The Glass Studio

Had such a fun night out with the girls. We thought it was a regular class but it was actually open stuido, we all decided that we liked it this way better, was able to pick what we wanted to paint, enjoyed the company of each other and the teacher was fun as well.

While planning our wedding, my beautiful, gorgeous, amazing now-wife was thinking about unity ceremony ideas. She didn’t like the idea of having to find a place for something that she would never use after the wedding, like candles or a jar of sand, and so concocted the idea of “glass blending”. She described it as a variation of the sand-blending unity ceremony where instead of just blending colored sand, we mix different-colored glass sandlike shards. From there she then wanted to take the glass and have someone turn it into something for us.nAs the future husband, this became the first item on the lifelong “Honey-do List”. Though a bit vexed, I looked online and found Cathi’s shop on google maps, so I drove down into Sunland amidst the hedonism of wedding planning, praying I would not fail my wife before I even married her - that would be bad . . . maybe (never overestimate a woman’s stress level while planning a wedding. It’s intense stuff). The studio is in a small section of a warehouse on a backroad in Sunland, CA. When you go, be sure to have your GPS as there is no signage, and be sure to notify Cathi before you head over to be sure she is prepared.nAnyway, there I was, carrying only an idea I had never heard of before, trying to explain it to a lady I had never met, standing in a random warehouse in Sunland. Thankfully she caught on. She took our dream and made it possible to create a beautiful reality that we will cherish for decades to come.nFirst, she had us pick out several different colors of glass shards/powder in two separate containers, one for me and one for my wife. There was a vast variety of colors, allowing us to choose the exact colors we each wanted to represent us in our unity ceremony; as we chose, Cathi explained the chemistry behind the different kinds of glass and how the glass blowing would affect the colors. From there we took the glass and blended the contents of the two containers into one single, third container in our wedding as you would in a sand-blending unity ceremony.nWe then took the bended glass and returned to her shop . . . 4 months later. This is a huge blessing of working with Cathi. Due to my military restraints, I would not be back in California for a time and needed to schedule the glass blowing months after our wedding. She was very patient, understanding, and willing to work us into her schedule even with the time gap. My wife had assumed we would just send in the blended glass, but Cathi provided something even better. She set up chairs for us in her studio and allowed us to watch and even play a small part in the creation of our pieces. It was phenomenal. We talked and laughed while seeing the glass melt together and blown to life. We ended up walking away with some beautiful paper weights and a small cream pitcher my wife had imagined. During the process, we were allowed to participate and perhaps could have made one or two paper weights ourselves if we’d asked, but mostly just enjoyed watching the glass glow and spin before our eyes, and after blowing the glass, Cathi put the art into a kiln to settle and held onto the glass for a few days to administer finishing touches.nOver all, the experience was fantastic and Cathi’s service was amazing. I would highly recommend any one looking to blow glass to reach out to her.

We had a great time learning the basics of glass working and blowing with Cathi. She’s a great teacher. I highly recommend.

This place is one of the only places in LA to take glassblowing glass with friends or by yourself. It offers a ranges of glasses, from hotshop, to flameworking borosilicate and soft glass, plus it also has fusing and beadmaking. It has something for everyone!

I recommend this for anyone a fan of art glass work