The Desire to Create is Inside Each Human Soul – Part 2
At one point he knew very little about glass art, now his work can be found in all fifty states and across the globe. We continue our documentary series on Tom Holdman and his desire to create. In his own words. This is part 2 of 7.
I sketched the picture of the First Vision many years ago and it was my first commission for the LDS church and now I’ve done over 20 temples in ten years. I travel around quite a bit all over.
You Have to Believe
If you want to be an artist, if you want to go halfway there, you just to believe that you can actually do it. With that belief, you are halfway there. You work out like rough ideas. People get a piece of white paper and they get so scared that it’s going to look ugly. But there is always more paper. It’s cheap. Yes, I have drawn ugly stuff. I will admit that, but there is always more paper. You know what I mean? You just need to do it!
You can see this was an early idea concept that I had loaded in my eyes of a grapevine chandelier. I roughed it out on this whiteboard (top image) and took it from that concept (left image). Then we made it (right image). You know what I mean? There’s that rough in there, that was quite an ugly rough sketch. That piece actually weights two tons. It is like 4000 pounds of glass, sculptured glass.
Are You Ready for Adventure?
In our hot glass room here at the studios, you will hear a roar of furnaces and fans and usually see a couple guys wielding long metal poles with hot glass on the end. You can take a class here and make your own glass flower. Be careful it’s like working with molten lava. We must preheat the poles because glass will stick to what is hot. It’s going in and out of the furnace it will be very hot. After heating your glass, you will grab a metal paddle and smash it all the way down. Then set the pedal down and pick up your tweezers and pinch on to the edge of your lava glass and pull all the way around the flower. Cool off the tweezers in the water. Then pull straight back at first and then at a 45-degree angle and pull it a little further each time to get the stem part of your flower started. You then grab on the top of it and pull the stem out – we’ll give it a crimp to cut it off. Now it’s done.
When we pull glass out it’s about 2,000 degrees, and it cools down to about 1,000 degrees while we work on it. Everything we make must cool down overnight. Working in a room with molten glass is really hot. You are going to create art. And be inspired by art.
This is a way that people off the street can experience doing something creative to help them feel the adventure of life. To be a part of the adventure.
This documentary will continue in Part 3