Hugh Erwin has been an artist for as long as he can remember, and creating beautiful glass almost as long.

Erwin says he started by digging in a dump from the late 1800’s in a small town on the property where he grew up. He found thousands of bottles, dug them out, broke them, and made things from the pieces.

He has done stained glass, blown glass, and practically every other form glass can take. He likes all of it, but especially loves exploration of new ideas and working out ways to solve the many problems that glass presents.

Another passion has been training other glass artists in his studios. He is especially proud of the ten artists he started in the field who are still producing top quality work, even though he had to fire one of them to get him started on his own.

Erwin’s current quest for new ways to do things is producing glass “marbles”—balls of solid glass about 2 inches in diameter that encase colored spirals, twists, and other designs in a shell of clear glass. When he has learned all there is to learn about this form, there will be another problem to solve and another beautiful type of glass to create.