We talked to legendary glass artist Marcel Braun about his extensive career and the many projects that he's currently working on. Marcel Braun is one of the founders of Project 33 and A Starship in Every Garage, and he works out of a studio which he calls The Starship in Eugene, Oregon, a town known for its incredible glassblowing community. Marcel was introduced to glassblowing in the early 90's through his connections with the local hippie scene in Eugene. At the time there was a group of blowers that basically lived in the woods near Eugene, and Marcel Braun would regularly visit with them to buy pipes. It wasn't long before Marcel took an interest in the craft, and because he started young he approached glassblowing with a single-minded dedication that pushed him to hone his abilities quite quickly.
In the early days of his career Marcel Braun attended a lot of workshops, and he was especially interested in the techniques utilized by master Italian glassworkers. It was this interest that led Marcel to the traditional techniques used to make complex imagery known as murrine and millefiori, and Marcel embraced these techniques which quickly became a signature aspect of his work. These techniques and other Italian hotshop techniques were a huge influence on Marcel Braun's work, and they continue to be the primary focus of the work which his studio produces.
Marcel Braun is one of the leading figures who is pushing the glass industry to new technological limits. Marcel is fascinated with cryptocurrencies and the potential that they hold in disrupting centralized banking systems and giving power back to people who create and provide services to their communities. Marcel founded Project 33 as the vehicle for a cryptocurrency-based "Art Unit" currency that would appeal to glass collectors and art supporters, wanting to create a system where murrine coins could serve as actual form of currency. Marcel had no way of knowing that he was experimenting in a space that was about to see a massive explosion of new developments, but Marcel was in a perfect position to pounce on the NFT trend when it began to make waves in cryptocurrency circles.
Non-fungible tokens or NFTs are essentially digital contracts that can have various terms and entitlements, and their significance to glass artists is in the way that they can act as a uniquely valuable form of a certificate of authenticity, and for Marcel Braun this is the most appealing way that NFTs can serve glass artists and help artists of all kinds to extract more value from their one-of-a-kind works of art. Project 33 is acting as the vehicle for these ideas, integrating Marcel's "Art Units" within the NFT market to push glass art further into the world of digital decentralized currencies.
With so many projects under his belt at any given time, Marcel Braun is definitely a "big picture" kind of artist and businessman, he loves to work towards the overarching goal and doesn't like to get caught up in micromanagement. At the Starship he works with a loose-knit team of anywhere from 5 to 10 skilled glass artists, and Marcel's studio is pumping out some of the most unique artistic creations in the glass industry. You can check out the work of Marcel Braun and the rest of his team over on the Project 33 Instagram page.
