Sunday 9/21/25
On Sundays I reflect.
I had two sips of wine last week. Jen Stark brought a bottle of her branded wine with Las Jaras and I enjoyed a taste as our team celebrated a victory in the studio over dinner last week. It felt like an auspicious occasion.
We’ve been in the studio since last Tuesday.
We’re hosting Jen Stark and an amazing team of artists for a residency and collaboration. Before I get ahead of myself, thank you Northstar Glass for sponsoring this production and thank you to Two Arrows for breakfast all week. Thanks to our friends hosting artists in their homes, and Lindsey for meal prepping to keep us on the torch. I’m sure I’m forgetting some other supporters, but we so appreciate everyone bringing this dream to life.
I discovered Jen Stark’s art many years ago and quickly it became some of my favorite art. At some point circa 2018 I was able to connect with Jen online and she traded me an Artist Print of her drippy rainbow for some glass.
Over the years Jen and I continued with our art trades, and I also acquired some of her most significant work from online releases including her first sculptural release and her first glass release. These pieces are some of the most important in my over 200 piece art collection.
I also attended Jen’s unveilings and talks in Miami during Basel, getting to meet her and introduce myself briefly a few times amidst a sea of people. We kept loose contact online, and I invited her to come ski and collaborate in the studio a few times.
This summer, Jen signed up and attended her first intensive glass workshop at Pilchuck in Washington. She was in a hot shop for a few weeks, after previously collaborating at Bullseye on a fused glass dichroic piece. Now that Dichroic Mandala hangs in my gallery thanks to Jen.
When I reached out again, Jen told me she had become obsessed with glass. I again invited her to come to Minturn to explore flame working and this time she enthusiastically said yes.
I spent a month or two creating a curriculum for Jen and recruiting some of the most talented glass artists in the world. The goals were straightforward and simple: we would get Jen time on the torch to explore the medium, and we would create Jen’s art in borosilicate glass with and for her.
I called up a dream team of artists, each brought in for a specialty I believed would contribute to this crossover opportunity for Jen.
Eusheen and I have been friends for years, and have also worked together. When I invited the pattern master to participate, he told me Jen was one of his and his wife Peach’s favorite artist and he was in for anything we needed. We began discussing plans for millie creation and various forms of flips that would best represent Jen’s patterns in glass.
Ian is one of my closest friends and also one of the biggest supporters since Drinking Vessels and the studio came into existence. I knew he could serve as Jen’s Sherpa on the torch, as well as contribute his own flips of her work and provide prep for anyone else in the room. My dude Holdin Golden delivered, personally providing prep to Eusheen and the team and walking Jen through her own implosions and other more basic torch techniques.
I also tasked Ian with creating a week long playlist for the studio session. He went so hard on curating a week’s worth of Drum N Bass that we’re all probably still moving at 180bpm.
Ian and I decided that our friend Geoff Madeley and his frit tech might be the best rendering of Jen’s imagery of anyone we know, and Geoff agreed to create the drippy rainbow for Jen. After spending twenty hours on each section Geoff delivered four large prep sections, each of which depicted a sand art style drippy rainbow.
I should mention here that Jen is a complete natural on the torch, and blew us all away with how quickly she was able to grasp and execute challenging techniques.
Alex Ubatuba goes bigger than anyone else I know on the torch. He is a conceptual artist who is constantly pushing our material’s limits in scale and assembly. I knew we needed an outside the box thinker and over the last handful of years Alex and I have become close friends.
Matty B has basically been my closest glass neighbor, working at home an hour away in Leadville since before I got to Minturn. I know his working style and his skills, and throughout the week he contributed to almost every project in the room. Matty ran the sandblaster and pulled stringers, when he wasn’t making marbles or assisting Jen.
My shopmates Heather and Alison were also around this week and leading up to Jen’s arrival. They both helped prepare our space and Alison shot some amazing photographs during our session.
So I assembled a team and Jen flew to Aspen last week. She spent a night getting situated there before Ian and I picked her up the following morning. We had an amazing farm to table brunch where the three of us first began to get to know each other.
Jen arranged a meeting for us at Anderson Ranch Arts Center with the director Betsy Alwin, whom I had just met a few months prior on my first visit to the campus. We toured the facilities and discussed the residency Jen was about to undertake at my studio. We also discussed the possibility of bringing glass flame working to Anderson Ranch in the future.
We then made our way back through Aspen and over Independence Pass, a breathtaking route over the Continental Divide. We spent the beautiful ride continuing to get to know each other, and taking in the earth’s splendor.
We made a brief pit stop in Leadville to show Jen the home studio Matty B works in, and she scooped a few of his marbles for herself and as gifts.
Up the road a bit we stopped again in Red Cliff to show Jen the home and studio of Red Cliff Bob (Will) who might be my hero. He is certainly one of them, and while he wasn’t home we were able to see his space and he got to come meet Jen at my studio later in the week. The things I would do for a Jen Stark x Red Cliff Bob collab are unspeakable. It is high on my list of desires.
And then after an 8-10 hour adventure we made it to my studio and showed Jen around amidst some orientation. She was like a kid in a candy shop.
The rest of the week would go as follows. The team met for breakfast at Two Arrows in the Vail Village almost every morning. Some commuters on the team would meet us at the studio after a brief morning outing and then we would work until dinner time or as late as midnight.
At any point in time, up to six artists were working on a multitude of projects around the studio while Jen took the reins on creating a stringer stack millie of her drippy rainbow. Ian and Matty pulled and cut stringers to size for Jen to arrange inside a 50mm tube of clear glass. Over ten hours were spent meticulously placing each string of glass, until a pattern emerged. Then as a team with Eusheen in the driver’s seat we heated the section and stretched down a cane together. In addition to using slices of the image in our work this week, we will be able to release cut and polished coins in the drop coming up soon on jenstark.com
Over the week we made marbles, drinkware, pendants, experiments and more. Everyone who showed up contributed to bringing Jen’s artistic vision into glass.
I think it was around day two or three on which Jen began talking about coming back to Vail. She also brought up bringing Ian and me to Lisa Angeles for another project I can’t share about yet. We all connected on a level in the studio that is hard to imagine for a room of almost strangers. We have big plans for the future.
Many members of the community visited our studio this week to see the action. We had prolific artists come by and major art collectors and gallerists.
On one morning, I was recruited by our host family to be the tenth person in attendance at a Bar Mitzvah they hosted. It is required in Judaism to have ten Jewish adult men in order to say certain prayers in some traditions. The artists were invited to join, and some of them had never attended a Bar Mitzvah. We stood in a meadow outside while thirteen year old Jonah read from the Torah for his first time. We celebrated at the home after the ceremony with a brunch flown in from Russ & Daughters in NYC.
Jen told us she’s a Karaoke queen and we tried going to sing at a local bar but ended up just creating our own session at the studio. Jen sang her signature “Sin Wagon” into a graphite paddle and I did a duet of “Amie”.
We had some new collectors come through the studio and sold some major pieces. I just want to take a moment to congratulate Emily Marie, Matty B, Jason Gordon, Log, Barto, Ian Silverman, Geoff Madeley, Ubatuba, and Ethan Meyer all on having work acquired from the gallery.
Over the last two weeks I’ve gotten to work with my friends and artists that I admire and look up to. Sometimes I found myself just sitting in the studio looking around and trying to take it all in.
Thank you Jen for making such a special time happen at my studio. Thank you for trusting our team to help translate your art into flameworked glass. This is just the beginning of your glass exploration, and we’re so honored to have been a part of it.
This experience has been larger than life. I am so grateful for all of the support that has gotten us to this moment.
I’m working with Jen and crew this week to be able to release the limited work we created during this residency. We are hoping to have a release live on Jen’s site next week but stay tuned for details on that. If you are interested in acquiring any of the work please feel free to reach out to me to be added to our list. I’m more than happy to chat about available work and pricing if it helps to anticipate what’s coming.
I almost forgot to thank my friends over at Taglia Tool who last minute created Jen Stark marble stands to go with the marbles made by the team.
Jen and Eusheen gifted me one of their first collaboration marbles with a stand and it was probably the most thoughtful gift I have ever received. I’ll cherish it in my collection.
I’m running out of steam here and there is a lot more decompressing I need to do personally after this experience.
Expressing eternal gratitude to be doing what I’m doing.
Thanks for tuning in and enjoy your Sunday,
BB
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