Blown Away (2019–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Lighten Up - full transcript

[Nick Uhas] We've built
North America's biggest hot shop,

where ten exceptional artists

push themselves to creative extremes.

Because if they can survive

our fiery competition,
they'll win a life-changing prize package.

Now eight remain.

-Battling the clock...
-[splintering glass]

and the sweltering heat...

of our furnaces.

I'm Nick Uhas
and this is Blown Away.

Good morning, glassblowers.



For your next challenge,
we want you to make a light fixture.

It could be a table lamp,

It could be a light sculpture,
it could even be a mini chandelier.

[Nick] We have all the equipment you need.

Furnaces to collect molten glass,

blow pipes for inflating the glass,

and punties to handle it.

Tools to shape, cut and twist...

personal glory holes
to keep the glass hot for sculpting,

and annealers to slowly cool the glass
to prevent cracking.

As always, our resident evaluator,
Katherine Gray is here.

And please welcome our guest evaluator,

-Jay Macdonell.
-[applause]

[Leah] He is a very technical glassblower



and makes some pretty exceptional pieces.

Jay is from the contemporary design
and manufacturing company Bocci,

which has giant art installations

in places such as London's V&A Museum,

as well as some of the world's
most luxurious hotels.

Glassblowers,
you have a lot to think about

with this challenge.

Will your lighting fixture
be a showstopper,

or something more modest
that will also have the same impact?

How will you exploit

the optical and decorative properties
of glass?

[Jay] In the lighting industry,
we take years to develop

and refine fixtures.

You've no time for that.

[Nick] You've got just four hours
to design, create

and present an original piece
of blown glass art.

Your lighting fixtures will be evaluated
on your design concept,

your technical execution
and your overall presentation.

Is everyone ready to get lit?

[laughter]

Alright, perfect!

Your time starts... now.

[tools clatter]

Glassblowing is like
you're always competing.

I'm drawing a heart,
your heart being that spark you have.

It's kind of a tricky shape.

Getting a light bulb in
will be the hardest part.

The spaceship goes inside a big cloud,

and I think I'm going to put
a bunch of bubbles in the glass, too.

So what I'm thinking I'm going
to create is like a little kid nightlight.

So it'll be a bubble with a foot imprint.

[Alex]
I'm making an old-fashioned candelabra.

I'm thinking
about a giant economic collapse,

what we're going to do afterwards.

It's a little dark.

[Patrick] Midnight sun lamp.

Except for two arms on the side,

it will be all black.

I tend not to look all that much

at other people's work,
so it doesn't... twist my mind.

[Edgar]
I'm thinking of doing a nightstand

of an... eyeball.

It's how I used to feel as a kid
with nightlights and stuff.

I was really scared to sleep in the dark.

The winner of this competition
will probably be somebody who...

does great under pressure,

but also is very technical and...

comes up with a lot of original ideas.

It could be fun to have
a cute little ghost haunting my room.

[Deborah] I'm working
with a light I see every day

in my life in New York City,

and that's the "Do Not Walk" sign.

These things could totally be reinvented
in glass,

better than what's out there.

This is gonna get me to the next level,

if not win the next competition.

We've got to move, time is ticking.

[Annette] This is the fun part for me.

[Alex] I've got to make
all these arm pieces first.

Let's make four or something,
you know, so we have some back-ups.

My plan does account for failure.

To survive any apocalypse,
you have to have a back-up plan.

That should work for phase one.

Go ahead and puff.

I need to make sure
that I design and make it large enough

so the light bulb fits.

So that's going to be the tricky part.

[Edgar] For the eyeball,
I'll make a nice, round, white bubble,

and for the iris, I'll grab blue
and kind of mix it up,

so it's not a solid blue.

I want it looking all swirly,
like eyeballs usually are.

Oh yeah!

Sick!

I'll make it as realistic as possible,
because Kathy did say

she thought my egg was a little cartoony.

I find it fun to make it more realistic

than just like a... doodle.

And stop.

Just gonna get you to blow really soft.

You don't know what you're headed into.

In competitions like this,
people appreciate that

and you move further, or they don't.

The piece I'm starting with
will be the UFO itself,

If this goes right,

I'll know what size I need to make the...

outer cloud hole, so it can fit inside it.

I hope I get it right first time
because we're against the clock.

Blow harder.

[tapping]

Sorry about that!

[Deborah] The first step is to blow it up
and hash out the bones,

the basic mitten shape,
so we're going to get the mitten going.

I'll reheat this,
then we'll blow it up a little.

[coughing]

[coughs]

The smoke is going right in my face.

It's going right in my eyes and my face.
Who can work this way?

Ugh!

All glass pieces have their challenges.

[Momo] One of the risky moments
in making this piece

is doing the color wrap.

If I mess it up, I have to commit to it.

There's not enough time for me
to turn back.

Is this something you've tried before?

That'd be silly, wouldn't it?

Of course not. Stop.

[Annette] Ideally I'd get the light
to flicker a little bit.

About two years ago now,
had some issues with my own heart.

It really sunk in the importance of it
and how...

that little bit of flickering
or that slight electrical...

impulse change can be so drastic
and so important.

I'm a little nervous.
I've never done any lighting before.

I'm a sculptor,
so I kind of try to sculpt most the time.

I'm just gonna wing it, honestly.

I'm kind of into that.

I'm hoping to show off
a different skill-set.

I haven't really done hot sculpting.

I'm really using the torch a lot,
kind of working from a more...

sculptor-painterly way.

These are the things that injure your body
in the long run.

You don't want to be lifting
with your neck muscles.

I really try to use good form
and I use my legs and core a lot.

If I get injured
then I'm down in the competition

and that's going to really mess up
my confidence levels.

[Janusz] If you trap a little baking soda

between two layers of glass,

it emits a gas and it gives these bubbles,

so I'm hoping that will suggest
twinkling stars or something like that.

If you've seen
an actual anatomical heart, they're...

really creepy.
[laughs]

They're not very attractive.

So I want it to be a very simplified,
clean representation.

It's not going well.

What can we do for you today?

You can tell me what you're thinking
for your lighting.

I'm going to hide that light bulb
in a black tube.

-A really dense black tube.
-Oh.

So hopefully, just...

a really deep-down beam

that's gonna shoot up to that sphere.

I know what I wanted to make.

I just can't.

Do you feel this interpretation
of the midnight sun

will reveal a bit more
of your personality?

Don't know.

I think she expected that
from the beginning

and I wasn't there yet.

I worked on that for...

at least half the time we had.

Gonna have to rethink that,
chuck it in the bin.

And I will take a little more glass.

Things can always go wrong.

I decided to just change the whole plan
and start again.

My assistant was...

very surprised.

I think it was for the best.

The way light refracts through glass

is really unpredictable sometimes,
and so...

it can do magical things,
but you can't really tell

until you actually have
a light bulb inside of it and can see it.

[Patrick] This lamp is more
what I would make for myself.

If I wanted to a lamp for my own place.

My aesthetic is right in that piece.

Up.

[ting]

[Alex] I got both the arms attached
onto the body.

I could see little stress fractures on it.

Open! Lift!

-[glass clatters]
-Whoa!

[Alex] Yeah. Okay.

And I ended up...

slamming them
into the the glory hole door.

It's a familiar feeling.

I'm just not good enough at this process
to expect success all the time.

Erm...

I think I have a little bit of a habit

of making things a little bit harder...

than they have to be.

I'm just remaking these arms.

I'm gonna finish them up, box them and...

and glue them
onto the one that's in there.

One of the sides we'll choose
to be the thumb.

The thumb is the most important part.

-See that mark?
-Yes.

I gotta get that thumb in first.

It's a pretty big thumb. Flip!

That's when I needed to torch most
and couldn't have it.

Deborah, how long will you be using
that hot torch?

-[Deborah] I was just getting into it.
-Oh really?

[Annette] Timing is so crucial,
you need the torch

immediately when you sit down.

Guy, if you want to grab the torch
whenever we can from Deborah,

I'll go ahead and crack it off.

So I borrow the torch from Deborah.
This is awkward as anything.

This is serious!

I don't know, it's ridiculous.

I wasn't making progress
at the pace I had hoped.

It's really aggravating, honestly.

It was like,
"I need it now. What do I do?"

Just wait. Keep flashing it and wait.

My poor assistant.

She was so amazing.

She calmed me down.

[Alex] Janusz decided to make...

the biggest thing
that anybody has yet made in this studio.

Intimidating to say the least.

[Momo] I saw Janusz cranking out

a huge bubble.

I don't know what that was,

but it was almost the full radius
of the inside of the holes.

[Deborah] My piece was medium-size.

I got in my own head and started to...

worry.

[Katherine] I see you've got an imprint
of a child's foot.

Yes. Almost this like, fantasy...

-interacting with glass.
-We're always curious

with your thought process
behind your pieces.

We always feel like you take it
in very different directions.

I think through the ideas
in a different way.

My brain doesn't really go A to B, ever.

-[Leah] Getting hot. We're hot.
-[Annette] 2 hours 45 minutes left!

[Edgar] Yeah!

Yeah.

[rattling]

Lower your back end.

Perfect, that was spot-on.

[snip]

[Leah] I'm gonna do some color layering.

I've overlaid a transparent
kind of gold-yellow color on top,

and it has just that like,
really beautiful glow.

And then it'll glow differently
where I've imprinted the footprint.

If you nail the proportions on something,

you're going to make a piece.
I nailed it.

My mom always prays for me.

I'll tell her, her prayers worked.

I used to question that,

but today I'm not.

[Alex] Pull up a little bit.

[Assistant] There we go.

Good job.

Thank you.

[Momo] I thought I was being too ambitious

for all the stuff I was trying to cram in
in four hours.

But yeah, I pulled it off.

-Everybody's making such good stuff.
-I know. Seriously.

Yes.

Killing it.

The only parts where I get stressed out

is when people yell the time.

35 minutes, everyone!

The clock is ticking.

Beautiful!

[Janusz] It's gonna be a nail-biter.

-Is it stretching?
-I think so.

Grab.

[clattering]

Perfect.

Good job.

20 minutes!

[Patrick] Flip it.

I'm hoping to make something
that will visually stand out.

[Edgar]
Patrick, I see him making like a...

to me it looked like an underwater mine.

That guy's a diver.
He thinks about diving all the time.

I'm thinking about art all the time.

[ting]

[clapping]

Dude. Hang in there.

[Edgar] Today's challenge
is to make a light fixture.

I got my eyes on the prize, for sure.

[Leah] All you can do
in competitions like this

is just be fully authentic.

You have to take the risk.

[Janusz] There was a lot of finesse
involved in making it work.

Really nervous.

[Deborah] I hope the evaluators see
my creative genius.

I mean,
I really think I've been nailing it.

[Alex] I'm hoping that people are...

interested, excited,
maybe even a little...

entertained by it.

[Momo] I definitely experimented a lot
in making this piece.

Everybody's going to be reacting to that.

[Patrick]
The work is technically well-made.

Hopefully they will see a little bit
of my own aesthetic.

[Annette]
I hope that my concept comes through.

It gets them thinking about the heart

and it sparks some ideas in them.

[Nick] This is Annette's work.

[Jay] There's a nice density

happening with the color,

and it goes nice and translucent
through here,

which shows that light off
and gives that life inside

of the heart, which is really clever.

[Nick]
This is Leah's, "Step into the Light."

[Jay] Children's nightlight.

It's supposed to be warm

beside the bed.
The color is perfect for that.

You know, it reminds me
of a Himalayan salt lamp.

-Same color.
-It has that same tone.

There's a lot of science behind that,
as far as that wavelength of light

does induce a calming-type effect.

So good choice on color.

[Jay] Yeah, really warm.

[Nick] So this is Janusz's.

I'm really impressed
that he made something of this scale.

This is the first big thing we've seen.

So what he's used here is baking soda.

The baking soda burns off

and makes all these little bubbles
in there, so...

-It's a really old technique.
-It looks like oil and water.

-Yes.
-[Katherine] It's really beautiful.

[Jay] I'll walk around this a bit

to figure out what's going on.

I have to admit,
I don't really feel like this is...

particularly skillfully made.

There's other things she could've done
that would make it read more clearly,

being a lantern,
and get rid of that ambiguity

of, you know,
"Is it a beehive? Or what is it?"

[Nick]
This is Patrick's work, "Drifting Urchin."

I feel like this references
those old diving helmets a little bit.

[all] Yes!

I'm remember what he was saying
when he was blowing the glass,

and it was something totally different.

I wonder if he had some struggles
in the hot shop when he was making it.

What was he talking about?

Something that looked like a midnight sun.

Oh.

[Nick] This is Edgar's. The title
of the work is "Bright Childhood."

I'm not kinda convinced by it,

the design rigor behind this.

It looks like a piece that you'd put
on an optometrist's welcome desk.

-Right.
-Yes.

Let's hear what the artists have to say
about their own work.

Here we go again.

[Alex] I feel less confident
about the reaction of the evaluators

for this work than about the previous.

[Leah] you don't know
what you're headed into.

Really nervous. Petrified.

Welcome back, glassblowers.

You guys did an excellent job.

[Jay] It was a real variety of work.

Really nice to go from piece to piece
and experience a whole bunch

of different emotions in different
concepts that are being brought across.

Congratulations.

Alexander, can you tell us
a little more about your art piece?

Thinking a lot about
what's gonna happen when we kind of

exhaust our planetary resources.

I really appreciated
that thinking behind it,

and I feel like, as glassblowers,
we have to be aware of resource usage,

but there's also humor in it.

[Jay] I did enjoy the tying-off

that almost seemed like a noose
wrapped around the chandelier.

Annette.

Ideally I'd have wanted this piece
with light bulbs flickering,

because of not only my experience,

but also it kind of reminds you
of how fragile that is.

I appreciated the fact
that you had the two aortic cavities,

one large, one small,

to slide the fixture through.
Really clever, really well done.

Edgar.

I sometimes get the feeling

that you have this idea
of what you want to make,

and you somehow kind of fit it
into what the brief is.

Do you want to talk about it?

For this one, I had a lot of trouble
with this, honestly.

Like I said, I've never done lighting.

I was gonna make it hang
and I didn't know how,

I struggled to figure out
what I would even make in general.

-[Nick] Deborah.
-[Katherine] Looked beautiful,

it was a little bit one-note,
maybe even just a little too...

kind of pop-art or a little too tidy
of the red, flashing hand.

Janusz.

[Katherine] Knowing you're
a good glassblower,

we'd hoped that maybe that form

finished more nicely at the bottom.

I went for volume.

I wasn't going for perfection,

because I just wanted to represent
this cloudy...

sort of thing.

I was happy with the way it came out.

Leah.

In lighting, there's a really big
consideration that...

is sometimes avoided,
that's the quality of light,

so I layered the colors
and layered things

so I could get this really specific...
kind of almost like fantastical glow.

It's a simple piece with few elements.
There's a confidence you displayed

in just saying that's it,
this is what it is,

and it really sings because of that.

Momo.

I'm not sure if the...

wings... the things on the back?
The clear things?

Those aren't wings. Those are fireballs,

kind of like spirit balls.

In the day, you wouldn't be able
to see them much,

and at night, it would warp the shadows

of the bands and stuff.

So get more wavy lights
and kind of bending the light at night.

We weren't sure they were necessary,

considering what you had in the front,

which was a lot of great things,
the tongue and the eye details.

I think we were expecting to see
the top and bottom bands

be black, so the purple
kind of threw us off a little bit,

in terms of your color palette.

That to me is totally inappropriate
for them to tell me.

As an artist, artist to artist
telling me what color to use?

Patrick.

I wanted to switch and I was really afraid

of doing so
because the clock was ticking,

decided to go back to the sketch book.

And...

tried to make something
that looks like my personal aesthetic.

That's impressive. It's a risky move,
but it obviously paid off.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
If you would give us a moment.

[Jay] Thank you.

The evaluators made some really bold
assumptions about my piece.

[Deborah]
This is not my best day, psychically.

[Patrick]
There's no going back.

It would be sad to go home.

[Nick] One of you created a piece
that embodies simplicity,

playfulness, and showed us
the optical properties of light.

Today's "Best in Blow" goes to... Leah.

Oh.

[applause]

Yay!
[laughs]

I was excited.

There's that integrity of your vision
that came through all the way

-to the end.
-Thank you.

Unfortunately one of you struggled
to connect the creative brief

to your work, and ultimately,
lacked the depth that we are looking for.

It's never easy sending someone home.

The artist's lighting fixture
that did not blow us away is...

Edgar.

We thank you again for all your hard work
in the hot shop.

Bring it in!

[laughter]

[Edgar] You're killing it,
all you guys, seriously.

You're amazing glassblowers.

I felt I was gonna get sent home
on this one.

Lighting is really weak for me.
I've never done it before.

Leah's piece, the idea
of having the footprint... really smart.

I feel like they did the right choice.

-[applause]
-Bye, everybody.

[Annette] That's a tough one.
Honestly, everyone's very strong.

I think everyone has a chance.