Blown away: A KC artist helps create a colorful glass sculpture for Sprint Center

by James A. Fussell, The Kansas City Star, 9/5/07

Kansas City glass blower Tom Bloyd shapes a piece of the Sprint Arena glass sculpture with a wet newspaper, while assistant Janine Daniels puffs air through the blow pipe. Bloyd is one of three artists creating a 3,000-pound glass and steel sculpture for the downtown arena.

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A new landmark

Paul Dorrell, owner of the Leopold Gallery in Brookside, has spent hundreds of hours as the Sprint Center project’s art consultant. He found the artists, helped with the design and oversaw work on engineering and safety issues.

“Once again it’s a great honor that a regional institution gave us the chance to prove that Kansas and Missouri artists can do world-class work,” he said.

Kansas City architect Ed Tranin, who came up with the original concept for the sculpture, praised the University of Kansas Hospital for adding to the city’s artistic resume.
“KU could have just put their name up in neon somewhere,” he said. “But they chose to do something aesthetic. The sculpture is intended as a landmark, a place to meet, like the clock in Union Station.”

Jon Jackson, senior vice president of the University of Kansas Hospital, said it was only appropriate.

“Art is important in health care,” he said. “We think it gives patients a therapeutic advantage. We also think this will help the status of the Sprint Center (and) assist in the redevelopment of downtown.”
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As heat from a 2,000-degree furnace flashed on his face, Tom Bloyd stuck a 5-foot metal pipe into a glowing orange chamber filled with liquid glass.

As he spun the rod, the molten material twirled around the end like honey on a spoon. At first the pliable blob was small and orange, the size of a squatty light bulb. But with help from an assistant, the Kansas City glassblower fashioned it into a large and striking emerald plate.

Next month that same plate may find its way onto a colorful, 3,000-pound kinetic steel-and-glass sculpture destined for the Sprint Center.

As one of the center’s founding partners, the University of Kansas Hospital commissioned the piece, called Spiral Ribbon. The elliptical sculpture, created by Bloyd, Jason Forck of Emporia, Kan., and Drew Hine of Pittsburgh, will wrap around one of the center’s support columns in the concourse on the building’s south side. Lighted at night, it will be visible to drivers on I-70.

For Bloyd and longtime assistant Janine Daniels, blowing glass is a delicate dance of talent, timing and teamwork. Do it right and the end result is spectacular, a colorful and translucent miracle that never fails to bring a smile to a visitor’s face.
Do it wrong and it shatters into a thousand pieces.

Bloyd — owner of Bloyd Art Glass Studio and Gallery in downtown Kansas City — has experienced his share of shattering in the 15 years he has been blowing glass. While he took a few glassblowing classes at the University of Kansas, he is largely self-taught.
Today the 37-year-old is a veteran of the delicate craft, which is part art, part science and a ton of trial and error. While Bloyd makes artistic plates, paperweights and vases, he specializes in glass-and-metal fountains and one-of-a-kind sculptures. He is especially known for his large and colorful blown-glass birds.

His pieces range from $25 to $3,000 and can be found in 75 galleries throughout the country. Locally patrons can see his work at Leopold Gallery in Brookside.

Bloyd discovered he loved to work with his hands while attending Shawnee Mission East. Inspired by an art teacher named Chuck Crawford, Bloyd developed a love for making jewelry. At KU he took two semesters of glassblowing but switched to other disciplines when the school closed that program. He finished with a degree in metalsmithing but never forgot about glass.

After graduating in 1992, he moved into a home in Lawrence where a glassblower had lived and worked.

“It had a 2-inch gas line going to the garage — totally illegitimate,” Bloyd said, “but it worked great.”

For the first three years he made a subsistence living selling his glass creations at craft fairs. In the mid-’90s he moved to California to take a job with a glassblower. Two years later he opened his own studio just north of San Diego. Soon he began selling his work to galleries. He and his wife, Julie, moved back to Kansas City in 2004 to be closer to their families.

In the last three years he has done other art projects in the area, including a large glass bird installation at the recently opened Matt Ross Community Center in Overland Park.
Daniels, 31, has worked with Bloyd for nearly 10 years. She is one of only a few female blown-glass artists in the country.

“When you think of glassblowers, you think of big burly guys,” she said. “When you see a young woman do it, I like to think it’s inspiring.”

Daniels lives in Kansas City, but has worked in California and Washington state. In Seattle she worked with two world-famous glass artists — Dale Chihuly and James Mongrain. When she’s not helping Bloyd, she enjoys doing figurative work in glass, including male and female nudes. She also paints on glass. She went to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. The main reason she still works in the medium: “It’s fun.

“When I started in college I just got addicted to it,” she said. “It’s physical, active and always challenging. And it still mesmerizes me every day. You have to feel lucky when you find something you’re passionate about.”