Glass provides a resting place for wine, evening footwear for Cinderellas, and a more dramatic exit from 44th-floor windows for Bruce Willises. Shatter artistic inhibitions with today's Groupon: for $65, you and a companion get to take a three-hour glass-fusing workshop at McMow Art Glass in Lake Worth (a $140 value).
Led by a team of certified instructors, McMow's welcoming classes etch artistic wisdom into the minds of students of all experience levels. Set in a 10,000-square-foot studio, the beginner glass-fusing workshop infuses paired pupils with the skills they need to shape, housetrain, and assemble glass panels to become colorful custom works. Along with ample hands-on instruction, the three-hour class delivers lessons in the history of fusing, the compatibility and co-efficiency of glass, types of kilns, and annealing processes. Participants can expect to head home with up to two self-made pieces, commonly taking the shapes of pendants, kitchen knobs, money clips, and trick water glasses.
To foster a friendly but intimate learning environment, one instructor presides over just 6–10 students in each workshop. Although the sessions include one silver bail and fusing piece, students can purchase additional accessories and specialty glass for at-home projects or for artfully tinting scuba masks.
McMow Art Glass
Master craftsmen lead the production team at McMow Art Glass, bringing experienced craftsmanship to each new project that the 9,000-square-foot studio takes on and they teach classes to students of all skill levels. A group of 25 employees with art degrees from all over the country assist the veterans, and together they produce an array of fine glass items that range from classic stained windows to carvings, etchings, and mosaics for residences and commercial buildings. Class topics start with the basic skills of fusion and slumping, and ultimately cover more advanced techniques such as how to repair a broken vase after using it as the ball in a harmless game of rugby.