Photography by Garrett Cook Dopp pauses before pulling a blowpipe with molten glass attached to its tip from the “glory hole” oven.

GLASS ACT

Heat from a 2,000-degree furnace in Mesa Arts Center’s Glass Studio courtyard quickly reddens one’s face with its intensity. But artist-in-residence Joshua Dopp appears not at all bothered. Accustomed to the temperature, he calls the open oven the “glory hole,” a traditional term in his trade.

From this glowing abyss, he retrieves a blowpipe—a long stainless steel tube from which a glob of molten glass is suspended. He puts the pipe’s open end to his mouth and begins blowing small puffs of air. Moving in an instant to a nearby workbench, Dopp continues blowing air—to cool and expand the glass—intermittently laying the blowpipe on his workstation, where he pinches the attached glass with long iron tongs, giving it further shape.

Back and forth from his bench to the glory hole he goes, repeating the glass-blowing process to create what eventually will become a carafe, a drinking glass or a piece of art. He has even made chandeliers in this way.

“It is like a dance,” he says of the furnace-to-bench movement, and, looking about, adds, “These are the same tools used for 2,000 years—the bench setup, too.”

Joshua Dopp pays homage to ocotillo plants with a cluster of 9'-tall spikes made of blown glass and steel, with LED interior lighting.

Dopp’s glass pieces are in national and international collections. He has been working with the material in different ways for 23 years and loves its endless possibilities as a medium. “I know masters who have been working with it for 60 years and say they are still learning about it,” he comments.

The artisan is inspired by many sources, including history, architecture and nature, and has plans for future glass pieces that fill sketchbooks from his graduate school days at the University of Illinois, where he earned a master of fine arts degree. Moved by the desert landscape, he currently is creating a commissioned sculpture containing blown-glass barrel cacti and a 9-foot-tall ocotillo. Dopp is not compelled to imitate what he observes, however. “I certainly look to nature for inspiration, but I often set the mood by ‘pushing’ the colors,” he remarks. For example, “Superimposed on the green of a barrel cactus is really bright purple.”

His innovativeness has not gone unnoticed. Patty Haberman is curator of the Mesa Contemporary Arts museum, located on the grounds of Mesa Arts Center. Dopp’s art has been shown at the museum, she says, and at a Tempe Fine Arts Center show where she was a co-juror. “His work is wonderful, top caliber,” she states. “I think that technically he is very good, very advanced in glass. He brings something special as far as the design, quality and shapes of his pieces, and the kinds of nuances, or unexpected things, he adds. And he has a wonderful color sense. His are not the ordinary glass pieces.”

After blowing air through the pipe, Dopp moves the glowing glass to his workbench for shaping.

Dopp is skilled in glass techniques beyond glass-blowing, including glass casting. An abstract blue tabletop piece he points to was created using this method and had its sculptural beginnings in clay. A plaster impression was made, clay removed, and molten glass put into the resulting mold. On the finished piece, one can see where he had pulled implements through the clay.

Passionate about glasswork, Dopp loves teaching the medium at Mesa Arts Center and his own studio, and shares his devotion to his craft with the public in other ways. Like many fellow art instructors, he has placed some of his work in the center’s gift shop. And with business partner and glass artisan Adam Frus, he brings demonstrations in glass-blowing, and also instruction, to venues such as Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden with a mobile “shop” on wheels dubbed the Highway Hotshop.

“It’s a way to get glass out there to more people,” says the artist.