Glassblower Mark Rosenbaum has been a fixture in the local art scene for decades.
Now after almost 50 years of shaping glass into colorful creations, he’s retired and stopped blowing glass at Rosetree studio in New Orleans’ Algiers neighborhood.
Louisiana Considered host Bob Pavlovich met with Mark at the studio to check out his work and learn more about the glassblowing process. Mark also talked about creating art despite his colorblindness and shared some advice for young artists.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
BOB PAVLOVICH: We're here in your studio, and I have to say, it's, it's just an astounding place. And you're not firing anymore, but just to walk in and see the work. It's outstanding. It's beautiful.
MARK ROSENBAUM: I appreciate that. Yeah, glassblowing has this magical mystery to it, and it's like you make this tangible work from this amorphous liquid, and all of a sudden this just appears and it's just been a great ride that I've had to establish that and get it out there to the public.
PAVLOVICH: Tell us about your artistic beginnings. Were you talented in arts as a child?
ROSENBAUM: I come from an artistic family. My father was an illustrator. He did anything and everything. And he was really good at everything. He did actually the first Spectacular Spider-Man cover in 1968. And that's not the amazing Spider-Man. It's Spectacular Spider-Man–you geeks out there will know.
I remember when I was a kid, he did these clay dioramas, I guess, of civil war battles, and he took pictures of those and those were in these books. So he did everything from soup to nuts, and he was really good at it.
My brother is also an illustrator and he's done some really amazing work also.
I was talented in two dimensional kind of things, kind of in the shadow of my brother and my father. And it wasn't until I got to college that I kind of realized where I wanted to be.
PAVLOVICH: When did glassblowing appeal to you? When did the light go off as it were?
ROSENBAUM: You know, I remember seeing glass blowing for the first time probably at Colonial Williamsburg or Jamestown–they do reenactments there. And I was like a history major, you know, thinking about doing history– I really loved that. And I said, you know, that'd be really cool to do both of those things. And that kind of was in the back of my mind.
When I was in high school, I did a lot of ceramics and I went to school out in Ohio and I was a history/poli sci major–and I did a lot of ceramics and art there– and it got to the point where I said, “What am I gonna do with this? I don't wanna be a lawyer. I probably would teach.” Then I said, “Well, you know, I'd rather teach art.” And I thought teaching art would be a lot more fulfilling for me. And my brother was at art school in Philadelphia, at Tyler School of Art. And so I transferred to Tyler and in the ceramics program. But in the ceramics program, they had a glassblowing studio and glassblowing is this magical thing.
Now you gotta imagine you’re an 18-19-year-old boy. You walk into this place, it's all loud, rock and roll music all the time– 24/7. And it's just, these people are making these amazing things with fire. I was hooked.
PAVLOVICH: I understand. What led you to the founding of a privately owned glassblowing studio? The first, I believe?
ROSENBAUM: The first in Louisiana. Yes, we established the first one in 1985.
It's a very old art form, but the resurgence of privately owned studios, and the situations in college really didn't start till the early 60s, like 1964, I think is the date. There was a conference or get together of mostly ceramic students in Ohio. It was a workshop and they put together a glass furnace and started blowing glass. By the time I got into it, in the late 70s, there were few college programs. And at that point, it was like one or two degrees of separation, you knew everybody. When I was done at Tulane in the early 80s, there really wasn't a place to blow glass, for me to go to. Now, there, there studios out and you can rent time and do that and not have to build your own studio. But at that point, if I wanted to continue, if I wasn't teaching, I had to build my own studio and that's the impetus for me to continue.
PAVLOVICH: I'm pretty sure most of our listeners don't know how glassblowing works. Can you give us a nutshell of what's involved in the process?
ROSENBAUM: Okay, glassblowing. You, you start with a mixture of basically sand and other things in it. The other things are put in the mixture to lower the melting point of the sand to a more usable temperature. The melting temperature is around 2,000 degrees, rather than sand itself is more like 3,000. So it lowers the temperature. Other things in there are to stabilize it so it's not brittle and cracks. You can add other things like colorants in there to make the color glass in everything.
We have a furnace, which has a crucible in it, which is a large ceramic bowl. And we put the batch into the crucible that is, again, very hot and it melts the glass down over time to resemble what you know is glass. It’s clear, this is actually in a liquid form, and you dip your blow pipe in there, and you gather like you would honey on the end of a honey dipper, and using successive layers of the gather and putting color in between or designs in between, you layer on the glass and then you blow it out to shape using hand tools or some people use molds–I don't use any molds. And this piece kind of appears, magically at the end of the blow pipe.
Then when you're done with the piece, you put it in what's called an annealing oven. An annealing oven is at 900 degrees. At the end of the day, all the pieces that are in the annealing oven slowly cool down over 18 to 24 hours to relieve the stress in the glass.
PAVLOVICH: I watched some of the videos of you creating your work, and the thing that struck me was the movement, the delicate movement at times. And then I read, you had referred to it as an elaborate dance. Would you expand on that for me? Elaborate on that, what you mean by that.
ROSENBAUM: It is a dance because there are certain steps that you always take. And just like in dance, the sequence of the steps lead to the finished product. So with glassblowing, there are definitely steps that you have to take and you can't skip steps. You have to be very involved and on point all the time while you're blowing glass, 'cause you got this 2,000-degree blob on the end of a blow pipe that you're wielding around in the studio. You have to be very aware of what's happening and how you move and how you influence the glass with those movements.
PAVLOVICH: And you only have so much time to do that.
ROSENBAUM: Yes, you have time. The glass cools off as soon as you start shaping it, the glass starts to cool off. But you do have the luxury of going back and reheating the glass up to continue with that dance.
PAVLOVICH: What are some of the works that you've created that you're proudest of?
ROSENBAUM: It's like saying which kid do you like best. I'm proud of the fact that I've done commemorative pieces.I've had corporate accounts that have been with me for years and years that use my work as their awards every year. I've had my work be presented to President Obama. I've been an official gift from the state. The governor made the official gift that the mayor gave out for the tricentennial in New Orleans. So things like that, that people choose my work to represent something, is really satisfying.
PAVLOVICH: We're here, next to your studio, but in the showroom. As, as you look around here, what do you see?
ROSENBAUM: A lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of years. And just growth. And hopefully I see things that make people smile.
PAVLOVICH: I read something about you and I look at the beautiful color. And I read that you're colorblind?
ROSENBAUM: Yes, I am. I'm not totally colorblind. First thing, when you say you're colorblind, first thing people ask is “okay, what color is the shirt I'm wearing?”
I just see color differently than you do. I see color. I have trouble with some colors and I used to stay away from them. I didn't find out I was really colorblind until I went to art school and we were supposed to copy an old master's painting and I chose an impressionist and I did what I thought was copying the painting, and when I presented it to the class, the teacher was like “What are you doing?” And I'm like,”this is this.” She's like, “no way.” And instead of nurturing that, she made me work in black and white and gray the rest of the semester, which I found, you know, later on I thought about it and it's like, this is very, this was not nurturing at all.
And then thinking back on it, when I was growing up, there's certain crayons, actually all my crayons I had to keep the label on. I worked from one end, not both ends, and I keep the label on 'cause purples and blues pretty much were the same to me. And reds and greens were the same, because they're in the same value. Back in the day, not with a 64-pack, back when you had an eight-pack or whatever. It was all one value. And in that value spectrum, I had trouble seeing. I guess it gave me more of awareness of the colors and I have a good color sense. I might not see the same colors “normal people” do, but I have a good color sense of what goes with what.
PAVLOVICH: I once read a quote by you. It was, “New Orleans was and is the only place where if you tell people you're an artist, they think it's a valid career.” What do you mean by that?
ROSENBAUM: A lot of other places that I've been or lived or whatever, you talk to other artists there and they're doing other work also. They're either gigging or waiting tables or something like that. But New Orleans is such an artistic town or city that if you can make it as an artist or musician, it's a valid career.
PAVLOVICH: What do you tell younger artists if they ask you about this? What advice do you give them, both up and coming and, and practicing artists too?
ROSENBAUM: I would tell them to learn some business skills, because art is a business. You can be the best glassblower in the world, but if you don't have a good business sense, then you're probably gonna be making glass for yourself or your parents.
I'm a good glassblower. I'm not great, but I hit on things that made my work saleable and from the business end of it, I think in my career, I was a good businessman. I made good business decisions and that led me on this path to where I was a successful artist.
PAVLOVICH: Have you put the blow pipe down for good?
ROSENBAUM: I stopped blowing glass two weeks ago. So it's still very raw. It's still very, you know, I miss it and I don't think it's hit me yet, that I'm not gonna be blowing glass anymore.
But if I do get the urge, there are other places I could rent time and still do it. And I probably will. I probably, you know, once a month or whatever, just rent time and blow glass for myself. Because it's what I do, it's my identity. I've been a glassblower for, well, it's at almost 50 years. So it's like cutting off your arm. You need that. It's part of you. So yeah, it's tough. It's gonna be a tough thing.
