If you want to know…

If you want to know where you’re going you need to know where you are from Period. How many times have wise elders and scholars repeated this special sentence? I don’t know but the saying has stuck because of its power to make one look deep at their tracks left behind. Any maker/creator knows this well. The intimacy of our past follows us going forward. So occasionally I stop turn around and look. Here is a picture burst of a few creations i’ve left behind me in my journey. Thats where I have been in the past. An event in the past that happened in that moment and so now it is. The creation if it goes well sometimes sells. Sometimes If it went some other way will be gifted to friends and family. Sometimes I keep them on my shelves in my studio until the right person comes along at a good time. One thing for sure is, I will always find a way to make new glass creations. I know too much. The history is too strong. So I find a way to get in front of a glowing furnace to gather up a gob of molten glass. Its like I get back to my heart, i’de swim the Mississippi River and pick up a pipe on my knees to play with the fire. Let the glass sing, let me sing, and make art - glass. Thanks for reading and feel welcome to look around or contact me anytime with questions or comments. ~ Zach

Home Made Pozole

Home made Pozole is a warming soup in the cold winter months. The bowl it’s in was a commission for a private collection.

Pozole is a wonderful soup stew from Central Mexico. I remember the first time I had Pozole. It was at a Holiday Party I crashed by accident. It was Margarita Ville in the Capitola Village and I unexpectedly descended on their holiday party. A friend of mine was their chef and had cooked up an enormous pot of pork stew with a beautifully rich red hue with stunning fluffy grain balls and meat. It looked so filling. My friend insisted I take a big bowl and he ladled me up some stew. It looked like magic coming out of the pot and cascading into my bowl. He then garnished it with thinly sliced cabbage, diced onions, lime, and a corona on the side and handed it to me. It was so good! The sensations were tangy, spicy, crunchy, sour, and chewy. That was the best bowl of Pozole I ever had. But since then every bowl of Pozole is good with its own time and place in a different context.

I’m happy when two or three worlds collide and create what is art. Life is art. And how we all have a choice to make these moments sacred in our lives. It culminates from a place of doing what we must do. Our expressions come out when we do the most essential tasks in life, like in cooking it becomes a display of beauty and grace. It is my honor to be the glassmaker that holds such amazing gustatory delights.