James Michael Kahle is not a craftsman, he’s an artist.
Or so he told me when I asked about the work that lined his Rockford, Ohio studio, Hot Commodity. Indeed, the art that surrounded us was both colorful and diverse. “Vessels,” as he described them to me (not bowls or vases or anything that would imply that his work is dishwasher safe), were scattered across the showroom in the form of sun catchers, paperweights, lampshades and beautifully decorated artisan glass. But like any artist, he didn’t start out with a large studio and impressive clientele.
He explained that it was actually in fifth or sixth grade that he had his first exposure to blown glass. “I was standing in front of this piece and this old fart came up behind me – now he was younger then than I am now – and asked if I liked the piece,” Jim remembered. It turns out that that “old fart” was none other than Dominic Labino, the man who is often considered the father of the studio art glass movement in the U.S.
From then on, James Michael explained, every time he would see a piece of blown glass, he would process mentally at least three different ways of making it. But it wasn’t until quite a few years later that he got to experiment with glass-blowing first hand. He had always wanted to learn how to blow glass, so he did, though he and his (now ex-) wife couldn’t technically afford it.
“After the second class I decided that glass blowing was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” Jim recalled telling his wife. “After she finished laughing for ten weeks, she told me I should build a studio.”
These classes were not for a college degree that Jim was working toward. Instead, he simply took three ten-week courses that met once a week for four hours to become the artist and teacher that he is today. From that point he acquired a shed which he reworked into a studio in Spencerville, Ohio in late 1989 to early 1990, built the furnaces and ovens that he needed and began the gradual climb to becoming a master glassblower. Since then he has traveled the world learning, creating, showing, and selling his work. He has attended experimental glass symposiums in Hungary, toured across Europe, and taught students from all across the globe in the art of sculpting glass. His art is displayed in museums and businesses, public and private collections all over the world, he had a documentary made about him and his work, and even got to participate recently in the prestigious “Dining by Design” show.
Now, as I have observed, many artists have other artists whose work they admire or technique they try to mimic. Not James Michael. “I have studiously avoided viewing anyone else’s work,” he said. So you know that when you purchase a piece of James Michael’s work, it’s James Michael’s work. It’s not Dale Chihuly’s or Dominic Labino’s work. It’s his own design created by his own craftsmanship and that is the way he intends it to stay.
Jim works in both colored and clear glass in a wide array of designs and sizes, but he also displays and sells work that is either theoretically impossible or that simply hasn’t been done. Metals in glass, for instance – James Michael discovered a way to encase metals such as bronze, stainless steel, copper and titanium in his glass, a technique that he had always been told couldn’t be done. But after two and a half years of trial and error and dozens of broken pieces, he found a way. Another example is the black sand found on St. Kitts Island in the Caribbean – scientifically speaking, it couldn’t be turned into glass – It didn’t have the right chemical properties – but he managed it anyway. One of the more unusual techniques he has developed (I believe the word “weird” escaped my mouth when he told me what it was), is that of encasing cremated remains in glass, be it a paperweight, a pendant or a free-standing sculpture. All of this, he assured me, no other studio in the world does.
“I did it because everyone told me that it couldn’t be done,” Jim Boasted.
His title of “master glassblower” has led him also to apprenticeships. He has trained at least thirty apprentices over his many years of creating and works hard at not only teaching them to be skillful glassblowers, but also decent human beings and artists that will be able to make it in the real, sometimes brutal, world of art.
“Most colleges don’t teach you marketing skills or how to build your own ovens or fix electric problems. It doesn’t prepare students for the pit falls of being an artist,” Jim explained. But he makes sure his “kids,” as he calls them, know what they’re going into. “My apprentices – if they don’t go into glass blowing full time – rise to the top of whatever field they go into because of the work ethics that I try to instill into them. Some people who know me well joke that this is a glass shop masquerading as a social service agency and others say it’s a social service agency masquerading as a glass shop.”
Jim also hosts high school art class field trips called “The Hot Glass Experience,” and by the end of the trip, the students are walking out of his studio with a blown glass paper weight in their hands and a huge smile one their face because they made it. The high school students that didn’t think that they could ever do such a thing are ecstatic to discover that they can. “When they walk out, they are proud of what they did. When you give students an ability to excel, they will perform in many different areas.” High schools from as far as Kansas have participated in this original experience.
But as much as he loves teaching his craft, he admits that there are downsides to living the artist’s life, though he doesn’t see them as negatives at all. “This is not a business for the faint of heart or desirous of security. There aren’t a lot of fancy new cars, clothes, or boats involved.” But he has no bad feelings about what he does or what he gives up to give his apprentices a boost. “Financial security’s overrated,” Jim admitted. “I am one of the most fortunate men in the world because I get to get up in the morning and do what I love. I don’t work for a living; I do what I love and most of the time I live off of it.”
It was becoming more and more apparent to me that money is not the most important thing in this artist’s life. He donates about $300,000 in glass artistry per year to many different charities and organizations and spends quite a bit on his apprentices in order to grow and further them in much more than glass-blowing skills. “It’s all worth it,” he stated confidently.
“Money is like manure,” Jim began again as I had a flashback to Hello Dolly, “If you just pile it up it stinks; it needs to be spread around for it to do any good.”
However, the past and the present are one thing, but the future is another entirely and James Michael Kahle has big plans for the future of his art. For starters, Jim is making the final arrangements to establish a glass community in Dayton, Ohio where the public can both view his work and take classes in the art of glassblowing so others can possibly pursue the art form that he defines as “working in the fires of hell to create a little piece of heaven.” Now, I’m excited because I have always wanted, as an artist myself, to try my hand at glasswork, and now the public has that opportunity. He also wants to begin work on setting up a series of maybe twenty glass shops around the world, one at a time, where his apprentices can grow, learn, and pass on their skills to their own apprentices until all have traveled the world and spread their art and their knowledge and maybe gathered some wisdom for themselves from the corners of the globe.
So whether you’re familiar with glass blown art or you’ve never really experienced it, stop in James Michael’s studio on
South Main St. in Rockford before it’s sold or check out the new studio in Dayton when it opens in September, 2007 and discover what is so captivating about blown glass.
*Visit James Michael Kahle’s website at www.glassbyjm.com
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