We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jon Offutt a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jon, appreciate you joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I’ve made a full time living blowing glass for 25 years with the belief that creative endeavors should fund themselves. Even when I was in school—a four-year art degree that took ten years and a three year glassblowing masters course—I was trying to sell my glass to pay my tuition. I’d have shows at local bars, where I also got my raw glass in the early days.

After leaving the support system of the university, I hadn’t had much business training so I needed to learn how to keep records, order materials, and pay taxes—and I learned that by networking with friends who had that knowledge.

I needed to choose where and to whom I would sell. North Dakota is cold in the winter, so that’s when the hot work of blowing glass makes sense. It follows that I’d try to sell my work in the summer. So I gravitated toward arts fairs rather than galleries. I didn’t have to share the proceeds from the work like I would at galleries, I don’t mind the travel, and it was too hot to blow glass anyway. My displays got more refined and continue to evolve. I named my business House of Mulciber after the Roman god of fire, and I lived very frugally as I dogedly built the business.

My first studio was in the small backyard garage of my 120-year-old house. The roof leaked and the floor was dirt. Fourteen years ago, a move to my current home included a 1,900 sq ft space with heated floors, air conditioning, and room for a showroom and an office. It took my wife and me a few years to find this “perfect” space that fullfilled her wants and my studio needs, and I’m truly blessed and grateful to have found this property along the Red River of the North.

My wife encouraged me to wrap purchases in tissue paper rather than newspaper, and invest in gift boxes and paper bags that I could stamp my logo and contact information on. That made the experience of purchasing my glass nicer for my customers, and the extra respect for the glass worked to give it the “heirloom quality” image that it now has.

One of my early discoveries was that my whole arts community needed to be strong if I was going to make my living in this way. So I and some fellow artists created a visual arts organization called Fargo Moorhead Visual Artists (FMVA) that not only educates artists, but the community as well. We filed for a federal tax identification number and federal nonprofit status—a learning experience that required some serious research. We gathered a board and wrote bylaws. Some of us had talents in marketing, some in tech, some in organizing. Twenty years later, it’s still going strong—but there’ve been some years when it’s been tough to get people to step up and take board positions. It’s an ongoing battle.

The annual Studio Crawl produced by the FMVA was and still is instrumental in presenting my work to my local audience. I volunteered to recruit sponsors, organize the artists, and produce a Studio Crawl brochure. After 10 years of volunteering to do that, now the organization is in a position to pay me.

Jon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

A childhood injury kept me from sports, so I gravitated toward art and spent many hours in the Creative Arts Studio in the basement of a nearby elementary school. I liked pottery and was studying that form in college when a glassblowing elective was offered. Since it was only offered once a year, it took many years for me to complete the course. I went on to get an MFA in glassblowing at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

My glass is traditional blown glass forms with innovative surface treatments. All my work is created from clear furnace glass with applied glass frits and powders–all while hot in one hour-long process. I like to say my work is inspired by plumb bobs, anchors, bubbles in beer, kites, and icicles.

My glass has benefited from the help of a friend, Dave Schutz, who assists me in the studio. The work can have more bling when I have someone to bring extra colors to me.

In the past decade I have used my midwest home as inspiration for my landscape series of blown glass vessels—the vast horizon line, the variety of cloud formations, and the perspective of field crops and tree lines advance the technical craft of glassblowing toward the artistic interpretation of art with a capital “A.”

The local public television station created a feature about me and my glass that does a good job of describing how glass works as an art form, my daily routine in the studio, the importance of “craft” in glassblowing, and my vision of art with a little “a” or art with a big “A”.

I travel the upper Midwest to sell my glass, but I also do demonstrations at schools and fairs with my mobile glassblowing trailer. I try to make my demonstrations tailored to the audience, talking about the science and physics, history and culture of glassblowing.

My glass vessels, sculptures, and exhibitions have garnered lots of awards, and my work is in the collections of the Plains Art Museum, North Dakota; Rourke Art Museum, Minnesota; Polk Museum of Art, Florida; Art Museum of Southeast Texas; Kentucky Art and Craft Foundation; Southern Illinois University; and Alamance County Arts Council, North Carolina.

I find advocating for the arts and arts education key to marketing my work. I have served the North Dakota arts community in numerous capacities, including serving as the mayor of the virtual arts community New Bohemia, ND, and as executive director of the FMVA Studio Crawl, and president of the Lake Agassiz Arts Council board and Fargo-Moorhead Visual Artists.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I had earlier in my creative journey known that my peers would be so important. Creating the Fargo Moorhead Visual Arts and having an organization of like-minded, creativitve individuals who are pursuing the same kind of goals was transformative. Artists should not, and really do not anyway, compete with each other. They will only benefit from supporting each other and banding together. In addition, the networking was amazing because all the problems that I faced had already been solved if only I asked those more experienced for help.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I’ve had my hip replaced twice. The first one was just before my first glassblowing class when I was 19 years old, so i started my journey with a cane. I got my second replacement when I was in graduate school, so I began my second year in my graduate program with a cane. Overcoming this physical obstacle has been a challenge, but I’ve been persistent. It’s also set me apart—I’m the long-bearded glassblower with a limping gait.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonoffutthouseofmulciber
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osJKZPyrwPc&t=93s
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHhWXD1GO3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcudTCcgot8&t=264s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVvpip5fLD8

Image Credits
The first photo is named JonOffuttphotocreditPaulaGeroy so please credit Paula Geroy. Other photos were all take by me.