Big On Neon Vinegar Flats Artist Steve Adams Pours His Passion Into Hand-Blowing Eye-Catching Lighted Glass Sculptures
For a quarter-century, Steve Adams has been blowing purified sand into brilliant pieces of glass art.
He has plenty of buyers for his bowls, goblets, candleholders and other art objects.
The sales are good enough to maintain a comfortable existence at his home and studio in Vinegar Flats along Latah Creek southwest of downtown.
Adams said he’s probably blown 5,000 goblets in his career.
“I can make goblets forever,” he said.
At 48, Adams isn’t satisfied with just making money. Art is still his passion, and it’s driving him to create dramatic neon sculptures using hand-blown glass tubes.
His work is currently on display at Cheney Cowles Museum as part of neon art exhibit that runs through March 16.
He said neon sculpture has helped him stay in touch with the joy and enthusiasm he felt when he started blowing glass as a college student in his early 20s.
“It’s more like play,” he said about the work. “I have a lot of energy for it.”
Adams’ centerpiece in the Cheney-Cowles exhibit is a sculpture entitled “Fragments from 2012.”
In it, a twisted glass tube is mounted on a jagged piece of dark metal. The glowing tube in blue and red contrasts sharply with the dense metal background.
The sculpture is a study of both shape and light and the interaction between them.
“It’s something that fascinates me,” Adams said.
His strong forearms and calloused fingers show his years of work as an artistcraftsman.
He hasn’t given up blowing the more conventional art pieces he sells across the country. He does them to pay the bills.
But as much as he can, Adams is spending time building neon sculptures.
Making the hand-blown tubes is no easy feat. Adams uses his years of skill with molten glass to fashion the long tubes that are filled with neon gas.
He is still experimenting with combinations of mercury and neon to create tubes that glow both blue and red when they are charged with electricity. Getting the right amount of mercury in the tube is the key to creating the twin colors.
Adams said collaborating with other neon artists is part of the fun.
Glass-blowing is an Old World skill that was adapted to studio art in the early 1960s. Adams is a devotee of the studio movement.
He has two blast furnaces in his shop: one for melting the glass, the other for reheating it as he works each piece. When the doors are opened, the furnaces glow nearly white at 2,100 degrees Farenheit.
They consume about $600 worth of natural gas a month.
“I work up a good sweat,” Adams said. It’s so hot, he stops blowing glass when the weather gets warm for about four months a year.
Each piece of art starts with glob of glowing glass pulled from the furnace. The molten, iridescent glass clings to a long hollow pipe that Adams uses for blowing and working the molten material.
He rolls the tube and forces air through it to fashion the inner and outer surfaces, repeating the process several times.
Finished pieces are cured in an oven to cool slowly.
His artwork is scattered throughout the studio, ready for shipment to retail shops around the nation. A set of three colored candleholders sells for about $380.
During the 1970s, Adams ran a shop near Gonzaga University and specialized in stained glass.
He moved to the Vinegar Flats neighborhood in 1978, concentrating on his glass-blowing skills.
He has been an active member of the community development steering committee for years.
His house is just above Latah Creek, which runs along his back yard. During the flood on Jan. 1, water rose to his yard, but no higher, while other parts of the neighborhood were flooded. The creek at his home has high banks.
Across the street from Adams’ home is the site of the old vinegar distillery that gave the neighborhood its name.
Adams said the setting is the right kind of place for an artist.
“It’s a calm, peaceful place to live,” he said. “It’s a secluded place that’s real close to town. That helps me.”
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