We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rachel Escoe. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rachel below.
Rachel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
Before learning glassblowing, I had already dived into any creative medium I could get my hands on! Ceramics, photography, drawing, painting, etc. When I started college at the Alberta College of Art and Design, that was when I first found my love for glass. I ended up majoring in glass and after graduating I realized how much I still had to learn. My teacher Tyler Rock once said to me, “When you’ve reached your 10 year mark of working with glass, that’s when you can call yourself a professional glassblower!” So I started working for other glass artist’s and assisting them with their work. Gaining more skill set that way. As a side note, I learned a lot of what I do with teaching, by working a ton of odd jobs, (day jobs) to be able to pay my bills. Meaning, while I was a practicing glass artist and freelancing for other glassblowers, I also worked several day jobs!
Glass blowing provides a lot of insight on team work and working with others, but my odd day jobs helped me hone in on how to work with strangers, potential clients and all of the various personalities we come across each day! I worked in the service industry for over a decade, worked for various other crafters helping them make their craft, I even worked in a colonoscopy clinic once!
Knowing what I know now, I could have spent less time doing what my college boyfriend wanted to do and spent more time finding art opportunities that I could exponentially benefit from. I feel like I researched a lot of residency applications, grant applications, job applications, and never actually applied to them because I was worried about the logistics of my current life. It really doesn’t hurt to apply! Apply apply apply! You can decide if it is the right path to take when you get an acceptance letter! I held myself back quite a bit when I was younger because I thought I wasn’t worth it and I seriously thought too much about what my boyfriend thought.
The skills that are most essential for me in glassblowing, have to be the constant movement that is involved with working in molten glass, learning how to make glasswork with another person and forgiving yourself when a project doesn’t turn out!
-The constant movement involved with hot glass forces you to focus, multitask, use your whole body and all of this combined can put you in a sort of flow, meditative state. That is, once you become familiar with the medium of course, flow starts to sink in!
-Team work is a huge aspect of glassblowing. Glassblowing can be very complicated depending on how big you’re working or the complexity of the piece. Having a partner or two to help you is essential and making sure you all vibe well and know what each other is wanting is super important.
-Forgiving yourself and using the human skill set of emotional regulation is also very important in glassblowing! Cause glass breaks and sometimes you can be working on a piece for a couple of hours and then it drops on the floor. So forgiving yourself, learning from it and moving on is part of that. It is okay to be upset ofcourse and feel those emotions. But if you don’t let go of that, it can travel to the next pieces you start working on!
Some obstacles that stood in the way for me, were living in the right area of the world. Not having access to glass shops because there were non around, not having enough money saved up to rent time at public glass shops. Glassblowing is a very expensive medium to work in. Supplies are crazy high. Most glassblowers will rent from other glass studios instead of having their own. So, being really good at saving your money up so you can do what you love is super important.
Also, a big obstacle for me, was being intimated by opportunities. Especially in the glass industry where it was very male oriented for a long time. But it is slowly changing now and becoming more inclusive to Women, BIPOC and LGBTQ+.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am a practicing glass artist in the Portland, Oregon area. Where I run Rachel Escoe Glass LLC. I have various bodies of glasswork that I make and sell online and in various gallery locations in the area. I also teach beginner glassblowing workshops and 4 week courses in my mobile glassblowing studio called Glass Current Mobile Studios. I also take my studio various locations around the pacific northwest, to showcase glassblowing, get people involved in hot glass and create an educational fun experience for everyone. The goal with my glasswork and my mobile shop is to create more accessibility for people and to educate them on the magic of hot glass.
I am most proud of my students when they come away from my experiences telling me they will never forget this and they had no idea what it was like! I also love it when they tell me that they feel very comfortable around me and at ease. Cause glass can be intimidating!
When my clients purchase my artwork, I am most proud when they make an emotional connection with my work!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Through out my journey of being an artist and running a small business, I never thought that the most trying part of it so far was recovering from having my beautiful son! No one talks about this enough! It is hard having a career and starting a family. When I was growing up in the 90’s, my mother was a full time neonatal nurse and had 4 of her own kids to take care of. She made it seem easy! It isn’t, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It’s okay that it isn’t easy. You’re not weak by saying that!
The trade that I work involves a ton of physical activity. So when I had my child, I didn’t realize how hard it would be to bounce back into work. Both physically and emotionally. One thing I was really impressed with, was how resilient our bodies are. I had an emergency c-section and everything went well. We are both healthy, but there was defineteley that question of whether I would ever blow glass again. C-sections in particular are crazy procedures if you think about it and I really had no idea how my body was going to recover from it. But keeping my baby fed and healthy, and also taking care of myself were my goals to getting better. Tiny physical therapy sessions everyday, staring at my babes little cute face and acts of kindness to myself helped me get through it. Till one day I felt like I can do this again and even more!! It was a pretty amazing feeling and one I cannot really fully explain in words. Our bodies are truly amazing and so are our minds. Its all about the amount of support you can get and believing in yourself too.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
I am a huge advocate for supporting your local small businesses where ever you live. Especially with art. When you are buying from an artist you’re directly supporting their livelihood and that money is going right back into your local economy. As well as galleries. Not every artist is good at representing themselves, so buying from your local galleries helps support both the artist and the person representing them. Immersing yourself in art on a weekly.monthly/daily basis can bring all sorts experiences about life that you may not have even thought of. Getting to know someone else’s life through their art can give perspective, an emotional connection, strike up a memory in your life and ignite creative inspiration. Try not to buy from big corporations like amazon! I do it too. It is so convenient, but if it is a timing issue. A lot of local businesses offer local pickup. Where you don’t have to deal with shipping!!
Talk about artist’s, meeting more artist’s, go to more concerts, art openings. and take yourself out. To experience things you don’t normally do. It feels good and you never know what might inspire you!
Contact Info:
- Website: rachelescoeglass.com
- Instagram: @RachelEscoeGlass
- Linkedin: Rachel Escoe
Image Credits
Nick Mendez