My studio in Ohio was in the front room, or “Parlor” or “Formal Living Room” of our house! I started out thinking it would be in our basement, but the ventilation was just not good enough. The front room turned out to be a great place, though, because I turned the whole room into my studio/gallery. I had Gallery Hours weekly for my local customers to come and shop, and they could see where I made the beads. I hope to have something similar soon here in Atlanta.

My ventilation is great-I have a 360CFM fan (kitchen hood) hung from the ceiling, and it is connected to a vent tube. In Ohio the tube was attached to a piece of wood that sat in the open window frame during torching. the propane sat outside the window (of course!) and I had to open the window, hook up my propane to my torch and set the vent in the window every time I torched. It worked pretty well. My new studio will have the venting permanently piped to the outside-I’m very excited about it!

For the rest of my set up I have a Nortel Minor bench burner (my torch) with an Extreme Oxygen EX-15 concentrator. My beads are annealed in one of two digitally controlled kilns, made especially for annealing beads, called Chilipepper Kilns. I use soft glass, primarily 104 COE, Italian Moretti (now called effetre), Vetrofond, German Lauscha, and USA CIM (Messy). I also have a large inventory of 90COE Bullseye from Portland, which I really need to play with more!