Blown Away (2019–…): Season 1, Episode 6 - Pop Art Blowup - full transcript

[fire crackling]

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

where ten exceptional artists...

push themselves to creative extremes.

If they can survive our fiery competition,

they'll win a life-changing prize package.

Now five remain...

-battling the clock...
-[splintering]

...and the sweltering heat of our furnaces.

I'm Nick Uhas, and this is Blown Away.

[sizzling]



[Nick] Good morning, everyone.

Today in the hot shop, 
we're paying tribute to pop art,

a movement which, in the 1950s,
transformed everyday items

into colorful and exaggerated bold images.

Let me introduce you
to our guest evaluator today.

From Bonhams Auction House,
Perry Tung.

[applause]

Have some fun with this.

Great pop art has a sense of whimsy
without losing the object's identity.

I've been accused of being whimsical
on other projects before,

so, you know, hopefully that will
shine through in this challenge also.

Grab yourself a box.

[whimsical music playing]

I don't like the feel of that box.



[laughter]

What we'd like you to do is recreate
these everyday bathroom objects

as super-sized works of pop art glass.

Oh man.

Oh, a towel! Oh, congratulations.

Poor Patrick really got the short straw 
on this one.

-Something so easy to make out of glass.
-[laughter]

I'm so glad I got that one.

[laughter]

I'm glad I didn't get that one.

This is an opportunity
to kind of play with scale and color

so we look at these objects
in a totally different way.

I rip open my box, and there's toothpaste
staring me in the face.

Oh! [laughs]

I'm obsessed with brushing my teeth, so...

I feel like I can connect with this.

[Momo] Uh, it's a razor.

[laughter]

Oh yeah.

-Any thoughts on the hairbrush?
-I hope so.

[laughter]

[rattling]

It appears to be a bottle of pills.

How many do I have to take?

[laughter]

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

and present an original piece
of blown glass art.

Your work will be evaluated
on your design concept,

your technical execution,

and your overall presentation.

Andy Warhol said 
we'd all get 15 minutes of fame,

but today,
you'll get four hours of flame.

[intriguing music playing]

I'm feeling comfortable
with the concept of pop art.

So with my piece, I'm going to have

squozen-out toothpaste
and then it's going to have the curl.

But what came out was this enormous...

blob. It almost looks like fat rolls.

I think it'll be hilarious.

Peppermint.

Change the color. Make it bright, cheery.

I'm not a pop artist,

so you've got to transform yourself
and come up with something

that makes you a pop artist
all of a sudden.

It's a little nerve-wracking.

It's an interpretation of a hairbrush,

so it doesn't have to be
exactly the same as this one.

A pop artist that I look up to
is Yayoi Kusama.

She's known for polka dots.

She's an amazing, amazing artist.

And she was definitely a huge part
in that movement,

and I think 
she doesn't get enough attention.

So, you know, I'd like to pay tribute
to the queen of pop art.

Bright pink colors and stuff like that,

that are typically associated
with femininity.

Yeah.

These little nubbies underneath
are kind of fun.

Stay there for inspiration.

I'm a little bummed out about my pick,
but it's just, uh...

I have to deal with it.

Towel stand.

Towel on it. A little bit wavy.

That way it will be funny,
because it'll be standing up

and the towel will be just falling down.

A pill bottle would be very easy
to, you know, make something out of.

[Alex] Really, all that Perry tells us

is to have fun with the challenge,

and that's good, 'cause that's exactly
what my intention is.

It gives me an opportunity 
to make a few objects

that fit inside one another.

I think it'll look cool.

-[bottle rattles]
-I like this kind of old-fashioned, um...

kind of...

orange-brown color for the... for the glass.

[pills rattle]

[thrilling music playing]

[Alex] The first piece I'm going to make 
is the big orange cylinder.

I almost never, ever use color, so, like...

So I'm particularly excited about that.

There's a translucent color called saffron
that seems, like, pretty close.

That's going to be 
the most time-consuming,

so I just want to get that knocked out.

A razor. It's such a mechanical thing.

To make the base, I get a white bubble

and I try to get, like, quarter-sized,
black polka dots going around.

[snipping]

Let's do another one.

It takes a lot of time,
because every dot needs to be made.

[snip]

So my first step, I think,
is going to be to pull a cane.

I'll make the bristles.

That will give me time to consider
how to approach making the brush.

You should never stand like that.

Always have one foot
in front of the other.

It's dangerous.

Ooh! That's a hot one.

Anybody that uses cane seems to win.

I'm not going to
come into one of these challenges

and just do a simple cane pick-up

and a simple form
that we've seen a million times.

"Ooh, you used cane, so, like, woo."

"Technical points."

I wanted to use this as an opportunity 
to show that I can use cane too,

but in an artistic way
where it's meaningful.

Ha.

Our thing's gonna be taller.
It's gonna be like a birthday cake.

Might have to go on its side.

Let's look inside the annealer
so we know what we're dealing with.

[Patrick] So I'm going to start
by pulling three different canes

with two different colors in each.

Keep the tension.

[torch flame roars]

[Alex] Blow softly.

[exciting music playing]

Don't be scared of pushing too hard.
Lay into it.

And if it feels like nothing's happening,

you can tell me
if I'm still being an idiot.

That's a good start.

A good place to be.

Glass is good at imitating...

other stuff.

It's one of the things I like about it.

[blows]

[Janusz] Now cut all that clear off this.

And then pick it up. Now.

Just now. Right now.
Don't waste any time, please.

Being in the competition,
it's a lot more stressful

than I had ever really anticipated.

-How's it going, Janusz? 
-Okay.

You have the hairbrush.

I'm making it into something 
a little more suggestive, I might say.

Suggestive in what way?

-I want to surprise you with that.
-All right.

There's something about the curve
that's sexy to me.

I'm unsure as to what to say to Kathy,
because I'm, um...

I'm still unsure as to what is going on.

So far, you're the only one
that's won two challenges.

Do you feel any additional pressure
because of that?

I guess we'll just have to snap
one of his fingers at some point.

It doesn't matter. 
The only one that counts is the last one.

-All right. Well, good luck.
-Thank you.

[Deborah] Come over here, please.

The first piece I'm going to make
is the hardest piece.

The hardest piece
will be the largest piece,

That's gonna be
the most physically demanding.

Wait. This side.

I'm a little nervous. What could go wrong?
The cane pattern could collapse.

Collapse on itself.

It could fall off by strip.

Back.

Um, it could distort and start twisting.

Can you turn it like this?

So I'm trying to strike a balance
where I get large, but not too large.

[cane rattles]

How are you feeling about the towel
and this pop art challenge?

I would say to everyone,
if you want to make pop art,

avoid using a towel as a starting point.

You've taken risks before
and they've paid off.

Oh, there's...
there's going to be a lot of risk...

involved in that piece, but we'll see.

-Okay. Well, good luck.
-Thanks.

[Momo] There is so much anxiety

in the hot shop today.

Whoa!

Oh my God.

I'm like, "Get it hot.
I'm gonna go for it."

I'm gonna stretch it a little more.

And turn.

It's blowing up as planned,

and I'm working well with my assistant,

and I'm thinking,
"Oh yeah, this is going well."

That's when things start going crazy.

Stop.

The torch goes out.

Something happened.

We're losing heat.

And I was getting physically exhausted.

For some reason, the studio...
I felt like I couldn't breathe suddenly.

Why should I punty this
when it's going to be death?

I mean, I have no tools to work with.

No heat, no torch.

Total disaster could strike.
Everything could go wrong at this point.

I had a total torch malfunction
for 20 minutes.

I'm hoping somebody around me 
is going to let me use a torch.

[Momo] She can use mine.

Thank you!

[Momo] She needed the torch,
and I'm glad I could help her.

I really look up to her,

and that's why I want to showcase
another badass lady in the world.

Thank you, Momo.

[thrilling music playing]

[rattling]

[Momo] Okay.

Yeah, so I go and knock it off.

My assistant puts it in the annealer
and we're good, so one part done.

But I also realized it takes so long 
to do these polka dots

that now I'm a bit worried about time.

[torch roars]

I go to box the finished piece...

You can stand it on its bottom
and push it way far back.

Alex!

[Alex] The annealer is idling, like,

a lot higher of a temperature
than it should be.

-Looks like they're holding at 565.
-Is that high?

Is that high?

-Yeah.
-All right.

[Alex sighs]

So that was a little, um, rattling.

Thankfully, we catch it
and throw it into another annealer.

I'm right behind you. Watch those ladders.
Here we go.

If I hadn't noticed that,

I would have just had a piece that, 
you know, slumped

and turned into a different shape.

[Patrick] For the zigzag pattern,

I have to make a cylinder
out of those canes.

We're gonna do the zigzag.

So when I go in the glory hole,

the cane will twist at the weakest spot.

Twist the other direction
so it goes back and forth.

Perfect.

It worked out well.

Don't talk to them.

[laughs]

The body of the brush needs to be thick
because I want it to bend,

and I want it to look like plastic,
not glass,

so the color needs to be near the surface
of the, uh... the brush.

If the color has got too much clear
around it,

it's going to look really glassy.

[Momo] There's a lot more pressure

just because
there's that much more attention on me.

I don't really do so good
with that much pressure,

but there is a one-in-five chance
that I could win.

Tap it.

[intriguing music playing]

Can you give it a little puff?

Flip. Stop. Just a tiny puff. Yeah.

I used the color to put 
a little bit of movement in the towel.

[tap]

[tinkling]

[Janusz] I'm hot-torching the piece 
on the bottom side of the brush

and inside that indentation,
I want to sprinkle on some white powder.

Don't flip it once we're over there.

-Go on.
-Sorry, I didn't know where it was.

[Janusz] Back to the bench.

I'm curious what Janusz is making.
It looks pretty good.

He cannot win three.

I'm coming at him with my toothpaste.

Turn, turn.

I'm getting exhausted.

-Can it stand?
-[assistant] No.

[Deborah] Side.

Roll gently. Yes.

[assistant laughs in relief]

I got a pretty good, um... piece.

Making the pills is the best part,
so I saved it for last.

Nice! Wow, that looks good.

Yeah, we're getting tablety. There you go.

All right, off.

[assistant] Wicked.

[Alex] And I add
that little final sprinkling of dust.

They basically just look 
like pills for giants. [chuckles]

Should have gone into pharmacology.

Now I'm in the home stretch.

The final piece is the tube.

I am laughing in my head on this one.

I'm like,
"I'm going to be able to nail this."

[grunts]

Oh, the H is perf. Oh my God.

Oh my God, oh my God, I'm in love with it.

-Glassblowers, one hour.
-[Janusz] It's pretty much finished.

The only thing I need to do now

is get the final curve
from front to back of the piece,

like it did on the drawing.

[Momo] Hit it.

[suspenseful music playing]

Oh yeah!

[tools clanking]

[Janusz] Bottom right.

I want to win. It's consuming me.

[fire whooshes]

[magical music playing]

[Momo] So our challenge today is pop art.

My piece is definitely far from boring.

[laughs]

[Janusz] Fun, whimsical. I hope I got
a bit of that into my hairbrush.

I distorted it a little bit
to give it a little bit of character.

[Deborah] Going into this,

I'm definitely feeling I'll make it
to the next level.

I think, technically, I raised the bar.

[Patrick] I think I've missed the point
of playing with size.

Maybe they're going to appreciate
the effort.

I don't know.

[Alex] I achieved, for the most part,
what I set out to do in the shop.

It's just a question of if that intention
is going to align

with the kind of expectation
of our evaluators.

[ethereal music playing]

[Katherine] They took it to heart
this time about using bold color.

[Nick] This is Momo's piece here.

In general, the proportions are there.

I don't know if I'm totally reading razor
in here.

[clicks tongue] It kind of looks like
a, um... a nightstand mushroom.

We'll move on over to Janusz's work.

[Katherine] He really has taken a liberty
with changing the handle like this.

But it adds a lot of whimsy to it,
a lot of life.

It's a hairbrush, 
but to me, it's reading chair

or some sort of animal,
insect-like object.

There's also something
that's, like, sexual about this.

-[laughs]
-There is.

It's the elephant in the room,
but I feel we should...

Yeah, yeah... yeah, there is.

[all laughing]

[Nick] Let's move on over to Deborah's.

She did a great job with color,

because I feel there are toothpastes
that look like this,

and she did a great job of capturing that

and that sense of how it does
kind of come out of the tube.

I like in her statement where she says,
"The voluptuous ooze."

She talks about sensualizing toothpaste.

The cap is bothering me right now.

I'd be just as happy
if that wasn't there, honestly.

[Nick] Over to Patrick's.

There are ways that glass can be made
to look like fabric and textiles

and have that sort of flowing,
sort of drapery kind of effect.

So I'm a little disappointed 
that I'm not seeing more of that.

But I do feel like 
what he's done with the pattern

makes up for it a little bit.

[Nick] This is Alexander's piece.

It's capturing that sense of whimsy
with the pills.

The texture is actually
like how a pill looks.

He was talking to me about that.

About keeping it a little dusty, 
chalky feeling.

[Nick]
Because they're not perfectly smooth.

Yeah. I mean, this is a big leap
in some ways for Alex,

because he's been such a purist
about making, like,

clear, colorless glass things.

-Shall we bring the glassblowers in?
-I think we should.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Patrick] I have no idea what to expect.

[Deborah] They're all my challenge to win.

God, I'm full of myself.

[Janusz] The closer we're all getting,

it's getting sadder and sadder
as we get eliminated.

Hopefully I won't be the next one.

We asked you to create
a piece of pop art glass

that would make us see an ordinary object
as something iconic.

I was really impressed with how all of you
took this object and elevated it.

It makes us look at the original object
in a different light.

I like the fact that you brought 
some bright colors to the challenge

and were able to play with scale.

Very, very pleasantly surprised.

Let's begin with Janusz.

You picked up on a few integral details
that make a hairbrush a hairbrush.

It also was kind of ambiguous.

We recognize it as a hairbrush,

but that extra little twist made it seem
like it might have been,

you know, an insect
or a piece of furniture.

So it added a lot of layers
to a humble hairbrush.

That was what I was hoping.

It was smart to position it
the way you did,

almost balancing on those bristles.

That's what really attracted me to it,
which is great.

Good.

If we could hear from Momo now.

Yayoi Kusama is the person 
that I kind of pulled inspiration from

with the polka dots and showcasing glass
and its lush, bubbly, round edges.

I love the reference to Yayoi Kusama,
another favorite artist of mine as well.

I too really appreciated the bright colors

and the polka dots, the contrast of color.

I was a little less taken
with the reference to the razor.

I felt that got a little bit lost
in the translation.

We thought maybe it was
like a lighting fixture

or, you know,
some other kind of sculptural object.

-Patrick.
-I love what you did with the color,

but, um...

I'm reading it as a sculpture of a towel.

[Katherine] There could have been
other ways that you could maybe...

um, kind of heightened that sense
of drapery or cloth in there.

That was really hard to do.

I've done the best I could 
with the challenge I had.

-I think I've done good.
-[all chuckling]

-I'm happy with it.
-[Katherine] All right.

[Nick] Alexander.

You always have exemplary craftsmanship.

The first word that I thought of
was "fun."

Uh, and I'm glad
that you put the pills inside the jar.

And Deborah.

I didn't want to just ape
the masters of...

contemporary pop art.

So I was trying to really capitalize 
on what glass does super well.

I really liked that play in scale and
having the life-size tube of toothpaste

in conjunction with the large dollop
of toothpaste.

My one concern was,

the cap is very distracting
in how the piece is presented.

My eye is going directly 
to the cap of the toothpaste first.

Mm, interesting.

You've given us a lot to think about.

So if you'd give us a moment,
we'll talk some things through,

and we'll be back.

I think there's a couple of people 
that I think are in danger.

It's always a tough decision.

-Yeah.
-They're not getting any easier.

I hope the evaluators connect the dots
on my piece.

[Patrick] I don't have much
of a good feeling from that critique,

but we'll see.

I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet.

[tense music playing]

Thank you for waiting.

As you know, you're all competing
for a $60,000 prize package

that includes an artist residency at the
world-renowned Corning Museum of Glass.

Today's Best in Blow will also get

a special advantage
for the next challenge.

Today's Best in Blow goes to...

Janusz.

-[heartwarming music playing]
-[all applauding]

-I've got goosebumps.
-[laughter]

Too relieved to be too excited,

because there's just
too much tension inside me.

[Nick] Now, unfortunately,

someone's work did not quite pop for us.

This has been
an extremely difficult decision.

But the person
leaving the hot shop today is...

Momo.

[Katherine] Momo, it's been a pleasure
having you here.

I feel like you've risen
to all of these challenges admirably.

-I see a really bright future for you.
-Thank you.

If you could, please say your goodbyes
and exit the hot shop.

Goodbye, everybody.
I'm gonna miss you guys.

This has been a wild trip,

and that's exactly why I wanted
to be here,

because I knew that the challenges 
were going to push me to my limits,

and it's been a real privilege
to, like, be here

and have my voice heard and showcase glass

and, yeah, my love for the material.

I was sad to see a woman go,

because I wanted it to be
female-dominated out there.

That's my fantasy for this competition.

Not just because we're women, 
just because we have an X chromosome,

but because she actually was bringing
concept to the table.

[closing theme music playing]