Name/Title
Jon SawyerDescription
MLA style: "In Touch With the Tides : Canadian Glassblower Jon Sawyer.." The Free Library. 2003 News World Communications, Inc. 18 Feb. 2023 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/In+Touch+With+the+Tides+%3a+Canadian+Glassblower+Jon+Sawyer.-a0111579392
Chicago style: The Free Library. S.v. In Touch With the Tides : Canadian Glassblower Jon Sawyer.." Retrieved Feb 18 2023 from https://www.thefreelibrary.com/In+Touch+With+the+Tides+%3a+Canadian+Glassblower+Jon+Sawyer.-a0111579392
APA style: In Touch With the Tides : Canadian Glassblower Jon Sawyer.. (n.d.) >The Free Library. (2014). Retrieved Feb 18 2023 from https://www.thefreelibrary.com/In+Touch+With+the+Tides+%3a+Canadian+Glassblower+Jon+Sawyer.-a0111579392
Veteran artist Jon Sawyer is capturing icons of New Brunswick's Bay of Fundy in his lustrous work; as the only full-time glassblower east of Quebec, he has become something of an icon himself.
Jon Sawyer lives on the edge. Not only does the New Brunswick glass artist give a refreshing new look to his craft, but he claims to run the only full- time glassblowing studio in the entire Atlantic coast region of Canada. Sawyer plies his trade nearly seven hundred miles east of Toronto's trendy shops and expensive boutiques, but forgoing this ready market doesn't phase him. It seems that the artist, who now operates out of a well-supplied studio in the northern suburbs of St. Andrews-by-the Sea, realizes that you cannot put a price on inspiration. After all, the nearby scenic Bay of Fundy has stimulated a legion of fellow craftsmen along the province's coast to tap into a higher creative plane.
"Nature is important to me," says the 48-year-old artist. "The color and shapes of the ocean surroundings influence my way of looking at nature." Indeed, Sawyer's work, and his career path in general, seems to resonate with the dramatic ebb and flow of the Fundy tides, the most extreme in all the world. "The soft shimmer of moving water and the tough hardness of granite boulders--glass can be both of these opposites," he intones enthusiastically. "My father asked me to move my work to Montreal or Toronto, but I prefer it here."
Sawyer was born in Toronto in 1955 and grew up about two hours north of the city. His first exposure to the process of glassblowing was in 1973, when he visited an acquaintance's glass studio in Ontario. "I walked in there with a cold bottle of pop in my hand," Sawyer recalls. "I saw him blow something up from very small to very, very large; I never imagined that glass could be so fluid and molten. After this brief exposure I became more aware of how I had taken glass for granted--everything from pop bottles to mirrors to cut crystal. It was exciting to think that you could hand-work this wild and sensuous material. After two visits, I was addicted."
The studio glass movement also provided a lifestyle that appealed to Sawyer. Unlike the days when a glassblower had to work in a factory with a rigid specialization of duties, the development of small studios liberated individual creativity. In such a setup, a single person could design an object and make it from beginning to end. Sawyer admits that the lifestyle was as much a draw for him as the beauty of the material: "A large part of the appeal for me is being creative and being my own boss," he says. "You can chose where you live. You're not really dependent on anybody but yourself."
Sawyer studied glassblowing at Georgian College of Applied Arts and Technology in Barrie, Ontario. Upon graduation in 1977, he apprenticed to glass artist Marty Demaine. "Demaine Studio in Mactaquac, New Brunswick, was the first private one-man studio in Canada. This is the reason I came to the east coast," Sawyer recalls. Of his experience there he says, "It was more like an old-time apprenticeship in that I wasn't to work on the hot floor for about six months. I did all the crummy jobs, like grinding and sweeping or making batch. I got paid $200 [Canadian] a month but was given a place to live. It was a valuable time in my development as a glassblower."
Demaine had moved his studio in the early 1970s from the area of Miramichi Bay to Opus Village at Mactaquac, just outside of Fredericton, the provincial capital, near the St. John River. According to Bob Kavanagh, director of the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, "Opus Village was a craft-making community that was very active for a number of years. Demaine had two apprentices--Pat Stanley and Jon Sawyer, who took over the studio after Demain left. Eventually Sawyer moved to St. Andrew's, while Stanley stopped a while ago."
By 1981, Sawyer and his wife, Kathy Ball, a native of New Brunswick, decided a change was in order."The highest cost factor in this business is the propane bill, and I wanted to be where it was cheaper." The couple moved out to Calgary in Alberta, "the land of cheap natural gas." But Sawyer didn't set up a studio right away. "I worked a variety of jobs--laying pipeline and working on oil rigs," he recalls. "I found the work refreshing. Instead of working alone in the studio, I was involved in the camaraderie of a rig crew."
A rig accident in 1983 mangled his left arm, however, requiring a number of operations and two years of therapy. In late 1984, Sawyer was asked by glass artist Bob Held, whose Skookum Art Glass was in the area, to join his production shop. There he further refined his art, mastering techniques used in Art Nouveau glass.
"In September 1985, with a baby on the way," Sawyer recounts, "Kathy and I decided to return to what we considered home." He went into partnership with another glass artist and set up a studio in St. George, New Brunswick. After two years the partnership dissolved, and he started a one-man studio in St. Andrews, where he settled with his family.
Today, Sawyer works out of a 1,600-square-foot studio that is split roughly in half between "hot" and "cold" working areas. "I have a small furnace that holds about one hundred pounds [of molten glass] when full," he states. The hot area also has a "glory hole" (reheating chamber) used in the process of shaping the glass and two annealers in which the objects can slowly cool. The seasons can be unforgiving when it comes to working with temperatures up to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. "You would think that summers would be worse with all that heat, but before the fire gets stoked in the winter, it can get pretty cold in here."
The "cold" part of the shop is where finishing work is done, such as grinding and polishing edges, bottoms, and surfaces. Decorative surface effects are achieved with methods such as etching, enameling, and sandblasting. The equipment here includes the rough-grinding lapping wheel, prepolishers and polishers, a diamond saw, and a sandblaster. For Sawyer, it is a "pretty basic setup, but it is manageable for a one-man shop.
"The type of blowing I do is called 'off-hand,' " says the artist, explaining that this technique does not use molds to shape the glass, but rather the glassblower employs wet newspapers, wooden paddles, or centrifugal force to make the desired forms. The blowpipes and hand tools such as jacks, pinchers, and shears were "designed centuries ago," he notes. "The advantage now is that we use [lightweight] stainless steel." Also, the blowpipe now has a cool plastic mouthpiece. Coloring is done with glass chips and chemical powders, which, like the artist's other raw materials-- including the refractories to build his furnaces--come from the "big ole USA."
Sawyer makes mostly one-of-a-kind wholesale pieces, ranging from goblets and bowls to perfume bottles and paperweights. "I also make more expensive sculpture that is more expressive of my inner self," he says. The artist's current signature works consist of a variety of fish and whale-tail forms, both highly sought-after symbols of the Maritimes region.
He follows classical glassblowing techniques in shaping his objects. After breathing a small bubble into molten glass affixed to a long blowpipe, he rotates the pipe to create a basic fish form. Molten glass is then added to make the eyes, tail, and fins, with refiring at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit between each additional feature. Kiln drying takes about twenty-four hours. Various metal oxides determine Sawyer's color selections: copper oxide on a clear glass base creates an aquamarine hue, while cobalt oxide produces blue tints.
Popular Appeal
"A lot of different kinds of people collect my work," Sawyers finds. "There are locals who just love to come and buy seconds of goblets so they can have many different styles. But it is the more serious collector who wants something that will never be repeated," he explains. The price range for his work is similarly egalitarian, with the small fish forms going for $35 (Canadian) and the larger sculptures costing in the area of $1,400.
"People from all walks of life buy and enjoy Jon Sawyer's art glass," says Ken Valen, owner of Serendipin' Art, which is the exclusive retailer of the artist's work in St. Andrews. He cites Sawyer's appeal as lying in the "huge variety of designs, the elegance, and simplicity, all combined with a multitude of brilliant colors. Jon's keen sense of design and mastery of glass is quite evident in every piece. His use and combination of various colors and shapes, whether highly polished or sandblasted, helps to make his art very exciting."
It's not unusual for someone to drive up to Sawyer's studio on the main road into St. Andrews and peek at the busy yet affable artist at work. "I enjoy demonstrating glasswork to the public for two reasons," he says. "First, the number of people who have seen someone working with hot glass seems to be small, which amazes me because glass has been around for so many centuries. And, if I can show someone what goes into a piece, they will appreciate the work and maybe even the price."
Indeed, there is a lot of craft interest in New Brunswick, where for years the traditional arts of favor were woodworking, knitting, and weaving. Interestingly, notes Kavanagh, although the "history of off-hand glass in New Brunswick is relatively short, except for cut, stained glasswork, blown glass in the province is older than in most of Canada." While Sawyer asserts that in the last fifteen years there has been an increase in other areas of craft in the Maritimes, the artist finds that he is "still the only glassblower who goes to regional craft fairs."
Yet Sawyer returns to the enchanting bay setting of St. Andrews to explain the focus of his work. "I think that a lot of influences in the [local] craft scene are really related to where we are--the ocean--either in the color or in the subject of what is being made," he observes. Indeed, Sawyer's whimsical and colorful bulbous fish forms and dramatic, true-to- life tails of diving whales (St. Andrews is a whale-watching mecca) are considered prime souvenirs for those who have experienced the magnificent Bay of Fundy. The artist has even begun construction of a line of complete whale forms, capturing in authentic color and proportion the aura of the creatures of the deep.
Through the years Sawyer's style has evolved, he says, "the biggest change being from doing 'hot trails 'or Art Nouveau-style work to a more organic style." (Hot trails is a decorative technique that uses colored lines, or trails, of usually contrasting colors of glass.)
"I used to agonize over a piece if it didn't turn out. I'd put so much time and effort into it," he recollects. "Now I don't feel that I have to make everything perfect--I can let the glass take me rather than forcing it into the perfect shape. I've mastered the technique, so now I'm letting the glass have some of that back so it can control me a little."
Today, besides his highly sought-after ocean forms, the artist creates exotic speckled bowls, glistening goblets, and elegant vases, covered in unusual glazes and decorated with enamel highlights, fluted edges, and curious slits and holes. His red, blue, green, and pink perfume bottles have a sophisticated sense of balance and proportion.
Sawyer runs his glass operation with Kathy. "I do all the blowing, and she is responsible for practically everything else," he says. "We work together on the hot floor when we make two-piece objects, or she will bring handles and such."
Although glass studios usually have a team of people, Sawyer prefers to work basically alone because "it is then my work, and I find that with other people working, you become a manager and not a glassblower." Sawyer is further freed to concentrate on his art, thanks to the involvement of his wife in the business side. "Kathy handles almost all of the daily running of the business, which allows me to concentrate on the blowing," he acknowledges gratefully.
Of the crafts scene in general, he finds both brilliance and mediocrity. Glass, he notes, "is still exploding as both a craft and art form. The variety and quality are very good." But of crafts in general he notes, "When I go to shows I see a lot of cheap art that is not very well made. It seems that there are more part-timers doing crafts. I feel that if you don't make your living--or at least try to--from your art, then it shows up in the quality and originality of the work."
Sawyer has enhanced his formal training with studies at the Hot Glass Summer Series at Canada's Alberta College of Art and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, in Maine. He stays artistically connected through organizations such as the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Crafts Councils, and the Glass Art Association of Canada and the United States. "They have newsletters and such, which gets information to its members," he remarks.
For additional inspiration, other than the awesome natural setting in which he works, there are a lot of painters whom Sawyer likes, but mostly it is glassblowers who move him. "I like the old-timers like Harvey Littleton," he says. "I admire them for starting the glass movement and seeing the possibilities for hot glass."
When it is time to free himself from the demands of glassblowing, Sawyer says, his two biggest releases are sports and music. "The sports side is me playing or being involved with my two sons' sport teams," he says. "Music for me is playing the drums. Hand drums, shakers, and bells are fun, but playing with a soft-brush snare is the most fun."
He stresses, "Being around my family keeps what is important, close. It doesn't get any better than a potluck dinner with a few fiddles, guitar, and mandolin."
As to what Atlantic Canada's only studio glassblower wants to be doing five or even ten years down the road, he says simply: "I don't really look that far into the future. I hope that I can continue to grow and to keep learning about glass."
Glass creations by Jon Sawyer are on display at Botanicals, 65 Shore Street, Fredericton, New Brunswick; Handworks, 116 Prince William Street, St. John, New Brunswick; Fog Forest Gallery, 14 Bridge Street, Sackville, New Brunswick; and Cornucopia, 2816 Main Street, Hillsborough, New Brunswick. Sawyer's email address is sawglassStephen Henkin is an arts editor for The World & I. The kind assistance of New Brunswick Tourism (www.TourismNewBrunswick.ca) and Air Canada (www.aircanada.com) in researching this article is gratefully acknowledged.
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