Art Glass Classes Forums » Introduce Yourself

**New flameworking school, studio, shop . . .** Posted: 2/15/2009 11:26:24 AM

Accents Glassworks is a brand-new, state-of-the-art glass studio, school, and shop located in Rockville, MD (which is just north of Washington, DC). The studio offers 26 workstations available to rent by the hour, day, week, or month.

We were extremely pleased to have Lisa St. Martin come in to teach our first-ever class, and we’re looking forward to having her back in March; we’ve also got lots of other classes in the works – including some with Chad "Cosmo" Trent!

Our resident artist and studio head is Anderson Coats, a borosilicate artist with more than 15 years behind the torch. Thanks to the generous sponsorship of a mentor, Anderson has been fortunate to attend many courses at the Penland School of Crafts, studying under masters such as Roger Parramore, Sally Prasch, Kristina Logan, Beth Lipman, Emilio Santini, and Kevin O'Grady. It has long been his dream to pass along his knowledge of and passion for glass, so it was with great excitement that he heard that Milton Criswell wanted to expand Accents Beads to include a lampworking studio and was looking for someone to head up the studio. Anderson creates everything from pendants, bracelets, marbles and perfume bottles to wine glasses, venetian goblets, and other large sculptural pieces. While he maintains a small line of standard production pieces that can be found in a number of galleries, most of his time and effort is directed toward the creation of unique works of art, whether directed by his own inspiration or by commissions.

Stepping out of the corporate plural for a minute, I’m Lori. I worked at Accents Beads for about eight years. Last year, when the shop owner decided to branch into the world of glass, I got told, “Help Anderson move his stuff in and get set up.” At the time, I’d bought a few glass beads and pendants, but never considered lampworking. A year later, I’ve definitely been bitten by the glass bug: I’ve switched to working full-time at Accents Glassworks (primarily focused on the retail side), and I’m on the torch whenever I can make the time. (I also have my own Lynx now, though I still have a serious case of torch envy for Anderson’s Delta!)

Lori is usually the person who posts with this account, but we will only use it for “official” announcements from Accents Glassworks; no one likes a shill, so we’ll try to limit its use to things that we genuinely believe people in the forum will find interesting. As we get more free time (once we pull off our grand opening bash!), expect to see Anderson begin to use his own glassartists.org account -- GuruGlassworks -- to show off his work. In any case, we’ll be upfront in all of our profiles about the connections between our accounts, because we don’t want anyone to feel like we’re being sneaky about our business interests. But everyone here is truly passionate about glass; we’re just lucky enough to have jobs working with what we love!

If anyone out there is still reading, we just want to say thanks: this site is an awesome resource for glass artists, and we appreciate the sense of community here. Hopefully you’ll find us to be good neighbors!

Art Glass Classes Forums » Introduce Yourself

New flameworking school, studio, shop . . .

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