish swam on channel 5. I experimented with lamps of all kinds and amature taxadermy. The howl of punk rock music filled the space and acrylic paint sealer held my hair into the proper spiked mohawk I wanted. Music and dance dominated my creative life. It would take years to harness the power in that kid and make him believe he was a sculptor. I was a vandal and a pissed off Mormon kid.
I served a 2 year Mormon Mission which tempered the vandal. I wanted to be a teacher and great story teller. I got my Bachelors degree in Speech Communications from the University of Southern Mississippi. While living in the Florida Keys I worked as an aluminum fabricator and welder. That experience made me trade my cubicle for a workshop and the process of transformation began again.
The transition from folk to fine art was really interesting.
He is a childhood friend who really took interest in the story I would call Anthem. I have a lung disease called Cystic Fibrosis. Since I could remember I have lived summer to summer waiting to run out of breath. It has impacted my every decision, and especially my art.
I was chosen as the Festival South featured artist for 2015. In June of 2015 Anthem opened at Oddfellows in Downtown Hattiesburg. This series of lung sculptures were a triumph over a disease and celebration of friendships. Anthem was a very vulnerable and humbling experience. The film also called Anthem was winner of the Audience Choice award at the first Festival South Film Expo in June, 2015. It was also accepted into the Austin Film Festival & DocUtah Film Festival.
This was the best way found to capture breath for my Anthem sculptures. It also made my imagination run wild as the possibilities were endless while mixing glass and steel. In Jan 2016 I bought a Mobile Glassblowing Furnace and Daniel moved back to MS for a few months to help build a Hot Shop for Glassblowing. We opened our business in October and by December it was like a runaway train. As students of a craft that is 5,000 years old it can be hard to find your niche. We care more about teaching than we do making the perfect goblet. We blow glass with people who don't know how, it is a simple strategy. We want to meet your families and blow you away with a good time. As your hosts at Mohawk Steel & Glass, we are all students of glass.It turns out that blowing and smashing glass with kids on a field trip is way more fun than toiling away making fine art.
