Menagerie of glass artists sell wares at festival

Clouds and a cool wind might not be ideal conditions for sipping merlot and browsing artists’ booths during the annual Glass on the Grass art festival, but glass artist Joel Nelson wasn’t complaining Sunday.

During last year’s weekend festival, a dust devil tore through Nelson’s booth. “It broke everything,” he said.

Fellow artists passed a hat and helped pay for some of the damage. “That was pretty awesome,” he said. “The winery even bought me a bottle of wine.”

No such bad luck this year during the glass festival, which has been held for the last nine years on the grounds of the Arbor Crest Winery in Spokane Valley. Even with the cool weather, the winery’s grounds were full of glass lovers. They browsed 36 booths for everything from hand-blown goblets to beads to glass flying pigs.

“People know this is where to come to find good glass,” said Nelson, who is finishing an art degree at Eastern Washington University. He also works at the Erlendson art glass studio and coffeehouse in Coeur d’Alene.

Many of the booths emitted a hissing noise. The sound came from gas kilns used in demonstrations. Or, in the case of Conrad Bagley’s booth, the kilns became a communal weenie roaster. Friends and fellow artists toasted hot dogs on heat escaping from the 2,200-degree oven.

“Now that’s art!” Bagley said, admiring a cracked, twisted dog that had been flash-cooked in the heat.

Bagley, who owns A Cat’s Eye Gallery in Spokane, organizes Glass on the Grass. Each year it has grown, Bagley said, but more than three-quarters of the artists continue to come from the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene region.

“We really, really make the endeavor to use Spokane artists,” he said. “We don’t solicit artists from Seattle, Portland. We’re really concerned about here.”

Although attendance was strong this year, Bagley said many people were interested in buying only small, inexpensive glass items. “It’s the economy,” he said.